Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940)

Mysterious Doctor Satan is a 1940 film serial named after its chief villain. Doctor Satan's main opponent is masked mystery man The Copperhead, whose secret identity is Bob Wayne, a man searching for justice and revenge on Satan for the death of his step-father. The serial charts the conflict between the two as Bob Wayne pursues Doctor Satan, while the latter completes his plans for world domination.

It was directed by the directorial team of William Witney and John English. Doctor Satan is played by Edward Ciannelli and The Copperhead/Bob Wayne by Robert Wilcox.

Henry Brandon was originally intended to play the part of Doctor Satan while wearing a regular devil costume, complete with horns. At the end of the 1930s, however, this would have stretched the audience's imagination too far so a more believable villain was written in the form of a sleek, gangster-style mad scientist played by Ciannelli.

Synopsis

Governor Bronson, who raised Wayne from childhood after the death of his parents, is killed at the hands of a world-domination-seeking mad scientist called Doctor Satan. Fearing his death might be at hand, as it has been for everyone else who had opposed the Doctor, the Governor first confides in Wayne with a secret about his past. Bob's father was really an outlaw in the Old West, who fought injustice while wearing a chainmail cowl and leaving small coiled copper snakes as his calling card.

Actors