Welcome, boys and girls, to the fourth in this series of movie serials. We’ve been to outer space, we’ve been to the depths of the oceans and we’ve battled moon men in the stratosphere but for the next fifteen exciting chapters we’re staying here on Earth. The Earth of 1937. A place where criminals were tough and ruthless and the only way to tackle them was to be even tougher and even ruthlesser. The man for the job was none other than…

Starring Ralph Byrd as Dick

A generic looking female as the only woman in the serial.

Two people who were in Undersea Kingdom as one of the irritating seamen and the irritating boy respectively.

A man who looks evil and who must be playing a baddie or possibly Sherlock Holmes.

I don’t know what this is.

Yet more people.

And a list of minor actors including two who would go on to greater things in Sesame Street.

We open somewhere seedy. It could be a bank, a race track or one of those places where men go to look at ladies in cages.

Overseeing things are two British stereotypes with nothing better to do.

It appears they were all at a railway station. Here is part of a train.

A group of criminals have gathered in a train carriage. They take it in turns to be afraid or not afraid of someone known only as "him".

"He is coming" says one of them. We cut to a surprisingly effective shot on a figure walking down a corridor in the sort of shoes Noddy Holder would go on to define a generation with.

The man – "him" – arrives in silhouette and grills the criminals about their affairs. One by one the weasels tell him everything is fine.

Until this man dares to speak the truth.

He’s not afraid. To show how not afraid he is, he reveals he wasn’t just pleased to see the boss – he has a gun in his pocket. He fires several rounds at close range but the silhouette just laughs.

The would-be assassin is appalled.

The lights go out, we cut to a shot of the train going past and suddenly the brave soul is running for his life, the limping man in hot pursuit.

He thinks he’s made it home safely. Then a beam of light projects the image of a spider onto his face. A gun shot follows and he falls dead.

This is rather good so far. Zillak promised me low quality laughs with this one and thus far it is chicken in a basket Hitchcock. I demand that something silly happens.

Meanwhile, at the Federal Office Building…

Dick Tracy is on the phone. He a seems jolly fellow.

Hang on – he seems to employ people to watch him answering the phone. I think he may be an egomaniac.

The other man is Dick’s brother. He wants Dick to come to a fair with him. Dick is too busy so his brother, the token female and Dick’s idiot sidekick go instead. We spend several minutes watching fair type things. Including a puppet show. This is quite silly but not the sort of silly I want. Try again.

This man is a friend of Dick’s brother. He receives a long distance telephone call about which he seems thrilled. Unbeknownst to him, there are shoes poking out from under the curtains.

The mark of the spider! He’s shot in the stomach and dies with very little dignity.

But enough of that – back to the puppets.

The children watching the puppet nonsense are told that there has been a murder. They are hurried away by a nurse but this boy decides he’d rather solve a murder than go back to the workhouse (or whatever it was children did before gangs and ringtones were invented).

The woman phones Dick and he rushes round to sort everything out. He quickly finds a foot print.

Dick finds more clues. The clown has been pulled in for questioning too.

The woman looks at some evidence under a microscope and makes an intelligent point. The clown and his friend are appalled.

The small boy spots some criminals doing something they shouldn’t be doing. He calls for Dick. Dick springs into action.

The bad guys are arrested. Dick congratulates the small boy on his quick thinking. The small boy reciprocates by recognising Dick. Dick beams at him.

He takes the small boy under his wing and sends him into the house with a gramophone record he found on the arrested man. He also finds a gramophone on a table in the garden which was lucky. He goes back in and the woman informs him that, according to her microscope, the sawdust they found near the body matches the sawdust on the clown’s shoes. Dick confronts him.

He puts on a record – it is a recording of the puppet show. Gah! This proves the clown (who was actually the puppeteer) had no alibi. He doesn’t panic however at this piece of circumstantial evidence. Instead he pulls out a gun and threatens everyone.

The case is all wrapped up in chapter one. I wonder what we’ll be doing for the next umpteen weeks. Peace is shattered when the nurse comes in looking for the small boy. Dick asks if he can look after "Junior" for a while. The nurse agrees immediately. They were more innocent times and no mistake.

There is a car chase next as someone from the good team is going somewhere and someone from the bad team decides to follow him.

The man from the good team crashes and is taken away by the men from the bad team.

They take him to their secret hideaway and operate on him. The evil doctor explains that he is going to "alter certain glands" and render the man from the good team unable to differentiate between right and wrong. We’ll have to invent a new team for him if it works.

Dick demands his boss give him free reign to investigate the case. He gets it. His boss is handed a type written message.

Two more follow. I think they’re talking about the clownish puppeteer man.

The evil doctor we met earlier is explaining that the now neither good nor bad team member is ready for display. He looks a little different and his hair has a white streak. I don’t really remember what he said – I’m too busy goggling at (a) the fact that they gave him a hump and (b) a massive hump.

This is the source of his pride.

He is given his orders – hate Dick Tracy and obey orders. As if to prove their power, the limping man (now seated) breaks a vase using only an invention. He has a bigger one elsewhere and this will destroy the Bay Bridge. But only if it is made of clay.

Dick is working hard on the case. Here we see him giving a lecture on typewriters to a group of adoring fans.

A montage of typewriter related images follows as Dick’s adoring fans scour every typewriter repair shop in the city.

They eventually get the address of the person whose typewriter matches the description. They decide to make a casual house call.

They arrest a lot of men.

Dick finds some plans which suggest the bridge will be destroyed with a sound weapon – like an opera singer breaking a wine glass with their voice. He orders that every lorry in the city drive onto the bridge because, his words not mine, the wine glass wouldn’t break if it was full of water.

High in the air, the bad crew’s plastic aeroplane is flying menacing over some buildings.

The sound wave begins – three funnels and a gramophone. That’s quite silly. I like that.

The bridge begins to collapse. Dick is trapped under falling girders.

He spots some more falling girders.

These ones.

And he’s dead.