An annual film series recreating the weekend matinees of yester-year!

Movie serials, shown complete and in order!
Plus classic features! All on 16mm film!

Presented January through March every year.
Each weekly show presents a thrilling episode of a movie serial, paired with a classic (but secret!) feature film. The features are grouped into bi-weekly themes.

About the Series | Previous Series | About Movie Serials | Articles and Books

About the Secret Matinees

The idea is simple: show movie serials in the way they were intended to be seen – in weekly installments, at a weekend matinee, in a theater alongside other movie fans.

Serials were standard matinee fare for five decades, vanishing in the late 1950s thanks to the new popularity of TV. Since then, home video and streaming have again made serials more available for viewing. But that actual original experience remains all but unheard of.

We wanted to "restore" that experience, not only to revive some thrilling movie entertainment and bring the classic serial form into new focus, but also to give audiences some escapist weekend fun during their dreary winters.

Feature films are a big part of the show of course, but just like in the old days, the real draw is the serial. The surprise of each week's feature mirrors the exciting surprise of the plot twists and last-second rescues in the serial episode. The secrecy echoes the secret identities of the serials' protagonists, the shrouded plans for evil domination, and the hidden struggles to save the day. Each audience member joins a kind of "secret society," a hidden legion of film fandom galloping to ever-new adventures.

All movies in the series are always shown from actual film prints – never DVDs, digital, or videotape. This provides a further connection to the classic movie era that the serials themselves belong to, and is consistent with a broader mission of celebrating mechanical cinema.

The Secret Matinees are presented by The Sprocket Society. Since 2011, the home for the series has been the Grand Illusion Cinema, an all-volunteer, nonprofit jewel box theater that is the longest-running independent cinema in the Seattle.

The first Secret Matinee series was held in the autumn of 2008 at the Northwest Film Forum. The series has returned annually except in 2010, and a two year haitus during 2020-21 (due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

In 2013 our Austin, TX chapter (now defunct) held its own Secret Matinee series, at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz.

Secret Matinees online

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Previous Secret Matinee series

  1. The Sunday Secret Matinees

    August 31 – November 23, 2008 | Northwest Film Forum
    Serial: Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) – 12 episodes
    Feature genres included sci-fi and horror. Each show also included a cartoon or short (sometimes both).

  2. The Sunday Secret Matinees II: Adventure! And Stuff!

    March 1 – May 24, 2009 | Northwest Film Forum
    Serial: Zorro's Fighting Legion (1939) – 12 episodes
    Feature genres were expanded to include silent film, art-house and foreign releases, swashbucklers...and sci-fi and horror, of course. Each show also included a cartoon or short.

  3. Sci-Fi Saturday Secret Matinees

    January 8 – March 26, 2011 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Flash Gordon (1936) – 13 episodes
    Feature themes: Japanese Giants, Weird Worlds, and Crazy Creatures

  4. Sci-Fi Saturday Secret Matinees II

    January 7 – March 24, 2012 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Buck Rogers (1939) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes: Space Madness, Steampunk Adventures, and Beasts from Beyond

  5. 2013 edition

    January 5 – March 23, 2013 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Zorro's Fighting Legion (1939) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes: Heroes & Villains, Exotic Lands, and Alien Encounters

  6. Secret Sunday Matinees

    August 4 – October 27, 2013 | The Ritz, Alamo Drafthouse (Austin, TX)
    Serial: The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) – 12 episodes
    Feature genres included sci-fi, adventure, comedy, and crime.

  7. 2014 edition

    January 11 – March 29, 2014 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Batman and Robin (1949) – 15 episodes
    Feature themes: Superheroes!, Tough Guys!, and B-Movie Monsters!

  8. 2015 edition

    January 10 – March 28, 2015 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes: Saturday Morning TV Classics, Antique Futures (pre-1940 science fiction), and Walk Like a Wagon (classic westerns, 1939-1957)

  9. 2016 edition

    January 8 – March 26, 2016 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Spy Smasher (1942) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes: Classic Comedies, Serial Heroes & Heroines, and Fantasy & Adventure

  10. 2017 edition

    January 7 – March 25, 2017 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Undersea Kingdom (1936) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes: Giant Monsters, Art-House Cinema, and TV Time

  11. 2018 edition – 10th anniversary!

