DC Saturdays #1 - Superman and the Mole Men (1951)

Welcome to the first of a new series on the blog, DC Saturdays, kind of a sister companion to Marvel Mondays. See the previous entry for more info. For our first entry, we're going all the way back to 1951 and probably the first "proper" superhero film, 1951's "Superman and the Mole Men" (there had been a few cinema-based serials in the pre-TV days of the 1940's based around both Superman and Captain America but as far as I'm aware this is the first proper feature-length one). It was intended as a pilot for the 1950's Superman TV series starring the late George Reeves and Phyllis South as Superman and Lois Lane. As with the '70s Marvel series, I'm gonna try to review these early DC films (and there's quite a few of them - DC definitely seem to have been more prolific up until the mid-'90s at least than Marvel were) bearing in mind the constraints of the era.

The story begins with Clark Kent and Lois Lane arriving in a midwestern town called Silsby for the opening of the world's deepest oil well. However, on arriving on site they're greeted by the sight of the workmen packing their tools up and leaving as the well has been closed by the government. Clark attempts to ask the foreman Corrigan about why this is but he refuses to answer, saying the information's classified.

Clark and Lois return to the hotel and, this being 1950's smalltown America, quickly find themselves bored so Clark suggests that they go back to the site after nightfall (though it's pretty obvious the scenes were filmed during the day with the streetlights switched on!) and do a bit of recon. Upon arriving there, they find the watchman dead of a heart attack. Clark goes out to investigate leaving Lois to watch over the body but she's terrified when two small humanoids (essentially two dwarves in costumes which look like the Thunderbirds dressing up as the Teletubbies!) turn up at the window although her scream scares them away. It turns out that these Mole Men have climbed up through the oil well.

The coroner and sheriff eventually turn up and take the body back to town with Lois hitching a ride with them. This leaves Clark alone with Corrigan and he takes the opportunity to ask him what really happened to cause the oil well to be closed. Corrigan explains that six miles down, the drill hit thin air and the oil that was being brought back was starting to glow. They also notice that two oranges that were knocked off the table where the watchman was have started to glow in the dark and deduce that the Mole Men are actually real and are probably headed towards town.

Clark and Corrigan arrive back in town but the locals have already seen the Mole Men and are in a state of panic. Led by local good ol' boy Luke Benson, they've formed a lynch mob and have set off to find the Mole Men and string them up. Clark quickly nips into an alleyway to change into Superman and flies off to the house where the Mole Men were last seen, forcing the mob to disperse. Benson challenges him but Superman simply bends his rifle in half causing him to wander off muttering darkly to himself.

Superman meets with Lois and Corrigan round the back of the house and briefs them on the situation before realising that Benson and his crew have set off with a pack of dogs to chase the two Mole Men. He catches up with them at the dam just outside the town and knocks Benson out but one of his sidekicks fires his rifle and shoots one of the Mole Men off the top of the dam with Superman having to swoop in to save it.

The angry rednecks chase after the other Mole Man and track him down to a shack on the edge of town which they try to torch - however, the Mole Man manages to tunnel out and escape back to the oil well and down the tunnel.

Superman meanwhile has taken the injured Mole Man to the hospital, quickly changing back into Clark Kent en route. When one of the nurses there says she's too scared to help the doctor because of the glow from the Mole Men possibly being radioactive, Clark agrees to step in and help. It turns out that the Mole Men have nearly identical bone and body structures to the humans and the glowing is caused by phosphorus rather than radium.

Word, however, gets out that the injured Mole Man is at the hospital and Benson leads his mob up there, even beating up the sheriff who tries to arrest him and shooting at Lois who is standing outside the doors with Superman. However, the bullets simply ricochet off Superman who marches into the crowd and takes their guns off them, sending them home.

The Mole Man is on the way to recovery when three of his brethren turn up with a huge laser cannon demanding that the humans hand him over. Superman goes in to retrieve the Mole Man only for Benson to turn up and the three Mole Men to blast him with their cannon! However, as they close in to finish him off, Superman steps in front and tells them to take their compatriot and leave, which they do leading Benson to offer a shame-faced apology to Superman.

We see Superman and Lois reunited back at the oil well with Corrigan and the sheriff as the Mole Men go back below ground. A few minutes later, the oil well suddenly goes up in smoke with the Mole Men destroying the tunnel to keep the two worlds separate. And that's the end of the film.

Well, what a weird start to this series that was. Less of a superhero blockbuster and more of a chilling '50s morality tale on racism (probably not a coincidence that this film was released in the McCarthy "witch hunt" era) that just happened to have Superman in it. It's pretty much impossible to judge "Superman and the Mole Men" by today's standards given that it was made 67 years ago (!) so I'll just say that for the era it's enjoyable enough and that at just an hour long at least it doesn't overstay its welcome (both of which are more than I could say for the recent "Batman vs Superman" travesty but we'll save that bile for when we come to said film in the distant future). I suspect that for the first four or five of these we're going to be in the same boat as we were for the early Marvel Mondays in that we're judging with the constraints of the time period in mind. Something which I suspect the second film in this series might just bear out as well...

FINAL RATING: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 5/10

NEXT WEEK: Holy catamarans, it's a '60s Batman film!