The Phantom Empire is hardly one of the best serials, but what it lacks in terms of production values, it makes up for in sheer wackiness. The Phantom Empire is easily one of the craziest serials ever made. It's part singing cowboy western and part underground city science-fiction/fantasy. This strange combination of genres gives us Gene Autry, in his first starring role, as a singing cowboy who runs Radio Ranch, a ranch that gives kids a place to go to get away from the city and learn about the West.

Betsy Ross King, a champion trick rider, plays Frankie's sidekick. King was an energetic performer who overcame her limited acting ability with an exuberant, "can do" attitude. She isn't given a lot to do other than shadow Frankie, but she's an energetic presence who broadens the film's appeal for the girls in the audience.

The filmmaking itself is rudimentary. The editing simply slaps together choppy fragments of poorly lit scenes where the camera awkwardly bounces from subject to subject. Rooms are always chopped in half for theatrical stagings and the camera rarely leaves a static eye-level point of view. The movie does feature a few flourishes with the camera, as when Frankie turns back to the camera and directly addresses the audience for the story of how the Junior Thunder Riders got their name, but this gimmick is never used again in the rest of the serial.

Queen Tika, the leader of Murania, is one of the major disappointments in The Phantom Empire. As portrayed by Dorothy Christy, she's a boring old maid who drones on about the dangers of life above ground. The role was no doubt a thankless one which few actresses could have saved. "Fools . . . the surface people are always in a hurry . . . their world today is a mad house. We in Murania are indeed fortunate." She ends up becoming merely priggish and a bore. As she prattles on about Murania, shouting her lines as if no one told her about microphones--"We can never allow Murania to become descreated by the presence of the surface people. Our lives are serene, our minds are superior, our accomplishments greater."-- she sounds like Criswell, the great incompetent narrator of Ed Wood' s movies.

But as goofy and rudimentary as the acting and filmmaking, the movie still contains many fascinating sights and sounds. In Murania, you'll see robots swinging sledgehammers in the furnace room. You'll see moving sidewalks, vacuum tube elevators, and test-tube shaped towers. You'll see the men of Murania sentenced to electrocution in the Death Chamber by the vengeful queen. You'll see mini-skirted male workers who wear strange barbed hats. You'll hear Autry speaking the language of the dead after being revived in the spark-spewing reviving chamber. You'll see the inhabitants of Murania dressed in sandals and robes, while their leaders wear tall hats like cardinals. You'll see ray guns that melt solid stone: "There is no limit to the power of radium when it is controlled." And you'll see the disintegrating atom-smashing ray capable of destroying all civilization. Interestingly, the movie suggests that the inhabitants of Murania are descendants of the Lost Tribe of Mu: "Thousands of years ago our ancestors were driven here by the glaciers. They built this city and since then my subjects and their forebearers have lived here in peace. They have lived a life far more attractive than the life led in the mad world above."

Gene isn't impressed by any of this, though. When the Queen (pumped with pride) asks him "How do you like our world?" He says "Well, I think the dampness and dead air of your land is more suited to rats and moles . . . My business is singing. I sing about horses and sunshine and the plains. . . . Well, how can anybody sing about those things here? Kinda makes you feel good to sing, you know." And who can argue with that? But the movie does contain some good matte work that blends in the actors with the models of Murania.