The Vigilante also has the honor of being one of the few DC Comics heroes to make it to the silver screen. The Vigilante was a 1947 thirteen-chapter movie serial, starring veteran action star Ralph (Dick Tracy) Byrd. He was the third DC character to make the jump to movies, after Batman (in 1943 and again in 1947) and Hop Harrigan (1946), and was followed the next year by a great serial with Kirk Alyn as Superman, and by a rather dull serial featuring Don McGuire as their Action Comics co-star Congo Bill (though the appearance of Cleo Moore did liven that one up a bit).

The Vigilante (and especially Congo Bill) may seem like poor choices to feature in a motion picture, particularly when there were many other more popular characters to choose from (i.e. the Flash, Green Lantern, or Hawkman). The decision to use these two down-to-earth characters was probably prompted by reasons of economy and exposure. Both characters would translate to the screen cheaply, with few out of the ordinary special effects and allowing for a good amount of stock footage usage and both were also featured monthly in Action Comics as back-up features to Superman, DC's most popular superhero.

Greg Sanders/The Vigilante: Ralph Byrd

Betty Winslow: Ramsay Ames

George Pierce/X-1: Lyle Talbot

Stuff: George Offerman, Jr.

Prince Hamil/Hassan: Robert Barron

Captain Reilly: Hugh Prosser

Silver (X-2): Jack Ingram

Doc (X-8): Eddie Parker

Thorne: Bill Brauer

Please note that Prince Hassan is referred to as Prince Hamil throughout the serial, but is listed as Prince Hassan in the credits.

1. The Vigilante Rides Again
2. Mystery of the White Horses
3. Double Peril!
4. Desperate Flight
5. In the Gorilla's Cage
6. Battling the Unknown
7. Midnight Rendezvous
8. Blasted to Eternity
9. The Fatal Flood
10. Danger Ahead
11. X-1 Closes In
12. Danger Rides the Rails
13. The Trap That Failed
14. Closing In
15. The Secret of the Skyroom

Greg Saunders, the "Prairie Troubadour" of the screen, was shooting some scenes of a movie at George Pierce's ranch. Prince Hamil of Aravania arrived, presenting Greg, Pierce, Betty Winslow, Capt. Reilly and Tex Collier each with a fine Aravanian horse. Greg's alter-ego, the Vigilante, is called into action as a gang of thugs led by the mysterious and unseen X-1 strive to steal the horses from their owners. The reason for that nefarious activity is that each horse was shod with shoes containing 20 "tears of blood", which are rare blood red pearls of which only 100 exist in the world. There is also said to be a 1000-year-old curse upon those unique and valuable pearls. The Vigilante and his sidekick Stuff eventually discover that X-1 is none other than Pierce. Pierce is eventually killed, and Hamil destroys the Tears of Blood, ending their evil curse.

This is one of my favorite movie serials, but even I will admit it is not one of the very best ones. Ralph Byrd is always fun in any stereotypical square-jawed hero role, and I have a soft spot in my heart for Lyle Talbot, as he's one of my favorite B-actors. The story and the mystery is actually pretty engaging, though it is quite obvious who the head villain is early on (but then, it rarely isn't obvious in a chapter-play). My only complaints concern the fact that the Vigilante is, in the serial, some sort of undefined government agent, and that Stuff wasn't used or even portrayed any way close to his character in the comics. It seemed that in the dying days of the serial, every hero had to be a government agent of some sort - even Batman sort of worked for the government sometimes. I guess it was really cool or something back then.

Stuff, however, is another situation completely. The young Chinese boy from the comics became a thirty-ish white guy with a very New York outlook on the world and not many brains in the mix. I realize it would have been asking way too much to have a young Chinese actor play the role, but couldn't they have at least kept the poor guy a kid? It's embarrassing to watch a grown man get beat up and captured all the time. Come to think of it, Robin and Jimmy Olsen were a tad on the old side in the other serials as well.