Adventures of Sir Galahad – Chapter 2: Galahad’s Daring

OUR STORY SO FAR: Apprentice ka-niggit Galahad (George Reeves), by virtue of defeating both Sir Bors (Charles King) and Sir Modred (Leonard Penn) in a jousting tournament, is granted membership by Arthur, King of the Britons (Nelson Leigh) in his cliquish little fraternity known as the Round Table.  For his initiation, Galahad must pull an all-nighter guarding King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, inside the aptly-named Sword Room.  But an unknown individual slips a powerful roofie into Galahad’s wine, and when he awakes the next morning Excalibur has been “liberated”—all Galahad can remember is a mysterious knight walking off with the sword and disappearing through a wall. 

Though the custodian of Excalibur, Sir Kay (Jim Diehl), would like nothing better than watch Galahad hang from the highest gallows, Arthur bestows mercy upon Galahad—he just won’t be able to become a knight until the sword is found.  Indeed, England’s king has bigger problems—his mortal enemy, Ulric, King of the Saxons, has been spotted in the vicinity of Camelot and if he should get his greasy hands on the sword a terrible fate shall befall them all.  In the meantime, Galahad, under advice from Arthur’s sister, Morgan le Fay (Pat Barton), searches for the missing sword in the Enchanted Forest…but encounters some resistance from the powerful sorcerer known as Merlin (William Fawcett)—who has placed our hero in a position of great peril including blindness, “flames of darkness” and a tree that’s a bit too free with its limbs…

MERLIN: Now, my foolish Galahad…you know the power of Merlin’s magic…to those who trespass in the Enchanted Forest I extend the most warm welcome… (Evil cackling)

Oh, brother.  Don’t quit that day job, Merlie.

MERLIN: What a pity that you should suspect me…you could well have been a credit to Arthur’s court…but no mortal dare defy me and live to tell of it…

VOICE: I defy you, Merlin…

Looks like a bit of dissension in the ranks.  An unseen presence quickly undoes all the mischief performed by Merlin, whose attempts at restorative magic gestures prove futile.  Knowing that the game is up, Merlin arranges to vanish seconds before Galahad can plunge a dagger into him.  “You are safe now, Galahad,” the mysterious voice informs him…a voice that is female in origin.

A woman in white appears before Galahad—the famed Lady of the Lake, the watery tart who threw Excalibur at King Arthur, thus allowing him to wield supreme executive power.  She’s played by actress Lois Hall, whose other main serial gig was Columbia’s Pirates of the High Seas in 1950 (co-starring with Buster Crabbe), and she also appeared in a number of B-westerns and TV shows before deciding to quit the business in 1957.  By the 1970s, she was back in the business in both movies and guest appearances on such shows as Marcus Welby, M.D., Father Murphy and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

LADY: Merlin cannot harm you now, Galahad…

GALAHAD: You, m’lady, must be…

LADY: The Lady of the Lake?  Yes, Galahad…

GALAHAD: I must have your help…

LADY: I have helped you…

“Who do you think it was who shut down the burners and restored your sight, while vanquishing that tree who tried to roger you?  That was me, buddy boy…”

GALAHAD (sheepishly): Well, then I’m grateful…but now you must take me to Merlin…he’s taken Excalibur for himself…

LADY: Oh no, Galahad…the mighty sword is not in the forest…

GALAHAD: I vowed never to rest until Excalibur is returned to its rightful owner…

LADY: A noble vow, brave Galahad…but you will serve King Arthur best by riding with him against Ulric…

And with that, the Lady of the Lake walks away, ultimately vanishing as well.  Hearing horse’s hooves in the distance, Galahad steels himself for battle when this mysterious knight rides into view.

I’ll take a moment here to tell you that if you’re expecting the excitement and spectacle of last week’s chapter…you’re doomed to disappointment.  This installment is barely sixteen minutes long, and most of it consists of fights and riding…which means that moment of levity I had last week about Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949) practically being a western may not have been a joke after all.  So Galahad, after thrusting and parrying with the knight for a few rounds, finally ends up knocking him on his ass.  Standing over him with sword drawn, Galahad warns: “Yield, or feel the touch of cold steel!”

And so the knight yields in a tactical retreat…by vanishing before Galahad’s very eyes.  (Something tells me he’s still got a buzz on from that wine.)  As Galahad traces the ground where the knight did lay with his sword, another knight approaches…it is Gallie’s comic relief sidekick, Sir Bors.

BORS: Have you been doing battle with the spirits of the Enchanted Forest?

GALAHAD (trying to catch his breath): That…that must be it…

BORS: I take it that Merlin has caused you a little trouble…

GALAHAD: Not half the trouble I’ll cause you if you don’t take me to King Arthur…

BORS: Your threat is my command…

The byplay between Bors and Galahad is interesting because while Charles King, who plays Bors, seems to be having the time of his life in one of his rare good-guy roles, George Reeves isn’t enjoying himself at all since he has to do the heavy heroics as the serial’s star.  (If you’d like to see Reeves with a King-like attitude, check him out in the first Jungle Jim film—his “What? Me worry?” performance is the highlight of that movie.)  Okay, time for Galahad to get serious: “Our king goes to battle with the Saxons…Camelot lies undefended—we must hasten!” 

