‘Man With the Steel Whip’: a serial in 12 chapters

To paraphrase Will Rogers, “I never met a serial I didn’t like.”

Until now.

The serial that changed my mind was Man With the Steel Whip.

Western serials were always among my least favorites anyway, and this one is a cheap knock-off of the Zorro character. Plus it comes from 1954 when serials were a dying breed and Republic’s serial budgets were thinner than onion skin. Every budget-cutting method was utilized, from employing the lowest-price actors to recycling old film footage for half of the serial.

This serial seems to be an excuse to use all that Zorro footage accumulated over the years, without having to pay any royalties to the Zorro copyright owners. It just cries out “cheap!”

How cheap is it? Well, it’s only 12 chapters. There’s the usual economy chapter. And tons of stock footage. It’s such a cheap production that they couldn’t afford the word “The” in the title. Whereas you or I might have entitled it The Man With the Steel Whip, Republic inexplicably pared it down to Man With the Steel Whip. Hey, every penny counts!

Say, who is that masked man?

Who is that whip-cracking masked man in skin-tight black? It’s “El Latigo, the Man With the Steel Whip!” Or as I like to call him, “El Latigo, the Man With the Zorro Costume!”

If this guy wants to be a Zorro clone, why can’t he at least have a cool hidden cave in which to change into his Zorro suit? That was one of the neatest parts of the other Zorro serials that I remember. The cave behind the waterfall. But there’s nothing so intriguing in this serial. Our Zorro wannabe just goes out to the barn to change his clothing. The barn? Sheesh!

Starring as El Latigo is Richard Simmons. No, not the exercise guru. This is the actor who starred, the following year, in the TV series Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. He appears here minus his famous Sergeant Preston mustache. His acting? Well, to say his acting is wooden would be a compliment. But he can swing a punch, crack a whip and ride a horse. So he met the requirements of this serial.

And about this steel whip business. It’s not a steel whip; it’s just a regular leather whip. Where they got the “steel” part, I have no idea. Nowhere in the entire serial is the whip referred to as “steel.” In fact, the only reference, anywhere at all, is in the title. Granted, it does sound cool, and that’s what counts, I guess. It certainly sounds better than “Man with the Leather Whip” (which sounds vaguely kinky…).

Yes, there’s a plot… sort of…

The plot? Well, someone is stirring up trouble and blaming it on the Indians. So heroic young Jerry Randall goes to the reservation and pow-wows with the chief. The Indians, he is told, will trust the word of someone who has helped them before. Someone like the mythical “El Latigo,” a masked white man who was reputed to have helped the tribe many years ago. “El Latigo” is Spanish for “The Whip.” I kinda expected that.

Anyway, Jerry Randall decides to dress up as the spirit of El Latigo, so the Indians will follow his counsel and stay safely on the reservation. The Indians never give any indication what the “original” El Latigo looked like, but when Jerry Randall appears at night wearing his Zorro costume, they immediately recognize him as El Latigo. What a lucky guess!

I suppose Jerry had this Halloween costume in his closet and figured, “Hey, maybe they’ll fall for this old Zorro outfit.” And sure enough, they do! So now, Jerry can show up masked, dressed in black and cracking his leather whip. And the Indians will trust him as the spirit of their old friend El Latigo, and do as he says. Ah, if life were really only that simple…

The brains behind the scheme

So, who’s behind all the ruckus? Barnett, the local saloon owner. He wants the Indians run off their reservation so he can buy up the land. We aren’t told why he wants the land until halfway through the serial, but it’s pretty obvious that it must be gold, silver or oil. And sure enough, it turns out to be that old faithful standby, gold.

So for 12 chapters, the evil saloon owner Barnett sends out his minions to stir up a few malcontent Indians and get them to aid other renegades in various attacks. They’re especially good at attacking wagon trains, courtesy of Republic’s stock footage. Hey, didn’t I see that exact same Indian bite the dust in a couple dozen other westerns?

The continual attacks are all thwarted by Jerry Randall, in his guise as El Latigo, until things wrap up in chapter 12. There’s a big fight where a band of renegade Indians attack the stagecoach. The cavalry rides to the rescue. El Latigo leads the fray. Indians bite the dust. Barnett bites the dust. Peace finally reigns. And for the past 12 chapters, I’ve been pinching myself to stay awake. What a yawner!

Here’s a couple strange anomalies I discovered while watching this serial. Bullets ricochet off hay! Honest! In chapter 10, there is a heated gunfight in Randall’s barn. The bad guy’s in the hay loft shooting from behind a pile of hay, and Randall, below, shoots back. There’s a gunshot, accompanied by the familiar ricochet sound. The bullet has missed the bad guy and nicked the hay. Yes, bullets ricochet off hay. The things you can learn from a serial…

And trees seem to appear and disappear during several of the Indian attack scenes. In the long shots, the covered wagons are circled in an open prairie with no trees in sight. But in the close-ups, obviously shot on a sound stage, there are trees just outside the wagons. Was no one in charge of continuity, when they filmed this?

The good… if there is any

Have I nothing good to say about this serial? Well… uh… give me a minute; I’m thinking! Well, gunfighters in this chapter-play reload their revolvers. I guess that’s a positive. In many serials, guns seem to shoot an inexhaustible supply of bullets without reloading. But here, the good guys and bad guys, alike, pause after six shots to pull bullets out of their gunbelts and reload.

And Roy Barcroft, the faithful Republic player and personal favorite of mine, has a small part here. It’s always good to see him in a serial. He definitely adds a badly needed touch of class to this sadly lacking chapter-play. In one of his unusual good-guy roles, he plays the sheriff in the last few chapters. My favorite good-guy role of Barcroft’s is Jim Logan, owner of the Triple R Ranch on the old Spin and Marty serials shown on TV’s Mickey Mouse Club. So see, this serial does have some redeeming features, after all.

Although it’s readily available via various streaming services, I can’t recommend this serial to anyone, not even a die-hard serial buff. I only watched it because I had transferred it to DVD and was proofing the final result, checking for glitches. And I’ll probably never watch it again. Unless…

Unless I come down with a bout of insomnia. This serial would be a sure cure!