Hello, my name's Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And will your heroes survive? You'll have to tune in next week. This has been the Important Cinema Club.

Last week on the Important Cinema Club, our heroes wrestled with the Uber of Carol E. Schneeman.

A recap of last week's episode. So, Carolee Schneeman. I'm just kidding. Could you

imagine pulling a scroll out of yourself as an art piece? God, what a world. Well, this week we're

talking about cereals. What cereals? Ah, well, Captain Crunch, Fruitloose. Good stuff. Yeah, that's the kind of

classic comedy that separates us from the other podcast.

Nah, we're talking about the old-timey movie serials most popularized in the late 30s, early 40s,

stuff like Flash Gordon starring Buster Crab.

The Adventures of Captain Marvel starring Tom Tyler.

The Lone Ranger, Zorro.

So many pulp heroes brought to the screen in little 15-minute

chunks was a cliffhanger at the end, meant to encourage young viewers to come to the theater

next week to see how their hero gets out of this destifying problem. Now, people may not quite

know the concept of a serial because it is an antiquated form.

They know parodies of cereals because that's essentially the only way it's portrayed in popular culture now.

So beginning in the 1910s and going all the way to the early 50s, serials were part of the special bonus attractions that accompanied feature films. You know, you'd have your

cartoon, you'd have your newsreel, short films, and a serial. Oftentimes, they'd be 15 chapters,

and they'd tell one long, continuous story, broken up, one per week. First episode, it usually

be 30 minutes, because it's setting up all the players, and then each subsequent episode

will be 12 minutes with a three-minute recap at the beginning of it.

And you'd get just a little bit more, and they would always have a cliffhanger.

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