![]() ![]() Harry Lauter, who plays Tom, had a long, dependable career in bits and supporting parts in westerns and crime dramas but he was never suited to leading man material and often looks awkward doing the heavy lifting here. Another sign of the serial's lower budget is the failure to cast a properly stalwart leading man. There's also stock footage from an earlier Republic serial, SOS COAST GUARD (1937), which also shares several plot points in common with TRADER TOM, no surprise since TRADER TOM's director, Franklin Adreon, and screenwriter, Ronald Davidson, were both involved in the writing of SOS COAST GUARD, which remains, alas, the superior entertainment. And his men look more like Arabs than like anyone you'd find in the "China seas." When the "rebels" attack the hero and heroine riding in their jeep, they're represented entirely by stock footage from a British India adventure, most likely GUNGA DIN (1939). ![]() One episode involves a train trip and the train crew is all white.When the action finally shifts to the "interior" we get to see some rebels led by Richard Reeves, who normally played urban thugs in suit-tie-and fedora, but who puts on a turban and cloak here but is otherwise the same standard-issue "crook" and doesn't even attempt an Asian accent. Everyone drives American cars and the locations are all familiar Southern California ones. (The politics and geography are all kept rather fuzzy.) For the first six episodes, the only "natives" we see are Wang, Tom's assistant, played by the only Asian actor in the entire cast, Victor Sen Yung, and Gursan, the villain's mute henchman, played by stuntman Tom Steele in obvious latex makeup. It tells the story, such as it is, of an American trading post owner and boat captain, Tom Rogers, who operates in the fictional Southeast Asian country of "Bumatra" and is recruited by Major Conroy (an American operative from an unidentified agency, most likely the United Nations) to help prevent a local arms dealer from supplying weapons to native rebels seeking to overthrow the ruler of a U.N protectorate in the interior. TRADER TOM looks much cheaper than the TV series that supplanted it and offered few of the thrills that had once made Republic serials so celebrated. ![]() Whatever inspiration and creative drive had motivated the production of so many great serials at Republic in the 1930s and '40s had, by this point, been used up. TRADER TOM OF THE CHINA SEAS (1954) was one of the last Republic Pictures serials (there were three more after it, the last one appearing in 1955) and it came out at a time when TV was making the kinds of action adventure series that replaced serials in the popular imagination and made weekly chapter plays in theaters obsolete. ![]()
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