The Film (4/5)

If you think the Superman, Adventures of Captain Marvel and Dick Tracy serials are fun rousing adventures, sink your teeth into Daredevils of the Red Circle. In this twelve chapter serial, Charles Middleton, who is best known as Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon serials, here playing an escaped convict, Harry Crowel who is seeking revenge on millionaire industrialist Horace Granville(Miles Mander, The Picture of Dorian Gray), who is the man who put Crowel behind bars.  Crowel, preferring to be called 39013 (pronounced three nine oh one three), which was his prison number, is determined to destroy to anything that Granville owns. Standing in his way are the three “daredevils of the red circle”, consisting of Gene Townley (Charles Quigley, A Woman’s Face), Tiny Dawson (Herman Brix aka Bruce Bennett (Treasure of the Sierra Madre), and Bert Knowles (David Sharpe, Wyoming Outlaw)

The first chapter basically sets the entire plot up for the remaining chapters. The dastardly 39013/Crowel destroys The Grand Amusement Center, where the three daredevils are performing. He causes an explosion that results huge fire, killing a child, Sammy Townley (Robert Winkler, Waterloo Bridge), who is Gene’s younger brother. The three daredevils, rightfully outraged by this spend the remaining eleven chapters trying to find and capture 39013/Crowel. Throughout the serial chapters, 39013/Crowel sets up traps for the three daredevils and also captures Granville himself, putting him behind bars. 39013/Crowel then disguises himself as Granville, and lives right under the nose of his daughter Blanche (Carole Landis, I Wake up Screaming) while scheming away!

Daredevils of the Red Circle immediately caught my attention since I am a fan of serials, and hadn’t heard of this particular one. The nearly non-stop action scenes are fantastic, and the acting is terrific. Every chapter seems like Middleton’s endless gang of thugs are fighting the three vengeful daredevils. Middleton is just amazingly evil as only he can be as 39013/Crowel; Miles Mander does a great job in his dual role as both the noble Granville, and the sinister 39013/Crowel under disguise as Granville.

David Sharpe one of the daredevils, made a career primarily being a stunt double and did the stunts for over one hundred films and television shows including Heaven Can Wait, The Towering Inferno, The Phantom Creeps and Bonanza. Out of the three daredevils, he was the most legitimate one!

Another actor that I’m a fan of, who appeared in this serial was Fred “Snowflake” Toones. He was usually found in the usual, at that time, stereotypical comedic African American roles. He was a fine, entertaining actor that despite appearing in lots of films, was often uncredited. Thankfully he was credited for his work here and you can see his other appearances in The Wayne Murder Case, Come and Get It and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Both directors English and Whitney keep everything moving along at a rapid pace with those great cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. Luckily this is on home video so you don’t have to wait until the following week to watch the next chapter. The music by William Lava is a great rip roaring tune not to fast forward through. In summary, this is a highly recommended serial, which is billed as one of the best by Kino, and it really is!

Audio/Video (4.5/5)

Daredevils of the Red Circle debuts on Blu-ray, with a brand new 4K scan prepared by Paramount Pictures. The image is in the aspect ratio of 1:33:1, in 1080p with an MPEG-4 AVC encode. To say this looks fantastic is a great understatement. The greyscale looks perfect; blacks look great and balanced; the details and textures are just outstanding and clear throughout all twelve chapters. There are some speckles, and vertical lines that appear here and there in different chapters, but overall, for a film (serial) from 1939 it boasts a very sharp, crisp image. And most importantly the characters’ faces do not look waxy. This release to me is one of the most flawless black and white releases from the thirties that I have ever seen. Paramount did a wonderful job with the restoration. Why can’t all obscure films pre - 1940 look this good?

The audio used by Kino for this release is the usual English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track and it is terrific. The dialog, fantastic musical score, gunshots, and explosions all come in loud and clear. This release has optional English SDH subtitles

Extras (2/5)

We get an audio commentary by Film Historian Michael Schlesinger which is provided for chapters 1, 4, 9 and 12. There are supposed to be trailers however when I clicked *bonus*on the menu, all I saw were the chapters that had the commentary tracks. 

Overall (4/5)

In just the first chapter I became an instant fan of Daredevils of the Red Circle. This is a very rousing action adventure serial with superior acting and excellent direction. Add to it a 4K scan for this movie, which does look remarkable, makes the viewing experience a real pleasure. The image quality rivals some of the Universal and other major studio releases that from the same era, such as Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Fans of serials should not pass this release up, and will find this to be one of the upmost entertaining serials out there.  And there is a commentary to boot, making this release even more recommended!