Superman And The Mole Men Review

Comic book fans Superman is perhaps one of if not the most adapted character in comic book history with the character getting alot of films made about him and as i'm writing this another TV show about him is due to air in January of next year on The CW. So I thought that i'd do something that i've never done before and that's take a look at the very first feature film to star the character and so here is my review of 1951's "Superman And The Mole Men" enjoy.

The plot of the movie is Clark Kent and Lois Lane travel to the town of Silsby for a story about the world's largest oil drill and while there they find something truly shocking. It honestly is hard to me to describe the plot of this film since it's pretty thin at best even the aspect of Clark and Lois looking for a story gets dropped pretty freaking quickly but from little plot there is it's OK at best and that's me being at best and that's me being very kind.

Starring in the film is the late George Reeves as Kal-El/Clark Kent / Superman and Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane. Also starring in the film is Jeff Corey as Luke Benson , Walter Reed as Bill Corrigan , J. Farrell MacDonald as Pop Shannon , Stanley Andrews as The Sheriff , Ray Walker as John Craig , Hal K. Dawson as Chuck Weber , Phil Warren as Deputy Jim , Frank Reicher as Hospital Superintendent , Beverly Washburn as Child , Billy Curtis as a Mole-Man , Jerry Maren as a Mole-Man and Byron Foulger as Jeff Reagan.

In terms of what I thought about the acting in the film it's honestly alot better then what I was expecting it to be. I was honestly expecting the acting to be really over the top and basically be the kind of acting that you see in kids shows where they talk down to you , but no I was actually surprised by how good the acting in the film , it would have been very easy for the actors to basically be over the top in this film since comic books weren't being made in to films at this time and were still seen as stuff for little kids and so to see an early comic book film where the acting is good is truly shocking in my humble opinion.

This film was made from what I can gather to help sell people on the possibility of a live action Superman TV show which must have worked because the very next year we got Adventures Of Superman. However that being said this film for some strange reason isn't an origin story for the character infact when the film aired as two episodes of the show it was aired as the final two episodes of the show's first season which makes me wonder why it was first made as a feature film in the first place.

Speaking of it being a feature film this film is only an hour long heck it's not even a an hour long it's fifty eight minuets long so the story doesn't even stretch to a feature length. Which is a shame because they could have got three episodes out of it if they did stretch it to ninety minuets in fact from what I can work out this is actually the shortest feature film adapted from a comic book so yeah it has that going for it at least.

They really did Lois dirty in this film because for a large portion of the films already short running time she does nothing and when she's not doing nothing she screams. Granted she only screams once in the whole film but it happens when she's doing absolutely nothing here they had a chance to do something interesting with the character but for some reason they chose not even tho her investigating would have actually helped the story quite alot.

Now then since this film doesn't show us the origin for this version of the man of steel we instead get a painfully long opening narration explaining who he is and where he came from. I'm not going to lie I found this narration to be boring as hell I get why they didn't show us the stuff on krypton since they most likely didn't have the technology around back then to make it look convincing but did they really have to go with a boring as hell really freaking long narration.

Now what I found to be very interesting in the film is the fact that the titular mole men aren't actually the villains of the film. In fact it's technically the townspeople of Silsby since they form a mob to kill the mole men when all the mole men are trying to do is get the people to stop digging into there homes underground but due to there frightening appearance the townspeople think that there evil and thus to kill them.

I honestly feel that that idea was really well done and was something that I honestly wasn't expecting to see in an early comic book movie. Even when I was doing research for this review I found that the Adventures Of Superman TV show often had mature and adult themes despite being aimed at kids and so it makes me wonder why superhero shows today don't do that even with many of them being aimed at adults.

Rather shockingly there actually isn't that much action in the film infact there's only one action scene in the whole film and even that is a car chase and not a fight scene. I get why they didn't have any fight scenes in this film because they mist likely either didn't have the money or they didn't know how to pull Superman's powers but one small fight scene wouldn't have hurt them surely even if it's the townspeople taking on Clark and not Superman just something would have worked better then having one chase scenes.

Let's take a second to talk about the pacing because I feel that it really needs to be talked about in my opinion. The pacing for this film is a feel one of it's strongest points since it's not to fast nor is it to slow the film goes just the right pace with scenes lasting exactly the length that they need to in order for things to set in altho there is a really long car chase which for some reason goes on for far two long in my opinion. 

Overall for not only the first Superman feature film ever made but also the first DC feature film ever made this is more of curiosity then anything else. Since apart from the name and both the leading characters this is have nothing to do with Superman nor the Superman mythology but it is interesting seeing how far we've come in terms of making not only films but also superhero films as such this film gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

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