The Mysterious Mr. M

Greetings all you Truly Adventurous Souls! 

So what's it all about?  How ya doing?  I guess we're doing okay here at the Adventure Site, thanks for asking!  That's just one of the reasons that I always look forward to your visits!

This time I've got another serial that I'd like to talk about:  The Mysterious Mr. M!  I know what you're thinking, you're thinking:  That's A Serial?!  And I'm here to tell you that Yes, That's A Serial!   

All right, so here's the schtick:  This criminal guy, Anthony Waldron, everybody thinks he's dead...well, except for his inner circle of criminal accomplices, of course.  He wants to steal the plans for a new submarine engine--which would power much larger submarines than are currently in use--from the designer, Dr. Kittridge.  He hopes to sell these plans to some foreign country for a boatload of money.  Since he is dead, he makes up a mysterious super-villain mastermind called Mister M, to take the credit and blame for the series of associated crimes.

So this guy Waldron is hiding out in the secret basement of his Grandmother's manor house.  The poor old lady has NO clue about it because they keep injecting her with their experimental drug "Hypnotreme" which--you guess it!--more or less puts the recipient into a state of deep hypnosis!  They use it and a bunch of other characters throughout the series.

But that's not all!  After killing a couple of cops--and accidentally killing Kittridge--and leaving Mr. M's calling card, Waldron and his gang begin to receive record albums.  These albums feature whispered instructions from some unknown person who seems to know their every move and installs himself as their new leader, assuming the moniker of Mr. M!

So that's what going on with the bad guys, but what about the good guys?  Well, on the case is Agent Grant Farrell, whose brother was found dead along with Mr. M's calling card.  His trusty sidekicks are insurance investigator Shirley Clinton and Detective Lieutenant Kirby Walsh.  

Fortunately, Kittridge was a sly (and paranoid) old duck, and his plans are not all in one place.  Furthermore, he had different companies and experts working on constructing different specialized parts for his engine.  So it's a race between the good guys and the guys to collect the various prototype parts and plans before the other.  A lot of typical serial shenanigans ensue:  fistfights, car crashes, explosions, falling from planes, planes crashes...that kind of stuff.

I recognize a couple of names in the credits, but really only from other serials.  But I did recognize the old lady's weasally little lawyer, I think I've actually seen him in a couple of old movies as well as other serials.  Apparently his name was Byron Foulger, but I didn't know it until I looked him up.

This is supposed to be the last serial ever made by Universal Studios.  According to the all-knowing Wikipedia they made a total of 137 serials!  Whew, that's a lot!

If you want to see it, it's available on DVD, of course, thanks to various specialty stores and Amazon.  But you can watch it for free on YouTube, I know because I did!  The sound is a little out of sync, and it's worse on some chapters than others, but it's watchable.  So see it for yourself!  Or don't!  Either way come back next time when I ramble on about something else!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell