TRADER TOM OF THE CHINA SEAS

Harry Lauter and Aline Towne

TRADER TOM OF THE CHINA SEAS (12 chapter Republic serial/1954). Produced and directed by Franklin Adreon. Colorized.  

Tom Rogers (Harry Lauter of The Louisiana Hussy) is a trader in Asian territories who is willingly signed up by Major Conroy (Robert Shayne of The Neanderthal Man) to help ferret out a gang that is smuggling out weapons, including light bulbs containing a poison gas, to foreign agents who are arming rebel natives so as to turn their country into a satellite. Vivian Wells (Aline Towne of Radar Men from the Moon) is the feisty daughter of a doctor who was targeted by evil forces, and Mr. Barent (Lyle Talbot), is the representative of his country's forces and the chief architect behind Trader Tom's troubles. Victor Sen Yung is Wang, a friendly associate of Rogers. 

Lauter and Towne with Lyle Talbot

Barent's helpmates include the nasty Kurt Daley (Fred Graham of The Giant Gila Monster), the mute Gursan (an unrecognizable Tom Steele), the psychotic Gorth (Richard Alexander), the rebel leader (Richard Reeves), and others. Tom gets some help from Kahn (Jan Arvan), who is fighting off the rebel forces in his country. Tom and Vivian have to deal with landslides, being trapped on a sinking freighter, being trapped underwater with a cut air hose, a train collision, angry rebels with big knives, and so on. Tom thinks nothing of burning these would-be killers to death, and nearly falls off a cliff into the fire in chapter seven. In chapter six a killer is placed inside a mailbag so he can take care of the engineer. 

Vivian and Tom escape from one doom only to face another

A nice aspect of the serial is that Vivian is depicted as being just as brave, plucky, and competent as Tom. She is no mere decoration, but an important player in the story. Lyle Talbot gives his usual professional but utterly bland portrayal, as he usually did in these serials. Fred Graham, on the other hand, emerges as a very credible and distinctly unpleasant bad guy. Trader Tom of the China Seas is a late Republic serial, one that is much more down to earth than the studio's sci-fi and superhero cliffhangers. For many, that may be the serial's weakness, but it has to be said that Trader Tom is fast-paced and full of action, with plenty of interesting death-traps, and a charismatic lead performance by Lauter. 

Verdict: Decent, often exciting serial if perhaps not as much fun as others. **3/4. 

SHE DEMONS

Irish McCalla and Tod Griffin

SHE DEMONS (1958). Director: Richard H. Cunha. Colorized version.

Fred Maklin (Tod Griffin) has been hired by a wealthy man to find a certain island where there have been reports of strange creatures. He has taken along two crewmen and the millionaire's spoiled daughter, Jerrie (Irish McCalla), and they wind up shipwrecked on the very island they seek. They discover that in underground chambers there is a Nazi scientist named Osler (Rudolph Anders), his disfigured wife Mona (Leni Tana) whom he is trying to help, and a bunch of stormtroopers lorded over by sadistic Igor (Gene Roth). Not to mention a whole bevy of women, half of whom have been temporarily transformed into hideous, fanged "she demons" due to Osler's experiments. Mona decides to help the castaways when she realizes her husband has the hots for Jerrie. 

Irish McCalla has no interest in Rudolph Anders' proposal

It's hard to hate the zany She Demons because it does make use of a kind of zesty luridness to pull you along. Victor Sen Yung as one of the crew members still seems to be playing Charlie Chan's Number Two son (or was it number one?), Tod Griffin has an appealing presence and is perfectly okay, but poor Irish McCalla, although she tries, never seems more convincing than an acting student in a high school production. Gene Roth (of Earth vs, the Spider) can give both good and bad performances and in this he's stuck somewhere in the middle. To give Anders the benefit of the doubt, he may have been trying to be colorful in his almost-camp portrayal of the Nazi scientist, but it just doesn't work and he's simply borderline awful. In addition to trying to fix his wife's horribly disfigured face -- we get a look at it in the film's single shock sequence -- Osler is also trying to use lava and thermal energy to create a perpetual motion machine -- or something like that. The She Demons are played mostly by the Diane Nellis Dancers. Poor gals! 

Verdict: You can never have enough She Demons at a party! **1/4.