The
History of TV and Movie Cliffhanger
Serials
Installments of stories of each of the first cinema serials
were shown weekly in theatres, but endings were incomplete,
always "to be continued" until the final chapter's
resolution 10 or 15 weeks later. Early silent chapter plays
(the first American movie was
What Happened to Mary,
shot by Edison in 1912) were aimed at an adult audience,
and included westerns, crime/mystery dramas, jungle
adventures such as
Adventures of Tarzan
and aviation epics. French serials such as
Fantomas
and
Les Vampires
were influential to the form as well.
Chapter plays gained a voice in 1929 and, sometimes drawing
upon footage from their silent predecessors, continued the
traditions of the earlier serials, added space opera to the
melting pot, and as time went on targeted younger viewers.
Republic Pictures brought popular characters Captain
Marvel, Spy Smasher, Dick Tracy,
Zorro
and Red Ryder to the screen, Universal's biggest success
was the Flash Gordon series, and Columbia pictures turned
out the exciting adventures of the Spider and Batman.
Jungle heroes, aviators, spies, and cowboys battled crooks
and weird masked menaces often bent on world domination
week after week, in 20 minute episodes which always ended
in a cliffhanger or deathtrap -- to be continued the
following week. A clever way to bring audiences back to
theatres weekly, the classic movie serials, which had
become increasingly targeted to younger audiences, left
kids on the edge of their seats.
Television pretty much put the serials out of business --
Republic's
Commando Cody
was released for both markets -- and the cliffhanger ending
dropped out of fashion for a while. Unseen for many years
after the last theatrically released serial,
Blazing the Overland Trail
(1956), cliffhanger movie serials saw a brief revival in
the mid-1960s as Republic repackaged feature versions of
many of their serials for TV release (see our video page
for the list), and a theatrical shown-all-at-once
re-release of
Batman
inspired the ABC-TV program of the same name. Condensed
versions of serials then became available in home movie
form. But in the 70s and 80s (apart from the occasional
showing of
Flash Gordon),
movie serials were pretty much lost to
view.
Though occasionally classic serials can be glimpsed late at
night on American Movie Classics or the Canadian Moviola
channel, home video is now the place to find them. With
over 200 of 232 sound serials available in one form or
another, movie serials can now be seen and appreciated
again by a whole new generation of fans.
When the chapter play format left the movie screen, TV was
glad to give it a new home. In England
The Quatermass Experiment
(1953) brought popularity to the form and influenced other
installment-dramas to come, such as the extremely popular
and long-running
Doctor Who
(1963-present), the leading character of which must be
called the most versatile serial star ever, as he can
travel anywhere in time and place at will, and to present
has even survived his own death and "regeneration" nine
times over.
In the 1960s the TV versions of
The Lone Ranger,
Batman,
The Green Hornet,
Star Trek,
and
Time Tunnel,
among others brought cliffhanger elements onto the small
screen. Miniseries such as the groundbreaking
Roots
(1977),
Shogun
(1980),
V
(1983),
North and South
(1985-86),
Shaka Zulu
(1986) and
Jesus of Nazareth
(1987), often kept viewers glued to the screen and coming
back for more, and were the home for the now more mature
sort of cliffhanger in the 1980s. TV's soap operas such
as
General Hospital
have included cliffhanger story arcs from time to time, and
one recent soap,
Passions,
included occult elements which made it look very similar
to
The Mysteries of Myra
from 1916.
Dark Shadows,
a daytime soap which ran from 1966 to 1971, was the longest
mystery/horror serial ever, and made a comeback in 1991 in
the form of a 12-episode miniseries which re-presented
condensed highlights from the original story.
In recent years Hollywood has readopted the serial format
to a degree, with "chapters" extended to a much greater
length.
The Lord of The Rings
being
one continued story released sequentially in three annual
installments, was the first new "serial" to hit the big
screen since 1956. (Previously, the two sequels to
Star Wars,
The Empire Strikes Back
and
Return of the Jedi,
were released with a cliffhanger in between, and contained
many classic-cliffhanger elements, but the whole Star Wars
series was not released at regular intervals or in order,
and several of the films' stories come to definite endings,
so the series can only be considered as theatrically
released to have been several batches of sequels and
prequels as opposed to an official serial.) The
Resident Evil
and
Pirates of the Caribbean
films also tell continuous stories and include cliffhanger
endings, although the installments have not been released
at regular intervals. Currently ongoing serial/series films
include
The Chronicles of Narnia
and the
Harry Potter
series, which has gradually taken on more cliffhanger
elements and shown itself to more one big story than just
the sum of its parts as further installments have been
released.
The action-cliffhanger format has also been gradually
returning to TV in the form of shows such as
The X-Files,
24, Smallville,
and
Heroes.
