Actors/Artists:  Ralph Byrd, Maxine Doyle, Bela Lugosi, Richard Alexander, Lee Ford, John Picorri

DC-DVD Price: £23.75

The seventh serial from Republic Pictures, S.O.S. Coast Guard (1937) was put together to take advantage of the success of Dick Tracy (also 1937).

Ralph Byrd had played Tracy (to some film fans, he is Dick Tracy), so he was brought on board to play Lt. Terry Kent. The great Bela Lugosi plays the sinister Boroff, inventor of a gas that will disintegrate anything it touches. When Boroff decides to sell his deadly invention to a foreign power, the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

Richard Alexander plays the brute Thorg, Lugosi's henchman. Serial fans know Alexander as Prince Barin in the Flash Gordon serials. Also in the cast is Maxine Doyle as Jean Norman, a spunky reporter who comes to Kent's aide. Miss Doyle would later marry the film's co-director, William Witney. All 12 chapters were shot in June and July of 1937. How'd they do it?

With Byrd, Lugosi and Alexander in the cast, Witney directing and the cool special effects of the Lydecker brothers, there's no way S.O.S. Coast Guard could miss. You'd be hard pressed to find a serial more fun than this.