SAKIMA AND THE MASKED MARVEL (1966)
Feature version of the Serial THE MASKED MARVEL
Article 1930 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-27-2006
Posting Date: 11-24-2006
Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet
Featuring Johhny Arthur, Tom Steele, Louise Currie

The Masked Marvel does battle with an evil Japanese saboteur named Sakima.

During the mid-sixties, several Republic serials were edited into features, and this is one of them. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the serial version of this one, so I didn’t find it overly familiar. For those who need a refresher course, the Masked Marvel was a slender, athletic and sharply dressed hero who is one of four insurance detectives, all four of which were slender, athletic and shared a tailor between them. They were also fairly bland and forgettable as characters, so it really doesn’t matter which one is the Masked Marvel, no matter how many times the movie tries to make it sound like it’s really important to know. It’s pretty ordinary as these things go; each episode is reduced to a five-to-ten minute sequence and strung together for non-stop but fairly repetitive action. In particular, prepare yourself for seeing lots of scenes of dolls falling from great heights. The most familiar face in the cast to me was Anthony Warde, who plays (as he usually does in this type of thing) the main henchman. I didn’t recognize him, but Professor Macrae was played by an uncredited Edward Van Sloan.