As mentioned previously, in “Impossible Voyages” I’m watching and writing about a run of new (to me) science fiction films to be watched over this year (and almost certainly beyond). You can read the rationale and ground rules here. In the meantime, we are advancing from 1934 to 1935 with this movie, #12 in this series.

One of the main advantages of these movie-watching challenges that I’ve been undertaking over the last few years (such as here and here as well as this current one) is that it forces me to be a bit more disciplined with my film-viewing habits its. There have been plenty of times where I have pushed beyond my natural disinterest point with a given movie, only to have the full viewing experience payoff for me in a positive way. And even when it doesn’t, there’s often been something satisfying about persevering and watching a bad movie all the way to the end. Old style movie serials, like The Phantom Empire (twelve chapters, from Mascot Pictures) are definitely examples of this. They tend to be so slow and drawn out that I’d almost never finish one if I didn’t have some blog-related reason for doing so. But did this particular example payoff for me in the end? Read on to find out.

Spoilers Ahead

The Phantom Empire (1935)

Directed by Otto Brower and B. Reeves Eason

The Story: Singing cowboy Gene Autry broadcasts his daily radio show from a dude ranch called Radio Ranch, provided he is an able to do his show every day without fail. This all comes under threat when ruthless scientists discover radium deposits in the hills nearby and want to get rid of everyone who would hinder them from accessing them. At the same time, an advanced underground empire called Murania, who live nearby, will do anything they can to keep their existence secret. With all this opposition, Autry has the help of a group of adventurous kids, led by twins Frankie and Betsy Baxter.

Starring: Gene Autry as himself, Frankie Darro as Frankie, and Betsy King Ross as Betsy. Dorothy Christie plays Queen Tika, the leader of Murania, and Wheeler Oakman is Lord Argo, the Muranian nobleman who plots to overthrow the queen. J. Frank Glendon is Professor Beatson, the leader of the unscrupulous scientists working to ruin Radio Ranch. Smiley Burnette and Peter Potter are Oscar and Pete, Gene Autry’s two dim-witted but well-meaning assistants.

Comments:  The Phantom Empire is a combination Western / science fiction / musical serial, which makes it as strange as you might think. Unfortunately, it’s also got the meandering pace and slow storytelling that is common to pretty much every old serial I’ve seen so far, which makes it a legitimate chore to get through. Of course, it’s worth remembering that it was not designed to be binged, but to be watched from week to week, and mostly by children.

Gene Autry was well-known for his singing at the time, but he wasn’t a big movie-star yet. Here, he’s playing himself, a singing cowboy with a popular radio show, but one that he can only keep if he broadcasts without fail every day at 2:00 pm precisely. This isn’t just trivia; it’s repeatedly critical to the plot. Numerous times throughout the twelve episodes, the tension is built on whether or not Autry can outwit both evil scientists and a mounted subterranean army and get to his broadcasting equipment so he and his friends don’t lost their contract (and thus, the ranch itself). Considering all the big stuff going on, including murder, false accusations, and the discovery of an actual ancient civilization living underground, it’s an amusingly low-stakes thing to build the drama off of.

But again, these things were for kids. Serials like The Phantom Empire were kind of the equivalent of the Saturday morning cartoons I’d watch in the 70s, and the storytelling reflected that. As such there’s sloppiness to the drama, something I noticed the most when young Frankie & Betsy’s dad gets killed in the second episode, but they barely take any time to mourn him because there are horses to ride and adventures to be had.

But there is also a lot that I can imagine the young audiences of 1935 would have loved, starting of course with those horses and adventures. Betsy and Frankie lead a whole gang of adventuresome kids who like to dress up in costumes, meet in their clubhouse, and ride around shouting “To the rescue!” whenever anyone needs help.

Most of the horsemanship looks pretty routine to my untrained eye, but peppered throughout are the occasional bit of more impressive showmanship. Both Betsy King Ross and Frankie Darro (and Gene Autry, I presume? Sources vary) did their own stunt riding, and King is even billed in the opening credits as “World’s Champion Trick Rider”.

More exciting, for me anyway, is the visualization of Murania itself. The design has got all the hokeyness that is inevitable with this type of movie, but still there’s no shortage of spectacle.

The Murania sequences are full of giant science-fictiony labs and engineering rooms, soldiers in fancy uniforms, an elevator that drops thousands of feet below the surface, and big goofy looking robots with hammers and swords.

It’s all kind of dazzling and awesome in a ridiculous sort of way.

As the human anchor for all these goings-on, I have to say that Gene Autry himself seems to me to be kind of a wet-blanket of a hero. He’s got some charm when he’s singing on the radio, and he looks like he can throw a punch, but as a leading man he’s kind of dull. The movie never goes anywhere with his character, and he doesn’t display any particular wit or charm. If the film had gone what in the modern day is the obvious route and hinted at some sort of romance between him and the Queen of Murania (the only romanceable woman anywhere to be seen), that would have been clichéd, but at least given us the chance to see a bit more of the guy’s personality.

Most of the other personalities are also one-note–such as Dorothy Christie’s as Murania’s ice-cold queen, or Wheeler Oakman as the treacherous Lord Argo, or J. Frank Blendon as the unscrupulous Professor Beatson–but at least those notes are played strongly. There are a couple of comic relief side characters played by Smiley Burnette and Peter Potter who I found annoying at first, but eventually came to appreciate because of their liveliness. But perhaps my my favorite performer is Betsy King Ross, as Gene’s young sidekick Betsy. She’s very energetic in her youthful role (and indeed she was only 14 years old when the serial hit the theatres)–the character is very broad but played with lots of vigour and spunk.

As I’ve mentioned, The Phantom Empire was work to get through (it took me several weeks to get to the end) but I tended to enjoy the later episodes more than the earlier ones. In the last few chapters, the focus of the drama really shifted to Murania itself, and so the science fiction side of the story came to the fore. The long-gestating rebellion by Lord Argo finally took place, and the action became all about Gene and his friends trying to survive, rescue each other, and escape. This culminates in all of Murania being destroyed by an out-of-control heat ray activated by Lord Argo, something that is shown via a nifty distortion effect that is applied to the entire image.

This is even shown over a shot of Queen Tika herself, which I can imagine might have been pretty horrific for the kids of 1935, seeing even a semi-villain like her just sort of melt away.

Only then does the action return to the surface, and we sort out the serial’s other storyline, with the scientists and Radio Ranch. The whole thing wraps up with a nifty climax where Gene Autry and Professor Beatson have a big horse chase, followed by a rock’em sock’em fist fight, and then one last song.

So yeah, stuff like The Phantom Empire is never going to be my favorite thing to watch, but I do appreciate the amount of imagination involved, and in the end the serial had a more enjoyable conclusion than I was expecting, given how slow some of the build-up was leading up to that point.