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What a beautiful movie!

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

disgusting, overrated, pointless

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Gene Autry, playing himself, is half-owner of Radio Ranch, where people come to stay as paying guests and from which Autry broadcasts a radio program every day. In the first chapter, after singing a song, he introduces Frankie and his sister Betsy, his partner's children, who head a club for teenagers sponsored by Radio Ranch called Junior Thunder Riders. They tell about how one day they saw a bunch of men with capes and helmets riding horses that sounded like thunder, though they do not know who those men were. Nevertheless, Frankie and Betsy formed the club, the members of which wear capes and helmets modeled after the ones worn by the original Thunder Riders, as they call them. Then Autry narrates the next installment of a serial within this serial in which the Junior Thunder Riders ride to the rescue to save a man and his wife from a bunch of bandits. You might think that since this is a radio serial, only dialogue and sound effects would be involved, but they actually act out the parts, almost as if it were being filmed, which, I guess, in a way it is.Meanwhile, a bunch of men fly in by airplane, who we quickly figure are up to no good. One of them, Professor Beetson, believes that somewhere underneath Radio Ranch is Murania, populated by descendants of the ancient city of Mu, who moved underground to escape the glaciers a hundred thousand years ago. Beetson believes they will find valuable deposits of radium and secrets that have been lost to the world, technology based on their knowledge of radiation. Their plan is to get rid of Autry, either by killing him, framing him for a murder, or by causing him to miss a broadcast, which will result in the loss of his radio contract. Either way, they figure the ranch will become deserted, giving them the freedom to look for Murania without being disturbed. This plot point leads to several ludicrous situations in which Autry is fleeing from the Thunder Riders, from the scientists, or from the sheriff, and right in the middle of it all has to worry about getting back to the ranch in time to sing another song.All this is on the surface. Meanwhile, twenty-five thousand feet below the ranch is Murania, where the original Thunder Riders live, when they are not galloping about on the surface for whatever reason. There are, of course, the expected absurdities in this lost city, such as that everyone speaks English. More interesting is the mixture of ancient and futuristic technology. The Muranians have wireless telephones, and they have television, allowing Queen Tika to view what is going on anywhere on the planet, mostly in America. They have all sorts of advanced weaponry, such as guided missiles, and yet the guards carry spears. They have robots to perform the manual labor, but the ones that are armed have swords. Moreover, when the Thunder Riders need to enter or leave Murania, they have a robot turn a crank to open the door, instead of simply having the equivalent of a garage-door opener. To block the path of anyone not authorized to pass by an entrance, there is a robot standing off to the side with a sword held erect. When activated by a button on his chest, an infraray tells it if someone is trying to pass, at which point it comes down with its sword. So, later in the serial, when Frankie and Betsy get to that robot, Frankie presses the off button on the robot, and then they go right past him without a problem. That's Yankee ingenuity for you.Their government seems to be a bit of a mixture as well. As noted, there is a queen who rules over her subjects. However, she refers to one of the wounded soldiers as a "comrade," a term not normally used in monarchies, but which would have suggested a communist state like the Soviet Union in 1935. And there is reference to the "secret police." When she watches the television to see what is going on in the world, she is contemptuous of the insanity she witnesses, calling the surface people fools, who are always in a hurry, their lives full of death and suffering. You might think from this that Murania must be an enlightened utopia, but when the captain of the Thunder Riders fails to capture Autry as she commanded, she starts to put him to death for incompetence, but then decides that lashes with a whip will be a better punishment. She wants Autry captured so that she can drive him off Radio Ranch, because she fears that surface people will discover Murania and invade it.When the captain fails a second time, she commands Lord Argo to put him to death in the Lightening Chamber. But once inside, Argo tells the captain that every time someone is supposedly put to death (thirty-seven so far this year), he saves him so he can be part of the rebellion he is planning. The captain agrees to join the rebellion, and so his execution is faked. When Queen Tika, who has people whipped or executed for merely failing to carry out her orders, despite their best efforts, finds out about the rebellion, she cannot understand why people are turning against her. After all, she knows she has been a good queen, because that is what her underlings tell her when they are asked. Later, Betsy says what most of us have been thinking, that Queen Tika reminds us of the one in "Alice in Wonderland," always shouting, "Off with his head."In the end, Murania is destroyed by its own technology, the bad guys are arrested, and Autry manages to get back to Radio Ranch in time to sing the final song of the season.

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).

I first saw Phantom Empire back in the 1970s when it was included in a local museum series of vintage films. I was totally enthralled by it and the incredible underground world below Gene Autry's "Radio Ranch". (The ranch was the site of weekly broadcasts of great oldtime cowboy music.) I'm more a fan of old cowboy movies than I am of science fiction, but I was really taken by the sci-fi set, with wacky multi-story elevators, ray guns, and metal robots. I was particularly smitten by the beautiful but evil Queen Tika, ruler of Murania, who had a magical spinning circle on the floor which she would visit and ask to show her anything she wished. The wheel would spin, complete with a spiraling graphic, which then turned into a real-time view of -- Gene Autry, of course, and his whereabouts, providing the Muranians the opportunity to capture him. (Seeing the spinning circle reminded me that as a six year old, I conjured up similar powers from spinning circle, and had forgotten all about it. Since then, my alter ego is. . Queen Tika!) I recommend the Phantom Empire series as an experience in true, though "kitschy", entertainment! Sincerely yours, Queen Tika

No, I wasn't 12 in 1935! Try 1955 when this 12 episode serial played on Saturdays in Colorado Springs. I grew up with westerns, with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lash Larue, and the rest. I was also acquainted with the science fiction serials and films of the period. Imagine my GLEE when I found out that they had merged the two genres!!!I saw this again recently, and while it has aged a bit in relationship to more modern westerns and SF films, this is indeed a landmark film: The only SF serial in which a major Western cowboy is the star!!!I am amazed that so few people have scored this film in IMDb. Please do yourselves a favor and seek out this one, watch it, enjoy it, and then give it a vote respective of its mark in cinematic history!