Brick Bradford (1947)

Such a frustrating disappointment

best movie i've ever seen.

As Good As It Gets

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I remember Brick Bradford when the series was shown at Saturday morning pictures at the Regal cinema in Purley, Surrey, England back in 1952. My friends and I thought it was exciting stuff and would shout and whistle the whole way through especially when the plot got too silly. Every episode ended with a cliff hanger and we would have to wait a week to find out what happened or how our hero has managed to avoid death. In one particular episode a lit fuse is thrown into an open barrel of gunpowder, there is a massive explosion that must have killed everyone including our hero and then the credits rolled. You can imagine our frustration when we had to wait a whole week to find out how Brick has managed to survive. The following Saturday the episode opened with Brick plucking the flame from the barrel and thus avoiding the explosion we had clearly seen the Saturday before. Well we roared with indignation yelling out " Fiddle ! fiddle" and " Rubbish! rubbish ! " and whistling and stamping our feet. It was all great fun and we loved it.

Dr. Claussen enlists the aid of Brick Bradford and his associates to protect the Interceptor Ray for the United Nations. The ray, invented by Dr. Tymak has the ability to destroy any missile that comes within the large area of the beam it emits. Laydron, a scientific criminal, is also interested in getting the ray in order to sell to a nasty foreign power. Brick and friend Sandy use Dr. Tymak's inventions such as the crystal door transporter to travel to the moon in order to get a mineral needed by the ray, and the Time Top which transports the two back into the 18th century to find a lost scientific secret buried away. The serial is fun no doubt with very original concepts. Its burden is that its separated into 3 different sections. The first 6 chapters concentrate on the moon adventure, the next 3 and a half have the Time Top (the best of the three), and the remaining chapters are back on present day earth and are unnecessary padding of the serial. Richmond is in the twilight of his acting career so the serial concentrates more on the supporting cast, but he still does have the adventurous presence. Vallin seems to have a ball playing Sandy, and much of his dialogue seems ad-libbed. (Brick and Sandy in the time travel sequence does have the feeling of a Hope-Crosby Road picture) I was surprised with Bennet directing there was a lack of good fight sequences. Rating, based on serials, 6.

I'd heard a lot of things about Brick Bradford...mainly that it was the worst movie serial ever made. Now, it wasn't the greatest, but it had some good moments...but it also had plenty of clunkers.Brick and company travel to the far side of the moon which suddenly has an atmosphere and a lost civilization that other people from Earth have PREVIOUSLY visited. They also travel back through time to the days of the pirates to find a lost scrap of paper with an equation relating to nuclear physics on it.The first half of the serial has moments like these, while the second half becomes a routine good guys/bad guys shoot-out and capture-everyone-a-thon. Still, Kane Richmond is always fun and Rick Vallin has a lot of good, funny lines. The scripting is a bit above par in terms of tongue-in-cheek humor for Vallin's character.If you are a serial fan, and can ignore outlandish plot contrivances (hey, most serial fans can =) ), I think Brick Bradford is definitely worth a viewing.