    January 6 – March 24, 2018 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes (bi-weekly): Alien Invasion, Swashbuckling Heroes, Very Bad Deals, Twisted Intrigues, Atomic Monsters, and Widescreen Thrills (rare 16mm cinemascope prints).

  12. 2019 edition

    January 5 – March 30, 2019 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940) – 15 episodes
    Feature themes (bi-weekly): Weird Crimes, War is Hell, Weimar Silent Masterpieces, Song & Dance, Super Disaster!, Special Ides of March show (March 16 only), Kaiju Attack!

  13. 2020 edition

    January 11 - March 28, 2020 (as scheduled) | Grand Illusion Cinema
    The final three weeks of the 2020 series were cancelled due to statewide pandemic lockdown.
    Serial: The Fighting Devil Dogs (1938) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes (bi-weekly): Classic Creatures, B-Western Heroes, German Silent Cinema, Weird Early Musicals, Journeys to the Beyond (partially cancelled), Totally High! (cancelled)

  14. 2022 edition: Escape from Lockdown!

    January 8 - March 26, 2022 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    The series returned for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first week's screening, the "feature" was the final three episodes of The Fighting Devil Dogs, which had been cancelled in 2019 due to the emergency lockdown. Likewise, features that had been cancelled were screened throughout this series.
    Serial: Daredevils of the Red Circle (1939) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes (bi-weekly): In Our Last Episode..., Adventure Queens, Super Sleuths, Twisted Satires, Stop-Motion Giants, Totally High! (make-up from 2019)

  15. 2023 edition – 15th anniversary!

    January 7 - March 25, 2023 | Grand Illusion Cinema
    Serial: King of the Rocket Men (1949) – 12 episodes
    Feature themes (bi-weekly): It Came from Planet Blech!, Swashbuckling Generations, Haunted Avarice, Nuts!, Espionage!, and Space Epics in Cinemascope

  16. 2024 edition

    January 6 - March 30, 2024 | Grand Illusion Cinema

    Serial: Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) – 15 episodes
    The serial was shown in "VerdanteVision," emulating the green tinting used for select prints during the original 1938 release. Feature themes (bi-weekly): Flash vs. Ming - The epic begins! (first week only), Forgotten British Sci-Fi, Weimar Noir, Revenge Westerns, Deadly Intrigues, Pulp Detectives Strike!, Kookoo for Kaiju

  17. 2025: To-Be-Continued Mini Edition

    January 4 - 25, 2025 | Grand Illusion Cinema

    Our home venue of 14 years lost its lease, and this was the last month of operation at that address. To commemorate the occasion and say farewell to a beloved theater, we compressed the series into a single month, offering up a buffet sampler in weekly form. Each week had a single episode from a different serial, each in a different genre and never previously shown in the 17 years history of the series. The secret feature was in the same genre as that week’s serial episode.

    The shows were as follows. Jan. 4: Superheroes with Captain America (1944), episode 4: “Preview of Murder.” Jan. 11: Adventures with Darkest Africa (1936, aka King of Jungleland, aka Batmen of Africa), episode 3: “Bat-Men of Joba.” Jan. 18: Westerns with The Devil Horse (1932), episode 3: “The Doom Riders.” Jan. 25: Sci-Fi Invasions with The Purple Monster Strikes (1945), episode 6: “The Demon Killer.”

About movie serials

In the old days, you got a lot of movie for the price of admission. A typical program would include one or even two feature films, plus a number of short subjects: a newsreel, a cartoon, a comedy or mini-musical, and — on the weekends — an episode of a thrilling movie serial.

Movie serials were extended films that were broken up into separate short chapters (or episodes) and usually shown weekly. They were extremely popular from 1912 through the late 1950s, when competition from television and rising production costs put an end serials and, eventually, all theatrical shorts.

