Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
A Native American scientist walks into the Daily Planet and demands that the paper print his claim: Manhattan belongs to his people and must be vacated. Perry White dismisses him as a crank. Lois follows him to his motorboat, stows away, and is taken to a fishing shack whose lift descends to a laboratory on the ocean floor. He spots her, straps her into a chair and switches on his machine, which sends electricity along cables into the bedrock under the island; the city shakes, buildings crack and the bridges sway. Clark Kent, in the newsroom as the quake hits, becomes Superman, holds up a collapsing skyscraper, dives to the sea floor, follows the cables to the laboratory and tears out the machine. The scientist floods the lab, and Superman carries Lois up through the water and lets the inventor be taken by the police.
Why It Matters
- It is the first film in the series to say plainly that the city is Manhattan, and the earthquake sequence, with the skyline swaying and Superman bracing a tower, is the Fleischers' urban realism at full stretch; the underwater laboratory, lit through portholes, is as handsome as anything in the series.
- The villain is unusual: a scientist with a legitimate grievance about stolen land, treated as a threat but given a dignity most 1942 cartoons denied anyone non-white, and his argument is left standing even as his method is defeated. The film is in the public domain with the rest of the series and is one of the most-seen Superman shorts.
Notes and Trivia
- The scientist is one of the few villains in the series who is neither a mad inventor nor an Axis agent.
- The series' rotoscoped flight, with Superman's cape rippling, is at its smoothest in the sea-floor sequence.
- See also: The Mechanical Monsters (1941), The Bulleteers (1942), Terror on the Midway (1942).
