Resistance is Futile!  HKC version 1.0 has been assimilated!

Actually, he's just involved in another roundtable with some fellow B-Movie sites, but....just humor him.  Trust us...it's for the better.

(1940 Republic Pictures serial, 15 Chapters) Director: William Witney and John English Starring: Edward Cianelli, Robert Wilcox, Ella Neal

I originally intended this review  to be one of a film that is a true representation of "Machines Gone Wrong"......

...and that film would be the early 1980s sci-fi comedy stinker Heartbeeps, one of Andy Kaufman's flicks.  Why? Glad you asked.  When I think of robots...I think cold, calculating merciless intellect matched with invulnerability and matchless strength.  Not some goofy-ass fringe comedian singing and dancing.  Robots are meant to crush us under their steel heels and dominate us, exterminating humanity because they view us a out-moded threat...or in the least a philosophy spouting kung-fu annoyance (if the Matrix flicks have taught us anything) that should be ruled by them with an iron fist.  But not singing and dancing.  And certainly not Andy Kaufman...that's just....machines gone wrong.  I have a feeling that when the Great Robot War does happen, Heartbeeps will figure somewhere into the cause of it.....and we'll have to thank Latka from Taxi for the nuclear holocaust and human concentration camps, where idiots like me will have to rise up and smash the "metal motherf**kers".  It could happen.  Don't look at me that way.

The Plot:  If Mysterious Doctor Satan teaches the viewer anything, it's the fact that technology is evil....as it should be.  Robert Wilcox portrays "Bob Wayne", the standard Republic serial he-man whom we learn in the first chapter is the son of a Zorro clone western outlaw hero called "The Copperhead", who takes up his father's mantle when his former legal guardian is gunned down by an agent of science-gone-mad mastermind Dr. Satan (Edward Cianelli).  If one wanted to put more thought than it's worth into that situation, it could be viewed as the scientific advancements of Europe (Satan seems to be vaguely psuedo-European, possibly an immigrant from the glorified "Europe" as it was presented in the Universal monster flicks of the time) making unjustified attacks on the values of the Old West, i.e., a stylized version of "true" American ideal....but, if you've read enough of my reviews, you'll probably be thinking, "Since when did "thought" enter into this?"....

Satan is amassing an army of robots bent on the usual goals of world domination and monetary gain.   Where were all the mad scientists that were just into it for the artistic aesthetic? Or laughs?  If I was a mad genius, I'd probably skip the death rays and re-animating the dead and cut straight to my ultimate dream:  Atomic super-rabbits that threw cream pies.....to rule the world!!!!!!!! BWahhahahahahahaha! Ahem.  Where was I?  Oh yeah...Doctor Satan.  Like all mad geniuses, it seems, Satanis lacking one crucial part for his robot engines of death: a remote control device designed by the father of damsel-in-distress lady reporter, Lois (Ella Neal)....

This leads to several attempts made by Doc Satan and/or his agents at theft of the device, only to be thwarted by the new, masked vigilante on the scene: The Copperhead.  Satan gets one of his contraptions to work...a Terminator prototype that possesses a retro-style menace to it's appearence that is ultimately defeated by it's clunky, slow and jerky man-in-a-tin-suit movements.  This goes to reaffirm the belief that technology may be evil, but it tends to be stupid and locked into it's own limitations of programming.  Kinda like any Microsoft Windows application... Several exciting climaxes follow, of which Bob Wayne (or his guise of the Copperhead) tend to escape early in the next chapter by his talent of being in the right place at the right time during a jump cut.  The End.

Said mechanical man featured in Mysterious Doctor Satan is of the classic Republic Pictures design, a special effect that tended to be recycled alot by their cliffhanger serial department, appearing in everthing from The Undersea Kingdom (1936) to Zombies of the Stratosphere (1950). Originally intended to be a screen adaptation of the DC Comics' character Superman to have been filmed in 1940 (until negotiations fell through between the publisher and the studio), the studio re-worked the script and this chapter-play was the end result.  Ironically, a year later, Republic would produce a serial adaptation of Superman's biggest competitor on the newsstands of the time, Capt. Marvel and Supe's wouldn't see the live action light of day for nearly a decade...