Deadwood Dick (1940)

Imagine having those two titles on your resume, but the fantastic James M Horne did, and we are all better humans for the result. This is a good serial. I saw it in the 70s screened each Sunday night in a Sydney Suburban cinema at their 6pm session with two whopper features ( eg: GUNS OF NAVARONE + GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER or HELLO DOLLY + CALL ME MADAM etc) and to a usually packed house. Well, if UNDERSEA KINGDOM wasn't enough, the scream of delight when DEADWOOD DICK hit the screen was enough to lift the roof. Inventive and genuinely entertaining, DD has some great set pieces, one especially is that The Mask or whoever bad-dude has a hideout behind a waterfall and the henchmen have to get off their horses, turn off the waterfall and reveal the cave behind....all very clever and silly. And then turn the waterfall back on again. It takes Dick about 3 months of episodes to realize why the hoof prints in the river sand 'disappear' at the waterfall's edge! Geez! Dick would gallop about on his trusty horse and the usual chasings and fights would go on for weeks...actually months, because this thing ran 15 episodes, one a week!! Seasons even changed before this serial was over. Great fun.