Watch Dick Tracy For Free

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

ONCE UPON A TIME, in 1931 to be exact, newspaper cartoonist, Chester Gould of the Chicago Tribune, presented his editor with a new concept for a comic strip. Rendered in a sort of early mechanical drawing style, populated with characters having names matching their physical characteristics and laden with an ever present, underlying supply of humor;it would be about a young man's career as a Detective on the Chicago Poice Department.THE TITLE THAT the young Mr. Gould had conjured up was "PLAINCLOTHES TRACY". The editor gave the subject a little thought and suggested that Gould ought to reconsider and change the first name to "Dick"; which was the nickname, even then, already well known for a Detective. With the surname of Tracy being suggestive of tracing a wanted subject, the two would be a perfect match.SO, THE COMIC strip was launched and DICK TRACY became an almost overnight success; soon being syndicated and appearing in hundreds of newspapers. With such success, it should be no surprise that Hollywood would soon be calling. It did and within the span of 6 short years, DICK TRACY was on the silver screen; now in the format of a 15 chapter Movie Serial, Cliff Hangere type.WE HAVE VIEWED the serial several times; some years ago. In fact, we do have video copies of all four of the Republic DICK TRACY Chapterplays. Today, Turner Classic Movies began a weekly presentation of the first one with the showing of Chapters 1-3. After the programing was over, many of our impressions and opinions surfaced once again.FIRST OF ALL, the casting of Ralph Byrd in the title role was a case of near perfection. Talented, athletic and possessing a very likable screen persona; Mr. Byrd was an immediate hit with the movie going public. What's more, he even bore a sort of real world resemblance to the Tracy of the print medium.THE SERIAL DID a fine job of bringing a great amount of action (the life blood of the movie serial); while at the same time taking the story to a great variety of locales. There appears to be as much time spent outdoors, as there is in studio sound-stages; which is always a plus in giving a picture a good, polished and luxurious appearance about it.THE CREATION OF a dark, menacing and sinister world is accomplished with the highest degree of success. The characterization of so many of the denizens who inhabit the shadowy underworld is a definite plus and serves to evoke the kind of mysterious horror as did so many of those great covers from so many pulp crime-mystery magazines of the 1920's-'40's.THE ONE ELEMENT that would become a hallmark for the Republic Serial, the greatest of special effects from Howard Lydecker (later joined by his brother, Theodore Lydecker) was present here. Mysterious rays, great explosions,realistic miniatures and a futuristic aeroplane; all add up to a fantastic, though believable world.ADDED TO ALL of that is the old Republic assembly line's creative use of stock footage, scenes from other productions and real life newsreel footage. Everything is blended almost flawlessly.ON THE DOWN side of things, unlike most of their future serials, there is no original musical score, but rather liberal doses of classical selections; including excerpts from Rossini's WILLIAM TELL OVERTURE and Lizst's LES PRELUDES.ALSO ON THE negative side of the ledger is Republic's habit of taking an existing feature (The Lone Ranger, Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher and especially Captain America) and radically changing it for the screen. In DICK TRACY and its 3 sequels, they make Tracy an F.B.I. Agent, exclude regular partner Pat Patton and make no mention of female lead and love interest in the comic pages, Tess Trueheart; who is Tracy's Fiancé!IN PLACE OF a regular detective partner, we are given a couple of hereto-for unknown commodities; including a comic relief buffoon portrayed by Smiley Burnette and a mysteriously vague version of Junior.

