Aldridge, except for a vaguely pretentious accent as she repeatedly intones "FAH-ther," was charming, independent and tough. Dressed in khaki big-game-hunter clothes (a short-pant suit) Nyoka, like Fenimore-Cooper’s Natty Bumpo, is at home in the wilderness. Whenever one of her men warns her of imminent danger, she refuses to hold back: she busts ahead to confront evil directly (not unlike Lois Lane in the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons, trying to get that first-rate news story). Her spunk, energy, and refusal to follow masculine authority is extremely appealing to young girls and makes Nyoka one of the great serial heroines. When Caitlin, my oldest girl, was six years old, this adventure about explorers questing for the Hippocratic tablets and their inscribed cure for cancer(!), was one of her favorite movies. And no wonder.

Perils of Nyoka benefitted from a slightly above-average budget, but it wasn’t the increased production values, contrary to what Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut assert (in The Great Movie Serials, Doubleday Press, 1972), that make this serial a gem. Nyoka was made for $175,000. That’s not much more than other Republic gems like Spy Smasher, made three months before for $156,000, and The Mysterious Dr. Satan , shot in 1940, for $147,381. And there were more lavish serials—Captain America cost the studio over $220,000 in 1942—that were a clunky mess. No doubt, the Republic sheen livens up the mise-en-scene and creates a believable alternate universe, but Perils of Nyoka is a winner because of the collected imaginations of its writers and the direction of William Witney. Witney’s innovative use of close-ups, cutaways, and shot sequences invest his visuals with comic-book verve. And several of his cliffhangers and accompanying resolutions are amongst the most exciting and kinetic within the genre.

The dramatic close to Chapter Six, "Human Sacrifice," captures the rhythmic rush of comic book art. Nyoka, attempting to rescue her father, Dr. Henry Gordon—who has been hit on the head, forgotten his past and become the ruler of the evil Tauregs—is captured in a cave by the dark queen Vultura (Lorna Gray with brooding Cleopatra eyeshadowing). Nyoka, suspended by a rope, limply dangles above bubbling lava. Drums pound incessantly, anticipating the sacrifice. Witney’s rapid edits are like the alternating sizes and perspectives of comic book panels, and the dramatic parataxis of these collisions builds across time as Witney’s camera, in syncopation, crosses Nyoka’s stillness with intense close-ups of Vultura’s evil eyes and medium shots of an indifferent Professor Gordon looking on. Witney’s dramatic switches in perspectives are like alternating the dimensions of comic book panels, building tension across a penciller’s lines—Nyoka, eyes, drums, Dad. Finally, Nyoka twists, the drum pounds, and she falls into the fiery pit.

Between chapters two and three, Nyoka moves from possible victim to a woman-of-action. The original cliffhanger sequence has six shots: Nyoka collapsed inside a hurtling chariot; Larry riding his horse trying to stop it; long-shot, chariot rushing ahead; return to Nyoka collapsed inside; chariot point-of-view (the camera is inside it), as it careens toward the cliff’s edge; chariot over the cliff, wheels twisting in the air. The chariot point-of-view shot is the key to reading the scene. Surely, this apparently unmotivated perspective must belong to someone and can’t be the look of an inanimate object. Chapter Three’s resolution of the cliffhanger replaces shots four and five with three new shots: Nyoka waking up; Nyoka’s point-of-view of the cliff’s edge; Nyoka jumping, rolling free. This is simple film-making, but it’s also innovative—Witney’s cheat shot (his ability to close the previously absent reverse shot and reveal the character who’s looking and complete the motivation for the camera-in-the-chariot shot) makes logical sense within the previous shots’ compositions. I love it. And more importantly, Nyoka’s ability to rescue herself, to not rely on Larry and his horse, makes her a '90s woman, a sister that my daughter Caitlin applauds.