Up until Superman and the Mole-Men, the only on-screen adaptations of comic book characters were in the form of serials. Due to the nature of what serials are, it’s debatable on what you want to say is the first superhero movie. If you count the serials, it would be 1941’s Adventures of Captain Marvel. However, if you don’t count serials as films, then Superman and the Mole-Men is technically the first superhero movie ever made. It’s also a weird movie to get this title, though, because it only runs at 58 minutes, being the length of about a TV episode. And in fact, the movie was later turned into a two-part episode for the Adventures of Superman TV series, so it’s a bit murky how you want to classify these things.

I wanted to give some brief background into how Superman and the Mole-Men is kind-of the first superhero movie ever, because I feel like it’s one of the justifications for why it’s so bad. But before I get into its strengths and weaknesses, let’s talk about what this movie is actually about.

The only recognizable characters from the Superman mythos here are Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane, because the film takes these two out of Metropolis to have them chase down a news story in a town called Silsby. This story involves an oil well that’s been dug, but the real conflict for this movie comes in when the drill shaft has accidentally penetrated an underground city of mole-men. Then, two of the mole-men come to the surface, and the people of Silsby freak out when they see these weird-looking mole creatures. So, they hunt after them, while Superman tries to protect them.

The thing that I liked about Superman and the Mole-Men is that there actually is a really interesting story that could be told here. The key word there is COULD though. On a conceptual level, I think the idea of people panicking over some unknown creatures coming to town is a great idea, and it’s been done well in other stories. Hell, it’s been done well in other Superman stories. And this is the whole point on why it’s unfortunate that this ends up being a bad movie. This movie could have touched on so many interesting themes, such as comparisons between how Superman isn’t accepted by everyone because he’s an alien, and how these mole-men are being hunted just because they look different. The mole-men don’t actually mean any harm, and yet the people are trying to kill them purely out of fear. This is an interesting story, but this movie doesn’t capitalize on these ideas in any interesting way.

And so the reason why Superman and the Mole-Men is ultimately a bad movie is because it doesn’t execute any of its good ideas in any meaningful way. The last 10 minutes or so worked for me, but it could have been so much more in a better movie. This does also have all of the problems you would expect from the first attempt at a superhero movie: bad acting, terrible make-ups/costumes, and some ugly special effects. All of this is egregious in its own right, but honestly I feel like I could have looked past all of it and enjoyed it for what it was if it was surrounded by a better movie. These kinds of problems have been endearing in other movies of its kind, but since Superman and the Mole-Men just doesn’t work on a fundamental level, its other issues only elevate how bad it is.

Surprisingly, though, at the end of the day I still have some level of respect for Superman and the Mole-Men. It’s unsurprising that the first feature-length superhero movie is bad, but it is slightly surprising that it’s not a complete and total trainwreck. I’ve seen a lot of other early superhero movies, especially between the 70s and 90s, that are actually way worse than this. It is bad, don’t get me wrong, but it also didn’t have any real precedent to work off of, and it does have actual potential hidden beneath its problems. It is neat to see it as a piece of film history, especially if you’re into superhero movies, but other than that there’s no real reason to watch this.

2/5