After watching all 15 episodes I have to tell you that this Dick Tracy seems to have paved the way for some of today's action heroes taken from the classic comics. The plot line is simply put - silly (a big crime ring cooperates with foregin goverments, wants to blackmail their own government, brainwashes people...). There seem to be hundreds of things going on and not a single case is solved. Tracy comes in, gets in a fight, the evil scheme is spoiled (case closed), bad guys escape, Dick follows them and get's in terrible danger. End of episode, right before Dick is about to die a horrible death. The next episode opens with a long revision of the previous story and Dick escapes unharmed. Meets with friends and the new problem arises. They investigate for a few minutes and then the same story all over. All right, the effects were awesome for the time when this was made and the ideas for how the villains planed to take charge were probably highly original back then (but were copied ever sense), still, not a single episode seems to have any depth. It was just jumping from one quick and shallow attempt by the Lame one to do whatever it was he wanted to do (there never seemed to be a grand plan behind his actions) to another. All in all, if they wouldn't repeat those previous episode scenes at the beginning of each episode and if the episodes took some time to develop a story it might have been good. Now (especially after watching it at once) as one long Dick Tracy session, I was really disappointed by the shallowness, but pleasantly surprised by the great effects.

"Dick Tracy" was the first of three serials based on Chester Gould's popular comic strip produced by Republic Pictures in the late 30s. The title character was played by Ralph Byrd in all three films. In this installment Tracy and his assistants Steve Lockwood (Fred Hamilton), Junior (Lee Van Atta) and Mike McGurk (Smiley Burnette) are up against a terrorist organization known as the Spider Ring. The gang is led my a mysterious shadowy figure known only as the Lame One. The gang tries among other things, to destroy the Golden Gate Bridge with a sonic sound wave machine, take over a gold mine and steal the plans for a new high speed aircraft. Tracy and his pals are kept busy trying to foil the gang's moves over 15 fast-paced chapters. Co-directors Ray Taylor and Alan James keep the action moving and provide us with plenty of excitement. There is a least one fight in every chapter. There is also the requisite "flashback" chapter which Republic used in most of their serials. The unmasking of the Lame One in Chapter 15 is almost anti-climatic. I challenge you to remember who the character was who turns out to be the Lame One. The DVD which I purchased was produced by Marengo Films. The print from which it was duplicated was apparently borrowed from a collector so IT WAS NOT duplicated from the fuzzy public domain print that has been used for several years. The picture quality is very good and the sound crisp and clear. Some interesting notes. The shooting down of a dirigible foreshadowed the real life Hindenberg disaster the following year. The high speed plane forecast the development of jet planes by some ten years. The Flying Wing used by the gang almost reminds one of the Stealth Bomber even though this was the 30s. And yes there's those great vintage 30s cars too. The running time of 290 minutes makes this I believe, the longest running serial of all time. Francis X. Bushman who plays G-Man chief, Clive Anderson had been in films since 1911 and was one of the first matinee idols. He is probably best remembered for his role as Messala in the silent "Ben-Hur" (1927). Lee Van Atta and Smiley Burnette both appeared in the serial "Undersea Kingdom" (1936). Burnette of course would go on to be one of the best known "B" western sidekicks riding with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Charles Starrett (The Durango Kid). Also in the cast in assorted roles, are Roy Barcroft as an air crewman on The Flying Wing, Milburn Morante as "Death Valley Johnny", I. Stanford Jolley as an intern and veteran silent heavy Walter Long in a bit. Future serial director William Witney served as a film editor on this project. Followed by "Dick Tracy Returns" (1938) and "Dick Tracy's G-Men" (1939).

Dick Tracy is on the hunt of a mysterious criminal known as the Lame One ( he has a bum foot, but I think the title describes the villian's general appearance ), leader of the mysterious Spider Gang. The Lame One along with his hunchbacked assistant kidnap Tracy's brother, alters his appearance, and goes out fighting him endlessly throughout this boredom. This serial moves incredibly slow ( mainly this isn't a Whitney/English chapterplay ), the acting outside of Ralph Byrd is dead wood, especially Smiley Burnette. Even when the master criminal is unmasked, the audience is forced to say, Who was this guy. Add a really dumb, sentimental ending, and well you get the pic. Don't judge the next three serials based on this one. In terms of serials, 4 out of 10.