In 1956 the serial film came to an unceremonious end. Columbia Pictures was the last company making them at the time and their final film was Blazing the Overland Trail. A western starring Lee Roberts.
The majority of the film was compiled from previous serials most notably 1941’s White Indian and 1939’s Overland with Kit Carson. The plot features Lee Roberts trying to stop evil Don C. Harvey from taking over America with his evil Black Raiders.
Republic Pictures ended their film serials a year earlier with King of the Carnival in 1955. It too used stock footage from a previous serial film, 1939’s Daredevils of the Red Circle. The serial film which began with promise and grew in popularity ended with a whimper with mediocre pictures that couldn’t be bothered to even shoot most of its own action scenes.
