Battling with Buffalo Bill (1931)

As a watcher of at least a hundred serials, I can see that this relatively early effort helped to establish their predictable pattern, especially with western serials. The hero, (in this case it's NOT Buffalo Bill, but rather the upstanding citizen Dave Archer) and his girl battle against nefarious white men who are trying to thwart their honest attempts to help settlers develop the land - in this case, as in many others, including a gold mine. Indian tribes get involved not as 'hostile savages'. but more usually, as pawns at the beck and call of the bad white men. There is lots of riding as well as cliffhangers involving wagons going over cliffs, victims lying in the path of stampeding horses/buffalo/wagons, heroes being shot in the back, falling off cliffs, being caught in burning sheds with, almost always, kegs of gunpowder lying around waiting to explode. Then, there's lots of riding. As well, out of a cast of 20 or so actors, only one female character usually appears, usually as the daughter of the earnest professor/developer/settler/miner the hero is trying to help (you can see the romantic possibilities, right?) This serial actually has an additional female role, but she only appears in two chapters and is listed below Bill's horse in the credits. This one was better than average (I almost always give the sea '6', but this one warranted a '7') since at least the Indians didn't speak English,and the hero didn't look with loving eyes into the smiling face of his beloved at the end. As well, the charmingly rustic vocabulary of Lew Kelly as the introductory narrator was a real hoot and a hollar! If one is only going to watch one or two serials in one's life, one could do much worse than to try this one out.