One of the best Mascot serials concerns a couple of marines taking on the Tiger Shark a masked criminal who is trying to steal a gyro compass and prevent his hide out island from being turned into a military base. This is an action packed serial that is better in the chapters then it is in the cliffhangers. The cast is good (with great chemistry between the two leads), the action better. This is as good as Mascot gets, and in its way it might have rivaled some of Republics best work had it had a music track. Its a minor thing but the lack of music (something Mascot didn't really splurge for at any point) makes a little slow at times. That flaw aside this is one to watch. Its actually very good.
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dbborroughs28 June 2008
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Mike-7648 August 2004The Marines, out of their San Diego base, are working on construction of a landing strip for their planes on Halfway Island in the pacific. Their efforts are being sabotaged on the island by a group headed by a masked criminal calling himself the Tiger Shark. Sgt. Schiller invents a gyrocompass which would pinpoint the where on the San Diego-Halfway Island route the planes are being brought down, but is kidnapped by the Tiger Shark's men in order to learn the secrets of the instrument. Cpl. Lawrence and Sgt. McGowan go after to rescue Schiller and stop the sabotage on the island, while trying to avoid the danger set by the Tiger Shark. It seemed like a decent serial on paper, but this serial drags on for long periods, with many time consuming chapter replays. Withers and Morris have great teamwork together which gives these characters personality. Ann Rutherford is absent for long spells, which doesn't give this serial a good heroine. The Tiger Shark is unfortunately an unmenacing villain, who is basically seen only in the last couple of chapters and given an identity easy to figure out (true to the Mascot formula in this regard), since Mascot didn't work much on the red herrings. Plenty of action and fights, but not enough. Rating, based on serials, 4.5
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JohnHowardReid2 April 2014By the modest standards of Mascot Studios, this well-worn Alpha DVD offers a reasonably good cutdown of the original 12-chapter Mascot serial. In fact, after a none-too-promising and rather jumpy start, the so-called "feature version" settles down quite well. Indeed, I would give the cutdown a higher entertainment rating than the serial itself which is chock-full of cost-saving gimmicks including weak cliff-hangers and boring reprises of action we've already seen. True, hero Grant Withers puts second-ranked Adrian Morris right in the shade. I can hardly remember what Morris even looks like, although I saw the movie only a few hours ago. On the other hand, our lovely heroine Ann Rutherford doesn't figure in this cutdown movie all that much at all. Indeed, as a matter of fact, despite her third billing, I'm told that her role in the serial itself is rather meager. Yet on the other hand, our 84-minute feature packs in plenty but plenty of well-staged action set-ups, put across with reasonable efficiency by director B. Reeves Eason and his adept pupil, Joseph Kane. Kane also handled most of the dull dialogue scenes – but they do serve to cushion the many action line-ups. Our well-worn but watchable Alpha DVD runs 82 minutes.