bkoganbing Through 12 chapters Gene Autry has to fight two sets of villains and keep his radio contract calling for broadcasts from the Melody Ranch in The Phantom Empire. Not easy since he nor anyone else suspects that there's a lost Atlantis type civilization 20,000 plus feet below the surface of Melody Ranch. To begin with Gene is framed for the murder of his partner by phony professor J. Frank Glendon. His partner's kids Frankie Darro and Betsy King Ross believe him and stick with him throughout the serial. So do a pair of less than helpful sidekicks Smiley Burnette and Peter Potter.The Professor is after radium which he has reason to believe there is a huge deposit on the Melody Ranch. Little does he or anyone else suspect that there's an underground city called Murania run on the nuclear power this stuff has. It's ruled by Queen Dorothy Christy and she's got a traitorous chancellor in Wheeler Oakman looking to undermine her rule. She's also got access to the surface world with her troop of Thunder Riders who take a really big elevator up and down and then ride around looking for presumably supplies that they can't get down below. They're a mysterious bunch and Darro and Ross have seen them and have formed a junior Thunder Riders club.That elevator was really the most ridiculous part of the film. These people are taking 20,000 mile trips in a matter of minutes and no one's ears even pop, let alone getting one bad case of 'the bends'.If this all sounds ridiculous believe me it's even more so when you see it on the big or small screen. But unlike most of the movie serials of the day at least we get a few songs from Gene Autry including the one that launched his career in country music, That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine.I'm not one to pass judgment really because I think movie serials in general are ridiculous. It's a genre form that thankfully is gone. But Gene Autry got a career out of this one.

Kieran Kenney This serial is one of the most random films I have ever seem. Turns out that everybody's favorite singing cowboy of the air waves,Gene Autrey, is promoting a ranch that is right near the entrance toa lost city of people who are even worse actors than the ones onthe surface. Autrey does some musical numbers, namely his big,big hit Silver Haired Daddy, the sets and special effects aredazzling at times, supporting cast members put in good efforts. The writing isn't always great, but the premise is enough. If youlike B-Westerns, and if you like Flash Gordan, this is a nicemerging of the two. I advise against the Alpha Video release. Thequality is terrible. It made me think of a piece of Silver HairedDaddy: "It I could erase those lines on your face..."

jimhass For somebody who wasn't about six when he first saw this serial, it's really pretty clunky and corny. For somebody who was (they reshowed it once on early TV, on one of those shows that had a local Uncle Bob type playing old westerns and cartoons, and promoting the station's shows in between. Even now, when I think of the juxtaposition of the aboveground world of the singing cowboy, the "Thunder Riders" and their bizarre, futuristic city under the mountain, I get goosebumps. The best occasion I had to see this was one summer, when I went to the local Y every Saturday morning to see a bunch of old movies with 3-400 other kids my age; the title would roll up, and the kids would scream. Also, I think I could prove that Freud was right about infantile sexuality when I think of the way I felt about the underground queen, clad in silvery, clinging clothes.

Edwin McBride This movie would be a classic of its type, if there were anything else in its type. The ostensibly peaceful underground kingdom of Murania actually exists on the slave labor of robots, who are planning a revolt. Periodically, the Muranians dress as "Thunder Riders" and after rocketing to the surface, come out of a cave to terrorize the Surface People (us). But they can't terrorize a gang of kids known as the "Junior Thunder Riders", whose motto is "To the Rescue!" They shout this while wearing buckets on their heads, in imitation of the gas masks of the Muranians. Mendacious scientists have detected radium beneath the surface of Gene Autry's ranch, but they don't know that the radium is coming from an underground kingdom. The scientists keep kidnapping Gene so that he won't make it to his weekly radio show and hence won't get the paycheck that he depends on to make his mortgage payment. The mortgage payment is the engine that actually keeps all these balls in the air, and as in all good westerns, the bankers are the real villains. Gene is so cool as he handles the Thunder Riders, evil scientists, mendacious bankers, cruel but oddly flirty Queen Tika, and surprisingly clumsy robots, while always having time for a kind word to the Junior Thunder Riders and Smiley Burnett. You can tell that he lives by the Cowboy Code.