The Phantom Empire Movie Review

So you think you've seen it all with computer-generated dinosaurs and liquid-metal Terminators? Bah! No true fan should turn down a chance to watch truly one of the weirdest of the vintage serials. Bad guys want to force singing cowboy Gene Autry off his ranch so they can mine a secret radium depost. Meanwhile 25,000 feet underground, the ‘Scientific City’ of Murania, an advanced, ancient civilization driven beneath the surface by glaciers, wants to avoid discovery, and dispatches oxygen-masked ‘Thunder Riders’ to the surface to ward off nosy cowboys. Autry is framed for murder, beaten up, slain, and resurrected (!) throughout the 12 episodes; but no matter what happens he always gets back to a microphone, often with the help of his kiddie fan club, in time to croon another number for his radio program. Dig the cheesy robots in their metal stetsons, and the Muranian production design, impressive despite Rhino Home Video's scratchy print. Studio publicity of the era claimed that the writer dreamt up the plot while doped with anesthesia in a dentist's chair (that should classify this as a “head” movie 30 years before 2001), but a definite influence were the hollow-Earth theories of assorted crackpot authors, whom had among their adherents Adolf Hitler. Meanwhile the script lifts lines from such far-flung sources as Shakespeare's Henry V and Ripley's Believe It or Not. Also available in an edited theatrical version at 80 minutes. Avoid like the plague Fred Olen Ray's recent soundalike feature Phantom Empire. AKA: Radio Ranch.

1935 245m/B Gene Autry, Frankie Darro, Betsy King Ross, Smiley Burnette; D: B. Reeves Eason, Otto Brower. VHS, Beta NOS, SNC, VYY