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Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) and his young friend Buddy (Jackie Moran)
get into a terrible dirigible accident in the 20th century that buries
them under tons of ice - but thanks to some suspended animation gas
developed by Buddy's dad (Wade Botcheler), they are kept in suspended
animation (and thus de facto alive) to come back to 500 later. In the
meantime, Earth has come under the rule of Killer Kane (Anthony Warde), an
offspring of 20th century racketeers who rules the planet with great
brutality. But fortunately there's Professor Huer (C. Montague Shaw),
leader of the rebels who reside in a hidden city inside a mountain - and
also, fortunately Buck and Buddy's dirigible is found by Professor Huer's
men, and Buck is quick to not only understand everything that's going on
in this future world, he also quickly becomes the rebels' most formidable
hero, and Wilma Deering (Constance Moore), ace pilot, falls in love with
him. Buck, Wilma and Buddy go to Saturn to ask the Saturnians for help,
but Killer Kane sends some of his men as well, and the Saturnians, judging
the situation wrongly, send an emmissary, Prince Tallen (Philson Ahn) down
to earth with Kane's men to sign a treaty. In what almost turns out to be
a suicide mission, Buck and Buddy get Tallen out of the hands of Kane's
men and convince him to sign the treaty with the rebels. But since no
radio connection has been established between earth and Saturn, so Buck
and Wilma have to fly Tallen to Saturn themselves ... but one of Kane's
man, Captain Laska (Henry Brandon) has made it to Saturn first, and
somehow he manages to kidnap Tallen, make him his mindless slave with the
help of a amnesia device, and thanks to that Tallen betrays Buck and Wilma
and almost has Saturn side with Kane before Buck can call the cheat. But
by now, Laska has already made the subhuman Saturnians, the Zuggs, his
subject with the help of a robot - actually a rebel wearing an amnesia
helmet to make him a mindless slave ... and the Zuccs almost overthrow the
Saturn Council until Buck again heroically deals with the situation.
Returning back to earth, Buck and Wilma are captured by Kane's men, and
Buck is even made part of Kane's robot squadron via one of Kane's amnesia
helmets, but Buddy has persuaded one of the Hidden City's pilots to fly
him to Kane's headquarters and save the day. But returning to the Hidden
City in Kane's captured private ship, Buck and company unknowingly take
Kane's private pilot with them who transmits the location of the Hidden
City over to Kane, and now Kane's men launch an attack. The first wave is
unsuccessful though, but now the Hidden City knows they have to lauch a
counter attack with help of the Saturnians to not perish in Kane's next
attack - but communications to Saturn are down, and Buck and Buddy have to
make another trip to the planet to find Laska has kidnapped Prince Tallen
in order to force the Saturnians into submission. Of course, Buck manage
to save Tallen and ultimately get Saturn on the rebels' side for good.
Then it's back to earth, where the Hidden City forces and the Saturn
forces are to attack Kane's air force while Buck and Buddy sneak into the
Dynamo Room where Kane's robot squad work, they free them all of their
amnesia helmets and organize an uprising from within, ultimately forcing
Kane into submission by putting an amnesia helmet on him ... Quite
obviously, Buck Rogers was made as an attempt to cash in on Buster
Crabbe's Flash
Gordon-serials of the same era, and a successful one at that -
mainly because the similarities between the serials were rather striking -
but that said, the Flash
Gordon-serials did have the upper hand, there was more sense
of wonder in them, they had more exotic and colourful sets and characters,
so even though in print, Buck
Rogers may have preceded Flash
Gordon, on film it seemed a bit like the kid brother - but the
kid brother who can, because seeing the serial on its own terms it's a
nice exercise in escapism, with an simplistic yet interesting enough
story, plenty of action, exciting (even if from today's point of view
primitive) visual effects (even if the most impressive backdrops of Killer
Kane's city were lifted from 1930's Just Imagine), cool backdrops
(borrowed from other Universal
productions, mostly, as was the rule with serials), all carried by a for
its time over-the-top and fantasy-out-of-bound narration and plenty of
excitement, making this good fun, especially when seen through the veil of
nostalgia. By the way, there is very little that ties this
serial to Philip Francis Nowlan's novellas Armageddon 2419 A.D. and
The Airlords of Han that originated the character of Buck
Rogers, and for mostly legal reasons, the similarities to the
comic strip by Nowlan and Dick Calkins (art) are fleeting as well.
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