Larry Martin is an inventor and scientist who has a jetpack that allows him to fly through the air (and therefore, according to the government, he's an expert on interplanetary affairs). G-man Steele asks him and his assistants Bob and Sue to investigate the appearance in the skies of an alien spacecraft. We see it land and Martians (with pale skin and tight sparkly jumpsuits) disembark. With help from some hired earthling thugs, they transport materials to the home of Prof. Harding who is being blackmailed to help the Martians. The population of Mars is dying off due to the thinning of the atmosphere, so the Martian plan is to set off an H-bomb explosion strong enough to send Earth spinning out of its orbit and allow Mars to take its place closer to the sun. But the Martians, led by Marex and his underling Narab, still need to get their hands on materials to finish building the bomb. In the way of Republic serials, most of the twelve chapters feature attempts at robbery (of both uranium and cash to get more uranium) and mayhem that Larry and Bob—and Sue in the unlikely event that she's around—try to thwart. Marex has a headquarters in a cave that can only be accessed by an underwater passage from another cave, so get ready for lots of scenes of Martians and humans going slowly back and forth underwater from one ladder to another, and at least one underwater fight scene. A remote control robot is used by the bad guys to pull off a bank robbery and to threaten our heroes, but nothing can keep the heroic Larry down for long.
This is the third of Republic's four Rocket Man serials. All the heroes have the same rocket suit (and the same plain office with an electronic grid along one wall so at least once in each serial someone will fall against it and get fried, or nearly so) but most have different names. The first was Jeff King (
KING OF THE ROCKET MEN), and this movie came after
RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON which featured George Wallace as Commando Cody; here, it's Judd Holdren as Larry Martin, but he's Cody in all but name. The generally accepted reason: ZOMBIES was planned as a Cody serial, but when Republic signed up to produce a Cody TV show, they had to change this guy's name, picking the blandest name possible. Holdren does get to be an official Commando Cody for the TV show which also became the fourth serial. Despite a great title, this is the least of the four serials in quality. Part of it might be that the shots of the Rocket Man leaping in the air, flying, and landing, which were very effective in the first movie, are used over and over again in each succeeding serial and come to feel tired. Judd Holdren is more emphatically heroic than Wallace was, but I miss Wallace's somewhat quirkier personality. The always drab and interchangeable sidekicks are particularly drab here: Aline Judge, who was Joan in RADAR, is Sue; Wilson Wood, who had a small part in RADAR, is upgraded to play Bob. Lane Bradford is oddly mild-mannered as Marex but his performance works; Leonard Nimoy, the future Mr. Spock, is in many scenes as Narab but only has a few lines of dialogue, though he gets to shine (sort of) in the final chapter. John Crawford is a standout as Roth, one of the main thugs, and he even gets a chapter heading summary card to himself (see right). One cliffhanger involves a runaway coal car which may have influenced the similar scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In another cliffhanger, everyone's guns run out of bullets at the same time. The fight scenes are, as par for the course for Republic and their stable of stunt men, pretty good. There is a lot of stock footage used from earlier serials (even from a western). Despite being watchable, this was still a disappointment for me as it just didn't live up to the cool title. The 70 minute condensed version is reviewed
here. Pictured at top left are Nimoy and Bradford. [Blu-ray]
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