A serial is not a sequel, nor a string of sequels…or something. It is a single motion picture, in long-form, divided into two- or three-reel segments (usually around 12 of them), then serialized. Theatrically, one new entry came out each week, ending in a cliffhanger, forcing viewers to return regularly to follow their favorite adventures. This form of filmmaking has long been out of favor, surely since television took up the serialization slack, with stylistic descendents like, well, anything George Lucas has done to remind us of what once was.
Little Tough Guys put out three movie serials in the early 1940s. Some consider these numerically as part of the overall series, while others note them separately. I consider these standard sequels, but in a different format – serialization of a single story necessitates adventure and derring-do (and Nazi-killing) over urban melodramatics. And so, like just about all other recurring characters of the ‘40s, the “Little Tough Guys” found themselves fighting the dread Hun menace in their own inimitable fashion.
Keeping their stories domestic, all the Little Tough Guys’ serials concern saboteurs in the States, with the same heady mixture of scientists and Feds as in all serials. Besides, the U.S. wasn’t in the war for some time yet. But we needed to do our propagandistic part in preparation, and filmed entertainment was a large part of that. As such, 1940’s Junior G-Men was the culmination of the Junior G-Men boys club of the 1930s, a sort of Boy Scouts for the crime-solving set. It was started by Melvin Purvis, the Fed famous for bringing an end to the reigns of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, etc. Modeling himself to the nation’s boys as a real-life Dick Tracy, Purvis oversaw distribution of detection materials. At its best, the Junior G-Men aimed to quench the rash of juvenile delinquency the earlier Little Tough Guy and Dead End Kid movies dramatized. So it makes sense then that these boys would be conscripted to act out serial dramatizations of the club’s policies.
The end result is entirely a product of Universal’s serial department, with prolific pulp purveyors Ford Beebe and John Rawlins co-directing (between ‘em, lotsa Dick Tracy and Jungle Jim). Their product is as far removed from the melodrama of Little Tough Guy as it is the hardboiled gangsterism of Angels with Dirty Faces. It is its own thing, a comic book yarn in the best sense, with the production values of a major studio – the perfect thing to rerun on ‘50s and ‘60s Saturday television!
CHAPTER ONE: ENEMIES WITHIN!
The adventure must start with the Little Tough Guys existing as they normally do, roughhousing it up throughout their tenement neighborhood, creating comic mishaps. A fight breaks out, and pies are stolen, but there is never a pie fight. We’re now well enough down the road from Little Tough Guy’s sickening melodramatics for Little Tough Guys to have clearly discovered their comedic niche (being unable to function at the pure level of the Dead End Kids films).
All the Little Tough Guys, from Billy to Gyp, Terry, Lug, Buck, etc. earn the ire of another local teen, do-gooder Harry Trent (Kenneth Howell), a Junior G-Man. Little brown-nosing snitch that he is, Harry calls the cops on our heroes, and Billy (Billy Halop, natch) gets hauled off to prison. This’d be the start of a typical sorrow-wrought earlier entry, but Billy is released on probate one single newspaper montage later. This is so he can lead his gang on the warpath against Harry and his goody brigade at the local Jr. G-Men HQ.
This leads to an instant fistfight, something this (and I’d wager most) serial really loves. The first chapter alone boasts three separate all-out fistfights, which is all sorts of amusing and entertaining. But you can’t have the Little Tough Guys acting up in Harry’s presence without the cops getting called, so…the cops get called. More specifically, the Feds. Man, Harry is a snot-nosed little wiener, he is!
Having employed wackiness to set the stage, top FBI dick Jim Bradford (Phillip Terry) can sit Billy down for a good, solid ream of exposition. Billy, a presumed orphan, is really Billy Barton. Because this is a WWII era serial, his father Robert Barton is a U.S. scientist who’d been hard at work developing a new superweapon for the war effort. (It occurs that every adventure film from the war years employs the “scientist’s new invention” plot – These things dried up juuuust once the A-bomb became public knowledge. Consider Barton’s device is basically just that – an A-bomb [though he calls it “Bartonite” of course] – and, well…) But here’s the rub. Barton has been kidnapped, along with all the nation’s top mad scientists, presumably by an evil ring of saboteurs calling themselves the Flaming Torch (basically, they’re SPECTRE). Like any good secret organization of pure hate, all Torch members sport incredibly obvious tattoos on their wrists, and the Little Tough Guys have been charged with “keeping [their] eyes open.” Because it’s just like the FBI to prattle on about spy rings to random juveniles.