During the silent era, serial episodes continued the overall story-line but were largely self-contained. During the sound era, the convention became for each episode to end with the hero or heroine in great or mortal danger, with little or no means of escape — the famous "cliffhanger ending." The viewer was thus (hopefully) hooked, and would return the following week to plunk down the price of admission to learn their fate.

A steadfast part of moviegoing for nearly 50 years, the weekly serial thrilled and entertained generations of audiences, provided the structural basis for TV dramas that is still used today, and influenced some of the most successful filmmakers in history.

Wesbites and online articles about serials

  • "The Great Sequelization of Hollywood Film" (CineMontage magazine) – A great three-part series tracing the evolution from movie serials to B-movie series to TV series to big-budget franchises. Originally published in CineMontage, the journal of the Motion Pictures Editing Guild.
  • The Files of Jerry Blake: Movie Serial Reviews and Other Cliffhanging Material – Our immediate go-to for information about any serial in the sound era. It is hands down the absolute, A-number-one best resource about serials on the internet (and possibly anywhere else). No contest. There are some 220 reviews of individual serials and each one is detailed, thorough, knowledgable, and thoughtful. There are also extensive bios of dozens of actors, even the bit players. All of it is extensively illustrated with stills and publicity pix. And that's not including the blog. Just an amazing piece of work.
  • "In Focus: Cliffhangers!" by Gary Johnson (Images Journal, Issue 4, summer 1997) – Covers the history of serials from their beginnings in the silent era, to their downfall in the late 1950s, plus profiles on 10 of the best serials ever made.
  • "How Old Movie Serials Inspired Lucas and Spielberg" by Janet Maslin (New York Times, June 7, 1981)
  • "Serial Films" by Tim Dirks (Filmsite.org)
  • The Serial Squadron – A group restoring rare and "lost" serials from the early 1900s to the 1940s, and releasing them on DVD.

Books about serials: an annotated select bibliography

With links to Internet Archive copies, when available.

  • William Witney, In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase: Moviemaking Remembered by the Guy at the Door (McFarland & Co., 2008)

    Memoir by one of the greatest serial directors ever, covering his entire career. Essential (and very entertaining) reading.

  • Yakima Canutt – Among the greatest stuntmen ever. A true pioneer going from rodeo bronco buster to eventual Oscar winner, appearing in dozens of serials, westerns, epics, and more. These books are very highly recommended.

    • (with Oliver Drake) Stunt Man: The Autobiography of Yakima Canutt (Walker & Co., 1979; 2nd ed.: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1997) – Foreword by Charlton Heston, afterword by John Wayne

    • (with John Crawford) My Rodeo Years: Memoir of a Bronc Rider's Path to Hollywood Fame (McFarland & co, 2010) – Forewords by Joe Canutt and Charlton Heston

  • Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut, The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury (Doubleday, 1972; Woburn Press, 1973)

    Probably still the best overall book ever written about serials, even after more than 50 years.

  • Jon Tuska, The Vanishing Legion: A History of Mascot Pictures, 1927-1935 (McFarland & Co., 1982)

    Slim but illuminating history of Nat Levine's Poverty Row studio that produced serials and B-westerns. (Mascot was among the six small studios that merged to form Republic Pictures under Herbert J. Yates.) Appendices provide filmographies, etc. Excellent and essential, very highly recommended.

  • Scott Higgins, Matinee Melodrama: Playing With Formula in the Sound Serial (Rutgers University Press, 2016)

    Academic but interesting and thought-provoking study examining serials as an artform, considering their formulaic structures and stock characters as assets rather than flaws. Recommended for those with a serious interest in serials and film theory.

  • Kalton C. Lahue – An early and influential film historian, Lahue wrote 16 books about silent cinema including these two still-respected histories of silent serials. With many rare stills and photos. Both are highly recommended.

