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Customer Reviews of The Green Archer, Vol. 1

A film noir serial
In my callow youth, I wanted to live in a great stone castle with loads of secret passages, like the Garr Castle in this serial. There are secret panels, stone walls that move aside at the touch of a hidden button. And perhaps best of all, there is a basement garage that one reaches, still seated in the car, by way of an elevator. There's just one problem that hadn't occurred to me when I wanted such a mysterious abode: if I could wander and hide in the secret passages, so could others--in this case The Green Archer. Rather, two Green Archers, a good one and a bad one. <
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>There is the usual fistfight in every episode, a staple of all serials. In fact, there are some real donnybrooks, with Victor Jory frequently taking on six or seven thugs--and whooping them big time without mussing his hair, his clothes, or the skin on his knuckles. The lead villain has an apparent endless supply of lackies or minions who are completely cowed, for reasons I don't understand. They are insulted, beaten, humiliated, and they keep coming back for more. <
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>The plot is simple and silly. A burglary/robbery ring operates out of Garr Castle, and Victor Jory is out to stop them, helped on occasion by the good and mysterious Green Archer, who shoots arrows with amazing accuracy. The bad Archer seems to hit a chair every time he shoots an arrow. It gets a bit tedious after a while, as most serials do, unless you watch the episodes a week apart. <
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>Unlike most serials, this one has a rather film noir quality, lots of wonderful 1930s cars, city streets, night action, tough talk. All in all, I liked it a great deal and would recommend it to anyone thinking about watching a serial.

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Not great, but quite a bit of fun
This is based on an Edgar Wallace novel...well, it sure isn't very true to the novel, but it's a light hearted look at the main concept with its share of thrills, hairbreadth escapes, mixed with some satirical humor, double takes, & so forth. James Craven who portraye Ivan Shark in CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT is the tongue-in-cheek villian here.

You see, he's framed his brother and had the train taking the brother to jail derailed in order to finish him off, imprisoned his fiance in a secret room, uses some vicious dogs to guard her and the entire castle. He also has a gang of rather dim-witted crooks, one in particular.

He's capitalizing on the green archer legend surrounding the castle by having a gang member dress up in the requisite outfit. Only trouble, a second green archer who obviously is out to foil the villian suddenly shows up. Victor Jory shows up as an insurance investigator (I think he was a reporter and not even the main hero in the novel), falls in love with the imprisoned girl's sister, and we take it from there for 12 chapters until we finally find out (surprise, surprise, as if any intelligent kindergartner couldn't figure it out) who the real green archer is.

Good fun if you don't take your serials serially, I mean seriously.

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Perhaps the best of the James Horne serials
Watching this serial can almost give almost the same pleasure as watching a good Laurel and Hardy short. One of Horne's techniques was to use the villains as butts for some humorous jabs. James Craven (head villain) is a hoot as he rants and raves against his blundering underlings; when he isn't doing this he is correcting their English or juicily dreaming up some more deviltry. Sarcastic end of chapter narrations also add to the fun--"Is Bellamy giving his gang a pep talk?", etc. Hilarious last shot in chapter 15: Victor Jory while going upstairs suddenly clutches a shield and covers his derriere to protect himself against the arrows of a future green archer.