The Phantom Empire
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The Phantom Empire, starring Gene Autry the Singing Cowboy, was a 12-chapter 1935 Mascot serial that combined the western, musical, and science fiction genres. It co-starred Gene's sidekick, Smiley Burnette. Gene Autry plays a singing cowboy named Gene Autry, who runs Radio Ranch, a dude ranch from which he makes a daily live radio broadcast. Gene has two kid sidekicks, Frankie Darro and Betsy King Ross, who lead a club, the "Junior Thunder Riders," in which the kids play at being armored knights of an unknown civilization, the mysterious Thunder Riders. The kids, dressing up in capes and water-bucket helmets, play at riding "to the rescue!" A chance to be real heroes occurs when Betsy, Frankie and Gene are kidnapped by the real Thunder Riders, from the super-scientific underground empire of Murania, complete with towering skyscrapers, robots, rayguns, elevators that extend miles from the surface, and an icy, evil blonde Queen, Tika. On the surface, a group of crooks plan to invade Murania and seize its mineral wealth, while in Murania, a group of revolutionaries plot to overthrow Queen Tika.
The action-packed serial was directed by Otto Brower and B. Reeves Eason and written by Hy Freedman, Gerald & Maurice Geraghty, Wallace MacDonald, John Rathmell, and Armand Schaefer.
The 1979 television series Cliffhangers, which attempted to recreate the old movie serial feel by showing three serial chapters in each episode, included a serial titled "The Secret Empire," a pastiche of The Phantom Empire. Events in the underground empire were shown in color, but events on the surface were "in glorious black and white."
There was also a 1986 made-for-TV movie titled The Phantom Empire. It is about man-eating cave creatures who battle Amazon women from outer space.
[edit] Influences
The Thunder Riders carry a strange, sword-like weapon which shoots flame from its tip, a possible inspiration for the Lightsabers of George Lucas's Star Wars. The title The Phantom Empire may also have been an inspiration for the titles The Empire Strikes Back and The Phantom Menace.
