The Phantom Empire

"The Phantom Empire" is a unique genre mixture of western, SF, musical and adventure serial. Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, discovers Murania, an underground kingdom whose queen sends her whole army after him so he won't tell the "surface people" about the existence of her secret empire. Because a serial with 12 parts needs a few complications, there is a conspiracy against the queen. The rebels need to silence Autry because he knows their plans, but Autry is also in danger from "surface people" who wouldn't stop at anything to get hold of the valuable radium in Murania. Thus chased by everyone, the most important thing to our hero is nevertheless to be at the radio station in time for the 2 pm broadcast! Hilarious fun with clumsy bucket-head robots, ray guns and country songs, a must for fans of 30s serials.

"The Phantom Empire" (1935) is unique in the entire history if cinema. It's "Melody Ranch" meets "Flash Gordon" - and it's a kick.

In the olden days (the'70s), it was the perfect entertainment for dropping a hit, taking a hit with a sip (or two...or three) and whoosh, off to the unknown, mysterious Murania, located 20,000 feet beneath Radio Ranch.

Radio Ranch's owner, the often bland Gene Autry (who also owned the more famous Melody Ranch...same place) stars with his pal Smiley Burnette (not playing his normal Frog Milhouse role, but nonetheless playing Frog Milhouse)/ Gene also gets some help from teenagers Frankie Darro & Betsy King Ross. It's up to them to stop the evil Muranians from world domination and destruction (what do they care, they're 20,000 feet below the carnage).

This gem was directed by reliable silent film and "B" movie journeyman master B. Reeves Eason, who also directed the "Flash Gordon"-inspired serial classics, "The Undersea Kingdom" (1936) which starred the always wonderful Ray "Crash" (named for "Flash") Corrigan (who has a small role here) and "Batmen of Africa" (also in 1936) with real-life wild game catcher Clyde Beatty. Eason helmed a slew of two-reel Oaters starring Gene Autry & Dick Foran before directing a series of rah-rah war films in the early '40s to compliment his turnout of westerns, mysteries & serials.

Note: As second unit director of the classic 1925 silent film version of "Ben Hur" with Francis X. Bushman & Ramon Navarro, Eason used 42 cameras to shoot that epic's legendary chariot race; as well as directing the massive burning of Atlanta scene in "Gone With The Wind" (1939).

"The Phantom Empire" is virtually never shown. Too bad because it's a fun curio. Perhaps they think it'll start a whole new psychedelic drug epidemic?

BTW, there's a new DVD release by VCI that is terrific: crisp picture and sound, no blips, and as far as I can tell, it's complete.

(IMO) - The best thing about 1935's "The Phantom Empire" were the unintentionally laughable robots who played the working drones in Queen Tika's underground empire of Murania (located 25,000 feet below the Earth's surface). Yeah. These clunky tin-men were a real hoot.

"The Phantom Empire" is presented as a serial "cliffhanger" in 12 chapters. And, I'd definitely say that this vintage Western/SyFy/Musical (which was clearly aimed at kids) had both its fair share of good moments, as well as its not-so-good moments, too.

"The Phantom Empire" starred popular country music singer/guitarist, Gene Autry (1907-1998) in his first starring role.

Gene Autry was already a radio star when he went to Hollywood in the early '30s. Naturally, since Autry was known as "the Singing Cowboy," his first starring role was in a sci-fi serial about an underground civilization. One might think that this was a brave example of casting against type; in fact, Autry plays exactly the same character he would continue to play on film and TV for the next twenty years: "Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy."

With a premise like this, one would expect THE PHANTOM EMPIRE to be thoroughly goofy. And one would be right. It doesn't help matters that the serial is directed exclusively to children, without even a nod or wink at the adult audience. Also, the cliffhanger cheat factor is fairly high, mostly involving added footage of the escapes which completely distorts what we saw in the previous chapter (this would, of course, have been somewhat less obvious when seeing only one chapter a week and not having a rewind button).

But if you're a connoisseur of cinematic goofiness, or if you're interested in B-Westerns and SF serials of the 30s, or if you have a burning desire to see Smiley Burnette in drag, you should check this one out. The Alpha DVD release, as others have said, is pretty poor (the worst Alpha DVDs I've seen, in fact), but if you can get through the first two chapters, the quality improves marginally (there does seem to have been some restoration work done on the print used--mainly with Scotch tape).

Without going into points covered by earlier reviewers (with which I am in agreement), I really encourage anyone who enjoys old movies to see this one. I rate this one a "6" because of its unique blend of genres and because I enjoyed it.

SOME TECHNICAL INFO:

Unfortunately the DVD version is VERY bad. Source material was substandard and encoding was outrageous. They also cut the "Mascot" leaders from each chapter.

I have this serial on quite old 16mm film and (splices, scratches and all) it's better than the DVD.

You may actually have better luck purchasing this on VHS...I never thought I'd ever make THAT recommendation!