Over at the Flaming Torch’s mansion lair, a revolving roster of sycophantic henchmen delivers basically the same exposition for their mastermind Brand (Cy Kendall). (The serial format means exposition is at an all-time high.) Brand bothers Barton to better his bomb, but Barton balks, backing Brand to boast he’ll burgle Billy from Bradford as barter against Barton. Seriously, did every character’s name have to start with a B?!
Anyway, in translation that means Brand has ordered Barton’s son Billy kidnapped as a bargaining chip – This is the first step towards a necessary cliffhanger for this episode. That’s the nice thing about a serial: It is forced into regularized moments of interest, necessitating action and the threat of death every 20 minutes or less.
And so, while Bradford continues to exposit at Billy (just so we’re sure we get this fantastically non-complex plot), a mass of Brand’s goons sneaks into FBI headquarters with notable ease. They encounter all the Little Tough Guys in a hallway, which leads to…a fistfight! Whoo! And Billy is nabbed up, and forced into the elevator. Here, his goon continues to fight with the elevator operator, sending the car into a swift freefall. And then –
Whamm-O! The elevator ker-rashes in a great blast! Killing all within!
…
Is this the end of Billy? Could he possibly have survived? Come back next week for all the answers in Chapter Two…
Right now!
CHAPTER TWO: THE BLAST OF DOOM
Yes, movie serials as a genre employed those scrolling Star Wars credits to explain “The Story So Far,” and bless ‘em for it! The super-involved plot (villains kidnap scientist, young boys charged with rescuing same) gets a thorough run through, not just in written form, but also in recycled footage – though again, bless ‘em for assuming audience literacy. Nowadays, we’d get James Earl Jones reading the titles aloud, because viewers are morons.
Anyway, last we left Billy for dead in a crashed, crushed, crumpled elevator car. Only…they now reveal Billy wasn’t in the elevator, but in the mop closet right beside it. Cheap! (Never mind he was shown in the elevator before, no one had the internet to say otherwise at the time…and they did basically make these things up as they went along – like “24!”) Okay, so Billy’s safe, the Flaming Torch goons driven off, and now it’s back into Bradford’s office for…
More exposition! Actually, just a reiteration of what we already learned in Chapter One. I swear, this story ‘ll take off soon.
All this being accomplished, the Little Tough Guys are deposited right back in their impoverished neighborhood without an action plan. Left to their own defenses, the lads follow a preset course of action – punching Harry. Because, you know, we needed another fistfight.
Meanwhile, villainous lackeys are “secretly” trailing Billy. They’re obvious enough about it, though, that the other Little Tough Guys trail them. And that’s before they behold their prominent “I am evil!” tattoos. So the Little Tough Guy Anti-Terrorism Squad leaps into action! They sabotage the saboteurs’ truck, forcing the goons to dial up Brand back at the lair – gotta keep him a screen presence. This is while Billy sneaks into the truck’s rear, along with his bestest chum in the whole widest world, Gyp (Huntz Hall, the only other distinguished Tough Guy so far). And off drives the truck.
In such a way, Billy and Gyp are unknowingly ushered straight to Flaming Torch HQ, past the palatial grounds and into a garage with super hi-tech automatically sliding doors (!). (It’s like a cheap, early Bond movie – and I love it!)
