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The Serial As I said in my intro this was probably the most memorable of the sci fi serials I watched during the school holidays. Overall my memory was pretty good as everything I associated with the serial – the Juggernaut, the Volkites, the flame thrower, the Tower rising through the sea, Unga Khan etc – were actually from this serial and hadn’t bled through from Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon or any of the others. Undersea Kingdom is certainly a serial which has its own identity within the crowded genre. It is certainly extremely repetitive stuff with lots of chases, lots of sneaking in and out of the tower, lots more chases and lots of recapping of previous events. This doesn’t play well today and we tend to scream at the television to get the hell a move on. But in its time it was exactly what was required. The serials were designed to get people – children mainly – to go to the pictures every week. If they missed a couple of weeks they could easily get into it and not feel they’d missed anything. The last thing the studios would’ve wanted is customers choosing not to go because they’d skipped a couple of chapters and felt it wasn’t worth going back and trying to pick up the threads. The serial is astonishingly simplistic – from the good guys always wearing white and the bad guys always wearing black to the perpetual struggle between primitives in a castle and scientists in a tower – and we are never given any indication that there is a world beyond the simple tableau of Sharad’s castle and Khan’s tower. There are no women, there are no other settlements, it gives the impression that these two camps just sit a couple of miles apart and seethe at each other. Khan clearly has the ability to destroy the Sacred City but has chosen not to use it until near the end of the serial. Until that point he just scowls in their general direction. The science is very much of that pre-television era before technobabble evolved into the language we speak today. Back in the 1930s "atom" was a word no one really understood but everyone knew was exciting and meant something powerful. Hence its inclusion in all manner of places throughout these exciting serials. Another bit of nonsense in Undersea Kingdom is the way Khan gives an order to his sidekick who then activates a Volkite who in turn flips a switch. Although singling out any one bit of Volkite action as nonsense ahead of all the other bits of Volkite nonsense is unwise. In the annuls of action adventure series robots they have to be the most pathetic. Their résumé of rubbishness includes –
And so on. In conclusion, Undersea Kingdom was very well made for the audience of the day. It is one dimensional, repetitive and shallow, and the special effects are charming (if one is in kindly mood) but with a brief to provide twelve 15 minute chapters, each ending on a certain death moment for Mr Corrigan, they were limited as to what they could do. The public wanted live action comic strips and Undersea Kingdom is nothing if not a live action comic strip. Undersea Kingdom appeals to the side of my nature which relishes The Sensorites, Planet of the Daleks and Terry & June – charmingly bad television which somehow manages to be more enjoyable than the "better" things around it. Whether this is clever post modern ironic deconstructivism or just a personality defect I’m not sure. Either way I salute those that brought us twelve weeks of horses, scowling and priming powder – the men and woman of Undersea Kingdom.
The Cast
Ray "Crash" Corrigan went on to appear in several dozen low budget westerns in the late 30s and early 40s. He also carved out a bit of a niche playing apes in such films as "The Strange Case of Doctor Rx" and "The Monster and the Ape". He also owned The Corrigan Ranch which became a popular location for filming. He died in 1976.
Lois Wilde’s movie career only began in 1936 (the year she made Undersea Kingdom) and she made a number of pictures (mostly westerns) as a freelancer before a car accident in 1938 ended her career. She died in 1995.
Monte Blue had been a leading man early in his career but by 1936 (when he was 49) he was mostly doing bit parts for friends in the business. He was seldom out of work doing these small roles and was working up until his death in 1963. A trivia note is that his first job was on the infamous film "Birth of a Nation".
William Farnum was one of Hollywood’s highest paid actors in the 1920s but a serious injury on set and the changing landscape of the movie business meant he never achieved those heights again. He kept working, however, and made numerous movies during the war years. He remained steadily employed until he died in 1953.
Boothe Howard died in 1936, not long after making Undersea Kingdom.
C. Montague Shaw was an Australian who mostly played educated British characters. He worked extensively during the war and retired in 1947. We will be meeting him again in "Zorro and his Fighting Legion", "Buck Rogers" and "Flash Gordon". He passed away in 1968. Lee Van Atta was 14 when he made Undersea Kingdom. His career as a child actor lasted only a few more years before he left the movie business in 1939. He died in 2002.
Smiley Burnette was a very successful comedy actor and musician who forged a highly successful career in musical westerns. He died in 1967 having earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Frankie Marvin was in more than 100 westerns between 1935 and 1955. He died in 1985 at the age of 81.
Raymond Hatton made the transition to television in the 1950s and made guest appearances in dozens of early series. He died in 1971 aged 84.
Find out more about Undersea Kingdom Download the serial (legally and for nothing)
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