The Singing Cowboy Fights Underground Female-Dominated Robot People

One of the most bewildering 1930s science fiction serials is called The Phantom Empire. It featured Gene Autry, the "singing cowboy," playing a country-singing radio star who discovers an underground empire of female-dominated robot people. He and his gang of teenaged pals live at a place called Radio Ranch, where they produce and star in a daily radio show full of zany songs about farm animals and such. Yes, you'll get to hear the songs in their entirety. One day, Gene's cute tomboy sidekick sees some mysterious figures riding on the range. They seem to be wearing space suits, and they enter a hidden elevator behind some rocks. The sidekick, a rodeo star named Betsy Ross King who does amazing horse stunts, hightails it back to Radio Ranch and tells Gene everything. Investigations deep under the Earth's crust ensue!

Turns out these mystery riders live in a vast underground"scientific city" called Murania, ruled by the brassy Queen Tika. OK,
they're not all robots. Some of them are just robotic actors dressed in extremely silly outfits.

Apparently the Muranians use a lot of radium, and so they're beingstalked by a bunch of evil "surface" scientists who want to seize RadioRanch and turn the whole area into a big radium-sucking operation. SoGene has to balance his daily radio show duties with explorations inMurania and battles with the evil scientists. It's exactly the sort ofincoherent mashup plot that would irritate the hell out of you if itwere in a contemporary TV show. Yet when you view it over 70 yearsafter its release, The Phantom Empire is nothing short ofretro-glamorous. There's nothing like hearing people say "gee" and "onthe level" without irony to make me swoon.

In an essay about the serial, Gary Johnson describes its campy splendor:

InMurania, you'll see robots swinging sledgehammers in the furnace room.
You'll see moving sidewalks, vacuum tube elevators, and test-tubeshaped towers. You'll see the men of Murania sentenced to electrocutionin the Death Chamber by the vengeful queen. You'll see mini-skirtedmale workers who wear strange barbed hats. You'll hear Autry speakingthe language of the dead after being revived in the spark-spewingreviving chamber. You'll see the inhabitants of Murania dressed insandals and robes, while their leaders wear tall hats like cardinals.
You'll see ray guns that melt solid stone: "There is no limit to thepower of radium when it is controlled." And you'll see thedisintegrating atom-smashing ray capable of destroying all civilization.

The best part? You can buy it on DVD.

The Phantom Empire [Images Journal]