As this is going on, Brand has summoned forth Billy’s father Barton (Russell Hicks, previously of Charlie Chan in Shanghai). Brand demands a test of Barton’s Bartonite bomb, outright lying to Barton that they’ve nabbed up Billy, in light of his men’s essential incompetence. Well, this works, and Barton caves. Wow, that was easy enough; they shouldn’t even have bothered with Billy! And so, Barton will blow of the shed – here ‘tis explained his material explodes big or small depending on what other explosives are nearby. It’s sort of confused, so let’s just say it’s that explosive proxy liquid from Die Hard: With a Vengeance.
Now naturally Billy and Gyp just happen to be hiding in that shed where the explosion shall happen – seeing as we’re nearing cliffhanger time here. The only thing is – Barton meant for a small explosion, enough to destroy a mere suitcase. Ah, but Billy is lugging around a bottle of freaking nitroglycerin now, meaning…ah, so that’s why the over-involved blast science! Also meaning…
Ka-blammo!
Have we time for one more episode? Well, I have!
CHAPTER THREE: HUMAN DYNAMITE
It turns out Billy and Gyp ducked into a side room in the tiny, tiny shed, its interior functioning by Tardis tech. Yeah, these cliffhanger resolutions are almost always cop outs, you wanna do something ‘bout it? It’s just how the danged format works!
Brand bursts into an outsized rage over Barton’s outsized burst. Surely Barton must’ve meant this as sabotage, for it’s not like some teenager was in that shed with nitro and – this movie’s getting out of hand! Anyway, Barton is dismissed for the time being.
Meanwhile, Billy and Gyp find the electrified Flaming Torch compound inescapable, so they head right on back to the garage, as though last week’s cliffhanger had never happened. Brand even has the truck driver drive the truck back into town (for more gear to blow up), so it’s really as though this narrative diversion was for naught!
That is, until one of Brand’s more insightful henchmen realizes he saw the boys racing through the brambles, and puts 2 and 100 together to figure out all that’s just happened. A little more braining occurs, and Brand parses out that the intruders must now be in the truck. He radios the truck goon to return to the lair – and with Billy and Gyp locked helplessly in the rear, it looks like Gyp’s jig is up.
Except for that radio transmission. See, Harry, in his do-goodnik eager-to-please lameness, listens in to radio frequencies on a regular basis, on the off chance he’ll overhear just such a terrorist request. How they figure “Bring the truck back” is an evil request, I’m too far removed from the ‘40s to answer. Anyway, Bradford the Fed drives out into the wilds to find this truck, because of course there’s just one road out of town. (Okay, the movie’s just silly and fun, I shouldn’t be this hard on it.)
Using a tire iron and his wits (in that order), Billy manages to open the truck’s rear doors. This noise distracts the goon driver, who instantly crashes into another motorist! Ka-foom, and Random Motorist joins Random Elevator Operator in the great innocent bystander heaven. And the boys run into the forest. The goon gives chase, because he is alive, only two quick-thinking teenagers outwit his truck-crashing self by hiding under a bridge like common trolls.
Safe – for now, but our reel’s coming to an end – Billy and Gyp walk the road’s edge, seeking a ride. And with the FBI out patrolling this road in force, wouldn’t you know it but some randomly passing Flaming Torch thug is the one who picks them up. They don’t know it at first, not until catching sight of his incredibly obvious torch tattoo. So he shows them his gun! The Feds see, and give chase! A car chase! Whoo! [Crazy screaming!]
All along the Angeles Crest Highway they race, a road I am all too familiar with (for I used to regularly handle traffic collisions on this damn highway). The fate of this latest goon’s car is therefore a familiar sight for me, as it tumbles off down an embankment into the canyon below, and explodes. FOOM! And that’s with Billy and Gyp “in” the car – until Chapter Four explains otherwise.
And what is Chapter Four’s explanation? Well, here you’re in the dark as much as I. But find out tomorrow! Same Little Tough Guys time! Same Little Tough Guys URL!
Related posts:
• No. 1 Little Tough Guy (1938)
• Nos. 2 - 15 (1938 - 1943)
• No. 7 Junior G-Men (1940) Chapters Four - Eight
Chapters Nine - Twelve
• No. 10 Sea Raiders (1941) Chapters One - Six
Chapters Seven - Twelve
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