Originally written February 8, 2017

Spy Smasher is a mostly forgotten superhero at this point. I know that I personally never heard of him until I ventured into the world of old superhero movies, such as this one. Spy Smasher is a DC character, and is the focus of this 1942 serial created by Republic. Like many other Republic serials, this one is 12 chapters in length, with each chapter being roughly 17 minutes long, with the exception of the first chapter, which is close to a half hour. It’s hard to comprehend serials nowadays because they’re such a hybrid of movies and TV shows. In today’s terms, you could look at this as a 12-episode mini-series, or a very long three-and-a-half hour long movie.

Anyway, my guess as to why Spy Smasher isn’t very well-known nowadays is because of his purpose. Alan Armstrong is a vigilante that dresses up as a costumed hero named Spy Smasher to take down Nazis. Think Captain America, but as a vigilante (not being associated with the government) rather than a soldier. In this specific storyline, Spy Smasher is going after a villain named The Mask, who is carrying out multiple attempts to try and attack the United States. Spy Smasher must stop his many schemes and take him down.

Truthfully, I’m slightly mixed on my feelings about this serial. Many people refer to it as one of the best serials ever made, but I don’t think it’s all that great. I do try to give some slack to older movies because they didn’t have the filmmaking advantages we do now, but even in that lens I find it hard to say that Spy Smasher is anything more than decent. I think its biggest saving graces are its cliffhangers and its action scenes. A lot of these serials have the same kinds of cliffhangers, with the hero being in danger of dying, and then escaping it at the beginning of the next episode. While Spy Smasher also does this, I just thought that the cliffhangers they had were well done. The very final cliffhanger (in chapter 11) was also a huge twist on cliffhangers of the time, because it didn’t resolve in the final chapter the way these cliffhangers normally do. And yeah, like I said, the action is also really good. Again, I say that viewing it in the lens of a 75 year old property, since they’re not as high spectacle as action scenes of today. But the action they do have has some really great stunt work, to the point where I’m surprised that they were able to pull off some of the stuff that they did. I think the action scenes are the reason to watch Spy Smasher, personally.

However, my biggest problem was just the story, and I think this plays into my earlier comment about trying to view a serial as either a movie or a TV show. As a TV show, I think the story works fine enough. It’s like an episodic superhero show, where each episode involves the villain coming up with a new scheme that Spy Smasher must stop. But as a movie, it just doesn’t function as well. The only real sense of overall plot is found in the first and last episodes, with a lot of the stuff in the middle feeling like filler sometimes. I read that footage of this movie was cut down into a 100 minute TV movie in the 60s, and honestly I think I’d much rather watch that. I also had a problem with the villain, who is perhaps one of the most generic villains I’ve ever seen. Seriously, The Mask? His defining characteristic as a villain is just that he wears a mask. That’s just not that clever in my opinion. But for what it’s worth, Spy Smasher is a pretty decent serial for its time, as long as it’s viewed in the proper lens.

3.5/5