Captain Midnight DVD

 Captain Midnight: Radio, TV & Cinema Flyer
If you're already in the know about the various incarnations of Captain Midnight, on radio or screen, then what I'm about to say may already be second nature to you. I guess Captain Midnight the aviator is not to be confused with Captain Midnight, host of the Inner Sanctum-like horror anthology radio show, "Lights Out!". But what I really didn't learn until now was that Captain Midnight, in the movie serial, is the same character as the one in the 50s TV series of the same name, which touts Captain Midnight as a war veteran still championing America's freedom. Maybe we can count the TV show as a sequel: in other words, Captain Midnight and his team started out in the late 30s/early 40s using souped-up prop planes, then graduated to post-war jet fighters (the TV version), and near-science-fiction laboratories to meet the higher tech demands of the atomic/Cold War era. Get it? Anyway, to my knowledge Captain Midnight never took on Nazis or the Japanese military directly, unless he did on his radio show, which I've never heard. Though released one year after Pearl Harbor, the villain in 1942's serial version, Ivan Shark, is not Japanese, German or an Axis supporter, but a Mafia-like American running a sabotage ring that threatens national security. If there's any connection with the World War II Axis, then it's only by way of analogy. 1942's "Captain Midnight" is much more like Columbia's 1939 serial, "Flying G-Men", than anything else I can think of for description/comparison's sake. If you like either one of those, then I'd recommend the other immediately. Both are full of patriotic drum-beating--NO Nazis, Nipponese, Russians or Yellow/Red Peril conspiracies, but American sabotage rings, with ring-leaders also American enough, and dressed straight enough, to pass for FBI agents. No funny-dressed furriners here. In fact, the only one with a funky outfit on is Captain Midnight himself: black leather aviation suit, matching pilot's hood, goggles, face shrouded up to his eyeballs in black leather too. The Black Falcon in "Flying G-Men" wore a similar outfit. I checked the biographies on this disc, about star Dave O'Brien, wife Dorothy Short, who co-stars, and director James W. Horne. Turns out, Horne also directed "Flying G-Men". I'm not a bit surprised. Like most aviator serials, including "Flying G-Men", "Captain Midnight" has childish kid-appeal. More slick and formulated than rudimentary predecessors like "Mystery Squadron", "Captain Midnight" offers nothing new, and exemplifies the churn-'em-out, meet-the-quota Hollywood factory mill of its time. But it does so on a lower budget, and that's what counts. Don't expect the more sophisticated, better-written/directed/acted, feature film-level noir of the first "Green Hornet" serial, the fresh music-comedy ensemble charm of Nat Levine's "Phantom Empire", or the well orchestrated comedy-action balance of serials like "Dick Tracy" and the Dead End Kids wartime chapter-plays, but even less novel serials like "Captain Midnight" are still better than the self-consciously over-budgeted, clueless swill Hollywood gives us nowadays.
Submitted by Bill (Newton, MA, USA) 
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