Camelot!

Camelot!

Camelot!  Hey, it may only be a model but I’m pretty sure this feature wasn’t there when Arthur bought the place.  We witness a ka-niggit entering the passageway (and the stone wall closes behind him) then making his way through a rocky hideout, where he finally reaches a stone wall dead end.  As the wall gives away to reveal another secret hiding place, allow me to introduce you to the ka-niggit in question.

He’s identified as Bartog—though the first time I watched this chapter I thought they were saying “Bartok,” as in Bela.  Bartog is the chief hench-knight of Saxon king Ulric, played by character actor Don C. Harvey…who henched in quite a few serials, notably Batman and Robin and Atom Man vs. Superman (but he also played good guys in chapter plays like Captain Video and Blackhawk).  Harvey appeared in a slew of B-westerns and TV shows—many of them also western-oriented; he turned up in quite a few Rawhide episodes as a drover named “Collins.”

Bartog finds a knight standing behind the wall, holding Excalibur in his hands.  He is known in this serial as “The Black Knight,” but the moment he opens his mouth he gives himself away as voice great Paul Frees.  (Paul Frees is everywhere!)  “This is the great sword Excalibur,” the Black Knight informs Bartog.  “Take it to Ulric, your king.  With it, he will conquer Arthur and become ruler of Britain.”  Bartog bows to the Knight, and walks off with the sword…after taking a few steps, he turns back to find him…

…vanished!  The Black Knight is this serial’s masked villain, whose identity we won’t learn until the final chapter, if past serial performance is any indication.  (If you want his identity to be a surprise until the very end, don’t make the mistake I did and look through the cast credits at the IMDb…because they give away the secret.)

So Bartog exits through the passageway, and after waiting for his chance to zip past this inattentive guard…

…he makes his way back to where his lackey has been feeding the meters for the horses, and he slips Excalibur into a handy little black tote bag.  And they ride off!

As Galahad and Bors reach the same clearing as the one in the first chapter, they can’t help but notice Bartog and his sidekick racing across the glen…

GALAHAD: He’s not one of Arthur’s knights…

BORS: Your eyes are sharper than mine…what device does his shield bear?

GALAHAD: It’s a…black raven…

BORS: That’s Bartog…Lord Chamberlain to Ulric…

So I guess the guy riding with him is Richard Chamberlain.  (Oh, I slay myself sometimes.)

BORS: Can you make out what’s hanging across his back?

GALAHAD: It’s a large case…not unlike that of a great sword!

Oh, yeah…I really believe you were able to make that out from that distance, Sir Lee of Majors…particularly since the Chamberlain brothers have already disappeared over the hill.  (Screenwriters are so lazy…)  Galahad shouts “Hah!” to get his horse in gear, and takes off in pursuit, with loyal Bors a-followin’.

I’d like to say the above screen captures inspired me to compose an original folk ballad…but I shamelessly cribbed most of it from a popular Britcom from the 1980s, changing the words ever-so-slightly to avoid a lawsuit:

His horse hauls ass through glen and fern

A race to outrun Bors and Gallie

It's almost like a B-western

As brave men ride hard through each valley

Black Bartog, Black Bartog

He rides with lightning speed

Black Bartog, Black Bartog

His foul scheme might succeed

Okay, that’s enough of that nonsense.  Stopping briefly, the Chamberlains notice Galahad racing toward them, and Bartog tells his aide de camp “Stay here” as he rides on.  The lackey is soon beset upon by Galahad, who duels with him at sword point until he (Gallie) finally knocks him off his horse and into a creek.  As Bors rides up, Galahad tells his buddy, “I’m going after Bartog—you ride to Arthur,” assuming, I suppose, that the guy he dumped off his horse is too humiliated to do anything else.  “Good fortune on your way, Galahad,” Bors replies, because he’s too far polite to say “Biteth me.”

Galahad rides off to stirring music.  But in the meantime, Bartog has reached the Saxons’ camp, and atop his horse, informs one of the guards: “I’m being followed…the intruder must not pass.”

“He shall not pass, Lord Bartog,” the guard assures him…and at this point I was thinking: Oh, boy…this is the scene where the guard guy gets all his limbs hacked off and he still wants to fight Galahad.  But then I remembered this serial was made in 1949, and something like that would simply not happen.  Instead, he orders two other guards to “fetch your horses” (as opposed to “hold your horses”) and runs behind a rock to lie in wait for Galahad.

I love the nose guard on that guy.  You should always wear protection in battle.  So what does Galahad do?  He goes around the other way, thus surprising the guard and after a quick exchange of swordery, it’s Galahad 2, Evil Ka-niggits 0.  After Galahad defeats the guard, though, the medium shot of actor Reeves that follows doesn’t quite match the angle of the previous fight, so that’s a little embarrassing.