  • Barbara Tepa Lupack, Silent Serial Sensations: The Wharton Brothers and the Magic of Early Cinema (Cornell University Press, 2020)

    An excellent and groundbreaking history of the Wharton studio in Ithaca, NY, which produced major serials like The Exploits of Elaine.

  • William M. Drew, The Woman Who Dared: The Life and Times of Pearl White, Queen of the Serials (University Press of Kentucky, 2023)

    The first full biography of the legendary serial star most famous for The Perils of Pauline. Deeply researched and exhaustive.

  • Rudmer Canjels, Distributing Silent Film Serials: Local Practices, Changing Forms, Cultural Transformation (Routledge, 2010)

    Details the silent era's surprisingly vibrant serial market, and the only book in English to cover in depth the serials made in Europe, including their import into the US. Academic, but very highly recommended.

  • James Van Hise – A prolific pop culture writer and editor who got his start in 1970s fanzines and has written a number of books and comic books. He was also editor of Rocket's Blast Comicollector, Enterprise Incidents, and Monsterland magazines. In 1988-89, he wrote a series of books on various serials, each about 100 pages long. Much of this material formed the basis for a longer book that also profiles additional serials.

    • The Serial Adventures of Flash Gordon, Books 1 and 2, (Pioneer Books, 1988)
    • The Serial Adventures of The Green Hornet (Pioneer Books, 1988)
    • The Serial Adventures of The Phantom (Pioneer Books, 1988)
    • The Serial Adventures of Batman (Pioneer Books, 1989)
    • The Serial Adventures of Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (Pioneer Books, 1989)
    • The Complete Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (Pioneer Books, 1989)
    • The Serial Adventures of Blackhawk (Pioneer Books, 1989)
    • The Serial Adventures of The Shadow (Pioneer Books, 1989)
    • Serial Adventures: The Incredible Story of the Superheroes of the Silver Screen (Pioneer Books, 1990)
  • Ken Weiss

    • (with Ed Goodgold) To Be Continued... A Complete Guide to Motion Picture Serials (Crown Publishing, 1972; pb ed. Star Tree Press, 1981)

      Reference book for 225 film serials from 1929 to 1956, with release dates, cast and crew info. Heavily illustrated with stills.

    • To Be Continued... American Sound Serials 1929-1956 (Love's Labor Press, 2000; pb ed. 2002)

      A retitled "second edition" rewritten without Goodgold, correcting numerous errors from the 1972 version. Issued as two volumes, Vol. 1: 1929-1938, and Vol. 2: 1939-1956.

    • Ray Guns Robots and Rocket Ships: Science Fiction Serials 1930-1953 (Love's Labor Press, 2004)

  • Raymond William Stedman – An early chronicler of serials.

    • The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment (University of Oklahoma Press, 1971)

      The evolution of the serial form in movies, radio, and TV (including soap operas).

    • The Movie Serial Companion, Book One (The Nostalgia League, 2010)

      Includes a five-chapter history of American film serials, revised and enlarged from his 1971 book, and a detailed filmography of US serials of the silent era. Profusely illustrated.

    • The Movie Serial Companion, Book Two (The Nostalgia League, 2011)

      Filmography of sound era US serials, with essays on some of the more notable ones. Profusely illustrated.

  • Alan B. Barbour – A prolific author of books on serials and genre film, editor of compilations of movie ads and ephemera, and editor/publisher of the movie ephemera magazine, Screen Nostalgia Illustrated. His early books, booklets, and magazines were published by Screen Facts Press, a joint effort of Barbour, Milton Luboviski, and Larry Edmunds Bookshop. This is just a partial listing of Barbour's serial-related works.

  • Jack Mathis – Author and self-publisher of the gold standard works of serial references, all deeply researched, well written, lavishly illustrated, and beautifully printed. In addition to extensively interviewing actors, directors and others, Mathis had access to the complete studio files of Republic. His papers were donated to Brigham Young University.

