The Eye of Ra

The Eye of Ra is a movie serial in book form. By Woodrow W. Walker If you were born after 1955, you might not know what a movie serial is unless you have had someone from an earlier time tell you about them. Movie Serials were made by three movie studios, Republic, Universal and Columbia as well as many independents. Republic stopped serial production in the 1955 and Columbia in 1956 Universal had stopped serial production in 1946. To put it in context, a serial is a short film or chapter from a longer film consisting of twelve to fifteen chapters. During the silent age of motion pictures, some serials were much longer. I have tried to keep the flavor of the serials from the thirties and forties. As the serial was made or a younger movie goer, they were produced much cheaper than even the ‘B’ films despite their longer running time. Each episode ended with a cliff-hanger and there was often cheating in the recap at the start of each new episode. The idea was simple; Cram as much action into fifteen or twenty-minutes as possible. Of course, a book is not a film and because of those differences it is impossible to translate from one to the other without some loss of clarity. I have done my best and hope you enjoy my efforts.