DANGERS OF THE CANADIAN MOUNTED (1948)
Serial
Article 2411 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-2-2007
Posting Date: 3-19-2008
Directed by Fred C. Brannon and Yakima Canutt
Featuring Jim Bannon, Virginia Belmont, Anthony Warde

Sergeant Royal of the Mounties patrols the town of Alcana, on the border between Alaska and Canada. He is hunting criminals who are after the lost treasure of Genghis Khan.

I’ll have to brush up on my history; I don’t recall Genghis Khan having spent a great deal of time in either Alaska or Canada, but then, I don’t have any record of him encountering Maciste, either. At any rate, he appears to have left a treasure in the area, and our dull hero spends most of his time trying to track down a henchman who is working for an unnamed boss (if you sit back and spend about ten seconds thinking about it, you should figure out who that is without having to sit through all twelve episodes) to locate the treasure, which of course, requires that he terrorize highway builders and try to procure books for their kidnapped expert on translating old languages. As a result, we get a lot of fairly ordinary fistfights (this was after the warehouse-wrecking battle royales of Republic’s better days) and lots of tepid cliffhangers; if scenes of people baling out of vehicles is your idea of fun, you’ll be in heaven with this one. There isn’t much fantastic content; mostly, it’s some slight horror/fantasy content having to do with some spooky caves. The most striking fantastic element occurs in the final episode, and has to do with the nature of the treasure that is found, but I won’t give that away, because it’s one of the few satisfying surprises in this one.

Gee, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a serial. I hope some of the remaining ones I have yet to see are better than this one.