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Dack in the old days of silent films, when you measured your money’s worth by the number of thrills to a penny, serials stood high in favour. There at least you could always be certain of value for each episode was packed with fights and chases, and each week found the heroine left in some new predicament—dangling over a sharp-edged cliff at the end of a piece of rope (you were shown the fibres of the rope being severed one by one by the jagged rock); or tied to a chair while a fuse attached to a bomb burned inch by tanta- lising inch ; or locked in an upper room while the basement was set on fire. Always the villain’s plans for the extinction of the heroine favoured some ingenious form of murder that allowed for the possibility — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the inevitability — of the heroine's escape in the nick of time the following week. Not for those old-time villains the crude and certain method of shooting the lady. Their methods were a little like those mentioned by the Mikado in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera—“ something slow, with boiling oil in it." And so we always knew that as long as there was another episode to go she’d have to get out of it somehow, and spent the inter- vening time speculating on how she’d do it. And how the intrepid heroine was cheered and the blackguardly villain hissed and booed ! Then audiences became a little more self- conscious and films a little more sophisticated, and serials went out of fashion. For a time there was really nothing that took their place—especially when talkies arrived. They have never really come back into general favour, despite the tremendous success of a certain “ Masked Rider ” serial in blase New York. Instead we have the modem version of the serial—the series. There have been sequels to films as long as 1 can remember, but for the most part they were the filmed versions of literary sequels such as “ The Prisoner of Zenda ” and “ Rupert of Hentzau." But sequels were not particularly popular, even when the original film had been an outstanding success, because there was a strong feeling— which was justified by experience — that sequels almost invariably Top right : Roland Young, “ Skippy ” and Constance Bennett in “ Topper Takes a Trip.” Top left: Ray Corrigan, John Wayne and Max Terhune, ” The Three Mesquiteers." Centre left : Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan. Left : Lionel Barrymore and Lew Ayres in ” Young Dr. Kildare.” 50