The Phantom Empire(1935), written and directed byOtto BrowerandB. Reeves Eason, is a Western serial filmconsidered the firstscience-fiction Western film,starringGene Autryas himself,Frankie Darroas Frankie Baxter, andBetsy King Rossas Betsy Baxter. WriterWallace MacDonaldclaimed to have dreamed up the script while under anesthesia, having a tooth extracted, according to Jim Harmon’s book,The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury. The story is a wild tale, where Gene Autry descends a mine shaft and discovers a futuristic and underground world that is something straight out ofFlash Gordon. The film first appeared in theaters as 12 distinct chapters produced by Mascot Pictures. The first episode was a half-hour, with each subsequent episode being about 20 minutes long. In 1940, the series was edited into a 70-minute feature film titledRadio RanchorMen with Steel Faces.
The Phantom Empire
When the ancient continent of Mu sank beneath the ocean, some of its inhabitants survived in caverns beneath the sea. Cowboy singer Gene Autry stumbles upon the civilization, now buried beneath his own Radio Ranch. The Muranians have developed technology and weaponry such as television and ray guns. Their rich supply of radium draws unscrupulous speculators from the surface. The peaceful civilization of the Muranians is corrupted by the greed from above, and it becomes Autry’s task to prevent all-out war, ideally without disrupting his regular radio show.
What Is ‘The Phantom Empire’ About?
Gene Autry is the singing cowboy of Radio Ranch, a dude ranch that hosts a popular radio program every day at 2 pm. His two sidekicks, Frankie and Betsy, are the heads of his fan club, The Thunder Riders, kids who dress up in buckets and capes mimicking the garb of a ‘lost civilization.’ Gene and his fan club and band are fundamentally good-natured entertainers who trick ride, trick shoot (with blanks, of course), and spend their days singing ballads about the old west.The romantic version of the West painted by the film is typical of Westerns of this era, something akin to a Wild West Show that is both wholesome and full of adventure.
This is where the similarities end. After their afternoon broadcast, Betsy ascends into a secret lab above the barn filled with cutting-edge mechanical gear via a mechanically operated ladder. Her brother Frankie is experimenting with a direction finder that can locate the source of radio beam frequencies and tells her that a secret transmission is coming straight down below them. A marked departure from the plot of any Western of its era,Lee Broughton, in his bookCritical Perspectives on the Western: From A Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained, would call it the first science fiction Western.
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At the same time, a group of scientists flies into Radio Ranch searching for uranium. The mystique of the atomic age is creeping into the narrative. They believe that they will find it in the underground City of Murania and are thrilled to learn that Gene and his friends have located an artifact close to where they believe the entrance to the city is. Due to the popularity of his radio broadcast, the scientists decide to assassinate Gene so that no other person can locate Murania. Failing to kill Gene, they settle to frame him for the murder of Frankie and Betsy’s dad, who know he is innocent.
Together, they help Gene escape the law, and desperate to clear his name, he returns to the entrance, infiltrating society and taking a space-ship-like elevator 25 thousand feet below the earth to a gigantic city entire of robots with ray guns, advanced television viewing, and towering buildings rules by the evil Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy).This is the defining moment of the film. A strange blend of theold romantic Westand futuristic technology, thebirth of the sci-fi Western.In a rugged display of individualism, Gene escapes the clutches of the evil queen, unassisted and rapidly learning how to utilize the near-alien technology. Then, he clears his name with the help of his friends, all before 2pm, making it in time for his broadcast because real cowboys honor their contracts.
‘The Phantom Empire’ Was a Box Office Success
Shot in the waning months of 1934, this wild take on the classical genre was produced on a working budget of $75,000 ($1,640,672 today) and a “marked box office success,” according to Jim Harmon’s book,The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury—the blending of science fiction and fantasy with the Western genre thrilled young audiences. Audiences loved Gene Autry.
In addition to being a movie star, he was a hugely celebrated Western music recording artist. His biographer,Don Cusic, in his bookGene Autry: His Life and Career,describes him as the second most crucial figure in developing country music next toJimmie Rodgers, performing and writing the entire soundtrack to the film. He was the idealized Western hero at the time, considered honest, brave, and true. His celebrity would have gone a long way in coaxing audiences into riding along with this bonkers tale of science run amok. Additionally, his co-star Frankie Darrio was billed as a “Word Champion Trick Rider,” with Darrio and Betsy Rossdoing all of their own stunt riding. The film was a marvelous breakthrough, all at once romantic, whimsical, and totally weird.
What Legacy Did ‘The Phantom Empire’ Leave on Sci-Fi Westerns?
The Phantom Empirewould leave a legacy of “Weird Westerns,” a term applied to this type of hybrid film extracted from the pages of DC’s 1972 pulp comicWeird Western Tales,which told similar stories toThe Phantom Empire.These films all pit ordinary cowboys against extraordinary otherworldly foes, making for an absurdist Western that is incredibly fun. Unlike their traditional counterparts, weird Westerns are fantastical, magical places full of wonder and Saturday morning cartoon-like drama where just about anything can happen and does. The unknown, the spirit, and the promise of the American Frontier are turned into plot devices that propel the protagonist of each film onto a journey where the rugged individualism of the hero is their single saving grace in a weird and wild land.
InThe Phantom Empire,Gene Autry’s unwavering belief in himself and the righteousness of the West acts as an inner compass, helping navigate a strange world. When he first encounters Queen Tika, she asks him what he thinks of Murania; he is unimpressed. He casually scoffs at her, perhaps unaccustomed to a woman in power, and, finding the matter laughable, tells her the damp and musty world is better suited for rats and moles than people.His can-do cowboy attitude sees him through, and he never gives up when the chips are stacked against him.
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For nearly 15 years, there would be no further development in the genre, but that all began to change in the 1950s when the genre started to pick up steam with films like the science-fiction WesternTheBeast of Hollow Mountain(1956), a movie about a dinosaur running wild in a quaint Mexican village andCurse of the Undead(1959), a vampire-themed horror-Western hitting theaters. The optimism ofHollywood’s golden ageleaned into futuristic narratives, and audiences wanted more. The genre would further be defined byBilly the Kid Versus Dracula(1966), a film where the real gunslinger takes on the famed Transylvanian, andJesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter(1966).
Riding the wave of the revisionist Westerns, storytellers now had the freedom to tell genre-bending maniac tales of something straight out of a fever dream, leaving people to wonder if screenwriters were all seeing the same dentist as Wallace MacDonald. Thanks to this groundbreaking film, audiences have a lot of weird West films that are much more commonplace today. Films such asJonah HexorBone Tomahawkfeel right at home in the Western genreand stand out on their own merits, but not so much for their break from traditional Western film narratives. Today, audiences are used to these films, but back then, not so much. The best films always push boundaries, andThe Phantom Empireshould be on the watch list for anyone who loves Saturday morning cartoons and sugary cereal.