Galahad races back to the horse just as the other two lackeys have mounted up and are riding in his direction.  In a laugh-out-loud sequence, Galahad gallops off in the direction of his pursuers, and as he passes by the “station” where Bartog told the guards not to let him pass, he scoops up a lance and…

…whammo!  Just like a Three Stooges comedy.  Galahad rides off, and as he continues to make his way through filmdom’s largest forest, he finally stops and parks the horse because he found a meter with time on it.  He stealthily makes his way through a clump of trees and in the clearing…

Behold!  The Saxon camp.  Galahad continues his sneakiness, until he approaches a tent that—and this is a coinky-dink—just so happens to be the one housing King Ulric hizzownself.

King Ulric is being played by one of my favorite serial baddies, John Merton—we got a brief glimpse of him during Serial Saturdays’ takedown of Jungle Queen (in chapter 8) and he was one of three henchies in the employ of ineffectual villain George Meeker in Brenda Starr, Reporter.  Merton appeared in other venues than just serials (he played tons of bad guys in B-westerns, for instance) but for some odd reason it’s the chapter plays for which I always remember him.  Among his best known serials: Dick Tracy Returns (as one of the Stark boys, Champ), Drums of Fu Manchu (as the mute and menacing Dacoit Loki), Hop Harrigan, Son of the Guardsman, Jack Armstrong and the too-wacky-for-words Brick Bradford.

ULRIC: You shall be rewarded handsomely, Bartog…

BARTOG: Serving you shall be ample reward, my lord…

What a kiss-ass.

ULRIC (chuckling): Sly dog…you ask for nothing, yet you drool like a hound before the kill…shall we say all of Lancelot’s holdings…and a Barony?

BARTOG: You are generous, my King…

As His Majesty generous pours he and his toady some wine, there is a cut to the outside of the tent where Galahad is eavesdropping.  He takes out his dagger and cuts a hole in the tent in order to improve his spying…something that completely escapes the notice of the two men inside, for reasons left unexplained by lazy screenwriters.

ULRIC (lifting a goblet): To Bartog…Baron of Saxony…

BARTOG (following suit): To the end of King Arthur…and his Round Table!

“To swimmin’ with bow-legged women!”  They down their wine, and then Ulric looks upon Excalibur proudly.

ULRIC: Arthur will soon feel the might…of his invincible sword… (A lowly messenger enters the tent, interrupting the King) Speak! What news do you bring?

MESSENGER: King Arthur and his knights approach…

ULRIC: Have they entered the pass?

MESSENGER: Yes, m’lord…

ULRIC (rising from his chair): Groom!  My horse!  Come, Bartog…

The first time I heard that last bit of dialogue I wasn’t sure if Ulric was saying “Groom my horse!”  Grabbing their weaponry, Ulric tells Bartog: “We shall see the noble Arthur crushed this very day!”  They then exit the tent and are helped upon their steeds by other loyal lackeys.

Meanwhile, Galahad realizes that he has to get the hell out of there and warn Arthur and the others…but as he tries to sneak back into the brush, he is spotted by Ulric’s groom, who in turn alerts two of Ulric’s men with “Guards!  After him!” in Paul Frees’ voice.  The two guards race after Galahad, who takes both of them on in a badly edited fight sequence…which allows Galahad to emerge triumphant.  (He’s that good.)

Galahad catches up to where he stashed the horse, and rides off in the direction of King Arthur and the other ka-niggits.  In the distance, he can see Ulric, Bartog and the others preparing for battle.  If you look at the screen capture…

…you’ll notice that Ulric’s fake beard has turned white, which seems to suggest he’ll need to pay a visit to Lady Clairol soon.

ULRIC: What report is there of the enemy?

LACKEY: A runner has arrived…only at this hour…the men of Camelot are advancing through the pass…

ULRIC: Are the men ready?

LACKEY: They await your command…

ULRIC: Then let them be assembled!

I don’t think that lackey is from around these parts, by the way—he distinctively says “A runnah has arrived” as if he were one of the Knights of Flatbush.  But the men get assembled, and ride off into battle when Ulric barks “Forward to the attack!”

From Galahad’s vantage point, he can see not only Ulric and his men but Arthur and his knights—so the only thing that remains for him to do is ride to Arthur and warn him he’s about to get a beatdown.  But then Galahad’s stuntman does this incredible lame fall off his horse…

…and Galahad lies helpless as Ulric and his men ride over him.  Yes, that is our cliffhanger for this week.  I would not blame you if you start throwing popcorn boxes at the screen.  And now…heeeeere’s Knox Manning!

MANNING: What new and fearsome weapon is this?

I don’t know…but that’s the second largest arrow I’ve ever seen.

MANNING: What predicament has Sir Bors blundered into?

I’d say joining the cast of Adventures of Sir Galahad…but that sounds kind of snarky.