The Phantom Empire

This movie would be a classic of its type, if there were anything else in its type. The ostensibly peaceful underground kingdom of Murania actually exists on the slave labor of robots, who are planning a revolt. Periodically, the Muranians dress as "Thunder Riders" and after rocketing to the surface, come out of a cave to terrorize the Surface People (us). But they can't terrorize a gang of kids known as the "Junior Thunder Riders", whose motto is "To the Rescue!" They shout this while wearing buckets on their heads, in imitation of the gas masks of the Muranians. Mendacious scientists have detected radium beneath the surface of Gene Autry's ranch, but they don't know that the radium is coming from an underground kingdom. The scientists keep kidnapping Gene so that he won't make it to his weekly radio show and hence won't get the paycheck that he depends on to make his mortgage payment. The mortgage payment is the engine that actually keeps all these balls in the air, and as in all good westerns, the bankers are the real villains. Gene is so cool as he handles the Thunder Riders, evil scientists, mendacious bankers, cruel but oddly flirty Queen Tika, and surprisingly clumsy robots, while always having time for a kind word to the Junior Thunder Riders and Smiley Burnett. You can tell that he lives by the Cowboy Code.

"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.

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!

A classic by anybody's standard! Never before and never since has there ever been such a combination of Western, musical, SciFi, comedy and adventure. Truly imaginative. Gene Autry's first starring vehicle. It predates Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and all the other SciFi serials of the '30s and '40s. And it was no doubt the reason Republic Pictures stuck to the SciFi theme in most of their serial through to the end of their existence. Has to be seen to be believed. An inside joke appeared in Gene Autry's 1941 feature "Sierra Sue" wherein character actress Dorothy Christy, who plays Queen Tika in this serial, says to Autry "I have the feeling we have met somewhere before. Maybe in another world". A true must see for film historians and fan of all ages. Great fun!

For somebody who wasn't about six when he first saw this serial, it's really pretty clunky and corny. For somebody who was (they reshowed it once on early TV, on one of those shows that had a local Uncle Bob type playing old westerns and cartoons, and promoting the station's shows in between. Even now, when I think of the juxtaposition of the aboveground world of the singing cowboy, the "Thunder Riders" and their bizarre, futuristic city under the mountain, I get goosebumps. The best occasion I had to see this was one summer, when I went to the local Y every Saturday morning to see a bunch of old movies with 3-400 other kids my age; the title would roll up, and the kids would scream.

Also, I think I could prove that Freud was right about infantile sexuality when I think of the way I felt about the underground queen, clad in silvery, clinging clothes.