There's a reason why serial fans call Spy Smasher one of the best serial movies ever made. But I don't think they go far enough. Spy Smasher is one of the best ACTION movies ever made...This movie has something which modern action/superhero movies don't. As much as I enjoyed Justice League and Captain America: Winter Soldier, the stunts and the fight scenes never feel as real as they do in the old serials. I don't believe that Henry Cavill can fly, but I know that Commandy Cody does. And I'm sorry Cap, but that's not fighting, it's dancing. Modern filmmakers are too obsessed about stunts/fights looking "cool" or "beautiful". In reality, they're just silly and predictable. And way too long.Old movie: Punch punch block punch! Villains fall down! Hero gets punched in face and falls on his butt! Punch punch! Someone picks up a chair and throws it! Punch!Modern movie: Punch block kick block slow motion punch! "Sexy" villainess head tilt! Hero wipes blood from lip! Hero jumps up in the air and spins around before kicking villain four times in a row! Blood flying through air in slow motion! CGI monsters kill CGI robots!There's no CGI, wires or slow motion in Spy Smasher. Just real people doing real stunts. It looks and feels like the hero is in actual danger and could be hurt or killed by the villains. It's more intense than any of the Die Hard movies.And best of all, there's no unnecessary sex scenes or gory violence in it. It's mostly safe to watch with the rest of the family (ages 7 and up). Now imagine if they combined the qualities of the old comic book movies (real action, no vulgar content, more heroic characters) with the modern ones (complex characters, better costumes, better writing and acting). That would be the best superhero movie ever.

The Spy Smasher serial follows a quite rigid formula. Each installment ends in a cliffhanger, the next one starts with how Spy Smasher gets out of the pickle he was in. He chases his enemies to a new location, fights them there, and stops their plan. Then he learns of a new plot, goes to where the bad guys are, and lands in a pickle (which is the next cliffhanger).Having such a formula is not in itself a bad thing, as you can do lots of variation within it. But it is difficult to keep the excitement for 12 installments, when all of them are so similar. Spy smasher does not manage this, and could easily have been shortened to five episodes, and be all the better for it.At its best, Spy Smasher has some great stunts and fights, fun twists and enjoyable cliff hangers. At its worst, the fights and twists feels like they are obligatory rather than meant to serve a purpose. The fight scenes are all quite similar, in that it revolves around men throwing themselves at each other, falling over furniture and more often than not running up or down a staircase. The locations differ, leading to an opportunity for different stunts each place.This is probably common in serials like these, but in almost all of the cliffhangers, they cheat. Meaning that what they show in the end of one episode does not match how the next episode begins. Some of them are quite fun despite this. The last cliffhanger (chapter 11) does not cheat like this, but is instead one of the highlights of the whole serial.If you are curious about the old serials, this is a good place to start, as it is mostly very fun. It is just too bad that they had to make so many installments, as it weakens the over all experience.

One reviewer, who clearly didn't pay much attention to the serial, says that Spy Smasher falls off a building and dies...then in the last chapter DOESN'T die. Well, that's plain silly. If anyone just watches the movie (I mean, you don't even have to pay super-close attention), you will see that it is Spy Smasher's twin brother Jack, who has donned the costume, gets shot and falls off the building. He does indeed die! But he isn't Spy Smasher! His brother Alan is...and has been the entire serial. His twin brother is no last chapter reveal...he's there from Chapter One. Wake up before you write a review...or at least watch the movie.

10-year-old boys must have really gobbled this up when it was a brand-new serial back in 1942. Even now it has the power to involve and entertain with its narrative flow, frequent spurts of action, and that pounding musical introduction from Beethoven's Fifth. Best of all it has Kane Richmond, (born in Minneapolis in 1906), who has all the looks and manner you want in a serial hero. He also has amazingly tough skin. In Chapter One he's captured by the Nazis, bound against the wall of a Gestapo dungeon, and given a vigorous whipping across his bare chest -- but hardly seems to suffer so much as a paper-cut! Actually, this is one of those floggings where the whip is never shown touching its victim. Instead, the impression of a flogging is given by means of editing together various visual elements. In any case, this scene ranks 18th in the book, "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies."