>>>>>It had the funny looking spaceships that had sparks coming out the back and the Emperor with the really high collar? By today's standards it would be a joke, but when I was a kid, it was very cool.
>>>>>
>>>>>Also made me think of Charlie Chan. Anyone remember that? Number One son and all that... I loved those movies.
>>>>
>>>>Flash Gordon. The evil emperor was Ming the Terrible. As I recall though, it was a movie serial, and not a TV show. Maybe there was a TV show that followed the movies, but I don't recall it. Flash Gordon was played by Buster Crabbe.
>>>
>>>Ming the Merciless, no?
>>
>>Ming the Merciless, yes. I corrected myself in a subsequent post.
>>
>>>Ah, now my mind drifts back to Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon ( which later were particularly poignant memories as I bounced around SE Asia in Air America porters ( inside joke among those pilots was to refer to themselves as 'Air Expendable' )) They actually referred to the program by which America pilots put their commissions in the safe in Khon Kaen to be 'sheep dipped' as pilots in Laos as 'The Steve Canyon Program'
>>>
>>>I guess lots of kids grew up at the Saturday matinees <s> I remember when The Flying Tigers was a TV show.
>>
>>I even recall Batman and Superman serials.
>
>Man, you are a kid. If you mean the Adam West batman I remember when it came out I was in college. They actually had to reschedule Thursday night chapel because it conflicted with Batman <g>

Read my fingers! ;) Serials, not series. Black and white 12 and 15 part serials that forced us back to the theatre ever week.

>
>>>I look back and it's hard to imagine how we fell for some of that stuff. Car goes over the cliff with the hero inside - but no - not even close, it turns out. Burning shack with hero inside explodes - but no - hero escaped about 5 minutes ago. At least long enough to be well away from the explosion. But still, they were fun.
>
>But we learned a lot of useful stuff - like you could break chair or bottles over somebody's head and guns never had to be reloaded and only had to be sort of pointed in the general direction of what you were shooting at.

Yeah. I used to get up Saturday mornings to catch the old Bob Steel and Wild Bill Elliott Republic westerns. Never new why they called them 'six-guns'. Bob and Wild Bill never had to worry about counting shots.