Republic Pictures Cutting Continuity Script Collection - Fully Processed, 1936-1950 | Cushing Library

Republic Pictures was a Southern California-based film company that operated from 1935-1959, and which specialized in film serials, Westerns, and lower-budget B-movies (although it did occasionally produce more significant films, such as Orson Welles' 1948 Macbeth or the John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara The Quiet Man in 1952).

Film serials were among Republic's more prolific productions - these were episodic stories that would be shown in movie theaters before the main feature, as something of a precursor to broadcast television and derived from the serialized stories found in pulp fiction of the era. Episodes would always end on a cliffhanger (a term actually coined in reference to serials). Serials were created for a number of different genres, especially Westerns (the cheapest type to film), espionage, crime fiction, and comic book adventures, but they have become particularly associated with science fiction. (One of the early smash serial hits was the 1936 Flash Gordon, which brought the character to a wide audience.) Though many studios produced serials from the 1910s-1950s, Republic was one of the more well-known studios, notable for its choregraphed fights and (for the time) advanced special effects. Its serial characters included Dick Tracy, the Lone Ranger, Captain America, Captain Marvel, and Spy Smasher.

Republic produced the serial Undersea Kingdom in 1936 (in direct response to Universal's Flash Gordon), directed by B. Reeves Eason and Joseph Kane and starring Ray 'Crash' Corrigan. The serial involved Corrigan (playing a U.S. Navy Lieutenant and star athlete) leading an expedition via rocket submarine to the site of Atlantis and thwarting an undersea invasion by the evil, technologically advanced Atlanteans.

In 1950 Republic produced Flying Disc Man From Mars, which chronicled the story of Mota, an invader from Mars who is accidentally shot out of the sky by an experimental atomic ray gun and who resolves to conquer the Earth in order to protect Mars from Earth's new atomic technology. Mota enlists the aid of Dr. Bryant (the inventor of the ray gun), but is eventually defeated by Walter Reed (the pilot who caused Mota to be shot down in the first place). The film was directed by Fred C. Bannon.