    • Valley of the Cliffhangers (Jack Mathis Advertising, 1975)

      Covers over a dozen top serials, each with rare stills, promotional art (most reproduced with spot color), plot summaries, production histories, cast and crew listings, etc. An absolutely mammoth, extravagantly printed and bound tome that now fetches similarly extravagant prices.

    • Valley of The Cliffhangers Supplement (Jack Mathis Advertising, 1995)

      A more traditionally sized volume providing a detailed filmography and (incredibly for the time) full chapter synopses and stills for all 66 serials released by Republic Pictures.

    • Prospectus for the Republic Confidential books (via Zombo's Closet)
    • Republic Confidential, Vol. 1: The Studio (Jack Mathis Advertising, 1999)
    • Republic Confidential, Vol. 2: The Players (Jack Mathis Advertising, 1992)
    • Republic Confidential, Vol. 3: The Films – Planned but unfinished before his death in 2005.
    • Tribute pressbook reproductions – Circa the 1970s, Mathis reprinted a number of original Republic pressbooks in very small editions. This is a partial listing, with links to scans courtesy of the invaluable Zombo's Closet website.
  • Ed Hulse – Prolific and respected journalist and pop culture historian of genre and vintage films, pulp and escapist fiction, and related art. He also co-founded and edited the award winning Blood 'n' Thunder magazine, and is executive editor and publisher at Murania Press.
    • Blood 'n' Thunder's Cliffhanger Classics (Murania Press / CreateSpace, 2012)
    • Blood 'n' Thunder's Cliffhanger Classics, Volume Two (Murania Press / CreateSpace, 2017)
    • Distressed Damsels and Masked Marauders: Cliffhanger Serials of The Silent-Movie Era (Murania Press / CreateSpace, 2014)
    • Handsome Heroes and Vicious Villains: More Cliffhanger Serials of the Silent-Movie Era (Murania Press / CreateSpace, 2016)
    • Behind the Mask: The Making of Republic's Lone Ranger Serials (Murania Press / CreateSpace, 2018)
  • William C. Cline
  • Roy Kinnard
    • Fifty Years of Serial Thrills (Scarecrow Press, 1983)
    • Science Fiction Serials: A Critical Filmography of the 31 Hard SF Cliffhangers (McFarland & Co., 2008) – With an appendix of "the 37 Serials with Slight SF Content."

    • (with Tony Crnkovich and R.J. Vitone) The Flash Gordon Serials, 1936-1940: A Heavily Illustrated Guide (McFarland & Co., 2011)

      The most detailed book about the Flash Gordon serials (such as is possible), though it could be better organized. Each serial is covered with an opening essay about its production history, and chapter summaries (which often contain additional, sometimes rather random production history info). Illustrated with promo stills and art. Overpriced, but recommended for those with a deep interest.

  • Jeff Walton (editor) and Norman H. Kietzler (publisher), Serial World magazine (1974 - 1984)

    Quarterly periodical devoted to movie serials that started as a fanzine and evolved to a glossy semi-pro publication over its 10 year run. Full scans of most issues can be found at the Internet Archive link here. In 1984, publisher Kietzler took over editorial duties and merged it with another magazine as Favorite Westerns and Serials, which continued to be published until at least 1995.

  • Hank Davis
    • Classic Cliffhangers: Volume 1, 1914-1940 (Midnight Marquee Press, 2007) – Originally issued with a DVD of material from VCI Entertainment.
    • Classic Cliffhangers: Volume 2, 1941-1955 (Midnight Marquee Press, 2008)

  • Leonard J. Kohl, Sinister Serials of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr. (Midnight Marquee Press, 2000)

  • Buck Rainey
  • Bruce Hershenson – Has compiled and published a large number of books reproducing classic movie posters, including these two.
    • Serial Movie Posters (self-published, 1999)
    • To Be Continued... 1930's & 1940's Serial Movie Posters (self-published, 2001)

  • Wayne Schutz, The Motion Picture Serial: An Annotated Bibliography, 1912-1956 (Scarecrow Press, 1992)

    Spans the entire history of American movie serials. Designed as a master index with many cross references. 397 pages.