J. Augustus Knapp, 1895.
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Sun Koh, Adventurer was a pulp hero exploration/occult series published in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and republished during the paperback boom of the 80s. A bodybuilder and occult adventurer who claims to be the descendant of Atlantean and Mayan Kings, Sun Koh’s adventurers explored weird pseudohistory, finding Atlantean radio artifacts in pyramids, Hindu mental powers and telepathy in India, and so on. Like many other pulp heroes, he had a team of sidekicks. My personal favorite was his 70+ year old secretary who lost all her kids in the Great War, who kept a machine gun under the desk.
Published under the Third Reich, Sun Koh, unique among pulp heroes, had a startling streak of violent sadism even in stories meant to make him the hero. Politically, from what can be seen in his stories, was less a Nazi and more a believer in Nietzschean will and transcendence of ordinary morality (honestly, he came off as creepy and cold).
The Nazis eventually shut down the pulp magazine industry for being trivial trash, which brought Sun Koh’s adventures to an end.
Gene Roddenberry created “Spectre” in 1977, a pilot for an occult-themed horror show that never went to series. It’s as far as you can get from the rationalism of Star Trek, about an occult detective fascinated by evil who investigates Satanic cults, possessions, trances, mediums, succubuses, and family curses. The creature on top is the demon Asmodeus, not a Gorn, incidentally. Majel Barrett Roddenberry played the witch, Lillith.
Gene always seemed to believe that the best way to keep audience attention was through a recurring cast, which is why he created a show like Star Trek instead of an anthology series like the Twilight Zone. I suppose he figured a recurring occult detective (with a Dr. Watson and a witch housekeeper) was the best way to take on the horror genre.
It’s one of many pilots Gene made during the 1970s but failed to get to series, like Genesis II, Planet Earth, and the Questor Tapes, all of which contributed to the sense that Gene was a one-hit wonder or has-been, a sentiment that explains why Gene was so ferociously controlling on Next Generation: he didn’t want Trek taken away from him.
1897, Luis Benares.
Bruce Pennington.
If I could rediscover only one lost silent serial, it would definitely be the 12 part “Mysteries of Myra” from 1916. The serial was filmed in Ithaca, New York, as this was before the era that film making was centered in Los Angeles. Supposedly, Houdini was a consultant on the black magic shown on screen. Only three episodes exist.
BEWARE THE BLACK ORDER! So comes the warning from the spirit of Myra Maynard’s father, who reaches out to her from beyond the grave to warn her of danger from the masters of the occult arts that lurk in the shadows and mark her for murder on her eighteenth birthday. Only the world’s first psychic detective, Dr. Payson Alden, and his friend Haji the Brahman mystic, can save clairvoyant Myra from the terrors of The Grand Master of the Order, who tries to claim not only her fortune but her life by means of suicide-inducing spells, invasion of her chamber by spirit assassins, and even reanimation of the dead by a fire elemental.
Sharon Bruneau and Debbie Muggli as the two female cyborg assassins in Albert Pyun’s “Nemesis 3: Time Lapse” (1996).