Description

The Phantom Empire is a 1935 American Western (genre) serial film directed by Otto Brower and B. Reeves Eason and starring Gene Autry, Frankie Darro, and Betsy King Ross. This 12-chapter Mascot Pictures serial combined the western, Musical theatre, and science fiction genres. The first episode is 30 minutes, the rest about 20 minutes. The serial film is about a singing cowboy who stumbles upon an ancient subterranean civilization living beneath his own ranch that becomes corrupted by unscrupulous greedy speculators from the surface. In 1940, a 70-minute feature film edited from the serial was released under the titles Radio Ranch or Men with Steel Faces. This was Gene Autry’s first starring role, playing himself as a singing cowboy.

Cast

• Gene Autry as Gene Autry, singing cowboy at the Radio Ranch
• Frankie Darro as Frankie Baxter, one of Gene’s sidekicks
• Betsy King Ross as Betsy Baxter, one of Gene’s sidekicks
• Dorothy Christy as Queen Tika, the evil queen of Murania
• Wheeler Oakman as Lord Argo, the Muranian High Chancellor and leader of the rebels
• Charles K. French as Mal
• Warner Richmond as Rab
• J. Frank Glendon as Professor Beetson, the villainous scientist after the land’s radium deposits
• Smiley Burnette as Oscar, comic relief
• Peter Potter as Pete, comic relief
• Edward Peil Sr. as Cooper
• Jack Carlyle as Saunders

  The budget was originally reported to have been “no more than” $100,000.