The Adventures of Captain Africa
| The Adventures of Captain Africa(Luo Yuchen, Lao Xun) | |
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Original poster for the first chapter of this serial
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| Directed by | Spencer Gordon Bennet |
| Produced by | Sam Katzman |
| Written by | George H. Plympton |
| Starring |
John Hart Rick Vallin Ben Welden June Howard Bud Osborne Paul Marion |
| Music by | Mischa Bakaleinikoff |
| Cinematography | Ira H. Morgan |
| Edited by | Earl Turner |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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15 chapters |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Adventures of Captain Africa (1955) is a Columbia serial starring John Hart. It was the third to last serial to be produced by Columbia.
Trapper Nat Coleman and government agent Ted Arnold come upon a plot to take over an African nation. Its leader, Caliph Abdul el Hamid, has been exiled from his country and replaced by a look-alike usurper allied with an unnamed foreign power. The Caliph intends to return but enemy agents Boris and Greg are out to stop him. Captain Africa a masked jungle lord, appears occasionally to aid Nat and Ted.
The main villain does not actually make an appearance anywhere in the entire serial.
It was conceived and filmed as a sequel to The Phantom (starring Tom Tyler). Well into production, Columbia found that its film rights to the comic strip had expired. King Features wanted more money than Katzman was willing to spend and negotiations broke down.
Hurried retakes and major re-editing followed, with John Hart now wearing an amended costume that only used part of the original Phantom outfit, with the addition of a leather aviator's cap and riding britches.
The new story featured a new hero, Captain Africa, who still bears a strong resemblance to The Phantom in both appearance and behavior.
The serial features heavy use of from earlier serials Jungle Menace (1937), The Desert Hawk (1944) and The Phantom (1943) itself. Footage from The Phantom was reduced when this stopped being a sequel. Only a few minutes of new material were included per chapter.
The serial was produced by legendary Hollywood cheapskate Sam Katzman. Serial producers often economized by including a "cheater" chapter, in which flashbacks to earlier chapters are shown instead of new scenes. The Adventures of Captain Africa audaciously uses four cheaters within its 15-chapter length. The frequent recaps were possibly necessitated by the hasty rewrites during production.
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Wikipedia