MovieChat Forums > The Phantom Empire (1935) Discussion > Childhood memories

Childhood memories

posted 18 years ago by copeland_399
12 replies | jump to latest

I saw this as a child in the late 40's early 50's at the Saturday Morning Cinema club. I was a great fan of Gene Autry as opposed to the more handsome and more popular Roy Rogers.

I always had this memory of a film I'd seen which starred Gene and had Robots in it (which seemed terribly unlikely). I didn't remember much about it but if my 63 year old memory serves me I seem to remember a scene, probably at the end, where everything melts, even the Queen. I found it quite disturbing at the time which is probably why it stayed with me.

I never expected to find out anything about it at this late stage but good old IMDB - a gold mine of information. I even managed to watch a short trailer clip when I firt discovered it here, but the link seems to have disappeared. How I laughed at the unsophisticated robots but we didn't know anything about special effects in those days.

I always knew they cheated with those cliffhangers - always sure they had gone right over at the end of one episode but still able to jump clear at the start of the next. It didn't matter, we still looked forward to it with eager anticipation every week.

Thanks IMDB for this trip down memory lane.

[–] Dejael 18 years ago

I first saw this wonderful old-time movie serial, one chapter at a time, in 1973 when I was the film projectionist at Doug Wright's OLD TIME MOVIE THEATER in Anaheim, California across the street from Disneyland. We ran everything in 16mm film, since all that old-time stuff was more readily available in 16mm format rather than the more expensive and explosive nitrate 35mm film stock.
We had lots of fun with this movie serial, and had a captive crowd for old-time movies.
Someone, I don't recall who, it might have been Donald Willis, once said in a review about this movie serial:
"Some old movies don't deserve their laughingstock reputation, while others do. This one does!"

This oddball serial is probably the most unusual curio film of the 1930s, along with THE VANISHING SHADOW (1934) which also had robots in it, THE UNDERSEA KINGDOM (1936) aka: SHARAD OF ATLANTIS starring Ray "Crash" Corrigan in a wild-looking helmet and gold lurex shorts; and Bela Lugosi in MURDER BY TELEVISION (1935) which is not half as interesting as it sounds.
There are many fascinating old movies out there!

Dejael

[–] piercearrow 18 years ago

I first saw Phantom Empire on TV in 1960 when I was 11, and fell instantly in love with Betsy King Ross--who was around 13 when the movie was made(the older woman). Anyway--at the time, I didn't realize how long ago the film was made(the old cars should have been a clue, but , at the time--I just thought that they were trying to save money). I'm sorry to learn of her death in 1989. I sure would have liked to have gotten an e-mail to her.
Pierce

[–] Dejael 18 years ago

Yes, I was pretty nostalgic about this antique sci-fi western movie serial, since I had seen a few episodes of it in movie theaters or on TV in the 1950s when I was a kid, and then I got to see the entire serial for the first time in 1973 when I was a theater projectionist at the Old Time Movie Theater in Anaheim, California. It was great, only because, in a MST3K kind of way, you can have some really good belly laughs at Gene Autry's corny comical antics as he tries hard but flops as an action hero, but always succeeded as a western singing cowboy star. It wasn't until a year later, in 1936, that Larry 'Buster' Crabbe defined the movie serial action hero for all audiences when he played Flash Gordon for the first time.
This serial is great, and its 1940 feature movie version, RADIO RANCH, because of Gene Autry's melodramatic theatrics, his corny cowboy singing, and our two young juvenile stars, Frankie Darro and Betsy King Ross, as they solve the mystery of who the Thunder Riders are, and where they came from. Also great fun in the cast is good ole boy Smiley Burnette as Gene's trusty sidekick, and their cowboy band broadcasting from Gene's ranch house in the country, somewhere thousands of feet above the lost civilization of Murania. And those comical robots with their own metal cowboy hats!!! Great popcorn fun.

Dejael

[–] copeland_399 17 years ago

Well you know I said I remembered something about it all melting at the end, I went on good old YouTube and typed in "Phantom of the Empire" and would you believe it - they had a much longer trailer for it and yes, the weird world of robots and the evil Queen DID all melt at the end. It was so not scary at all but it really spooked me all those years ago - lol.

[–] CoolestNameEver 17 years ago

I first saw this at 15 or 16 in the late 90s. They aired it on AMC and I recorded it. I don't remember being excited about it, though. Did any of you see the Fleischer Superman serial in theaters?

Top 250 on 4/28/06 >>http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0097775/board/thread/42051082

[–] goodellaa 15 years ago

I think I discovered this picture on late night tv about 15 or so years ago and it was obviously one of the darndest things I had ever seen. Wild and entertaining. I love it.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] max von meyerling 14 years ago

I saw certain episodes of this as they were broadcast on Captain Video. That's what Captain Video was. That's what a lot of kid shows were then, excuses to show old serial and programer movies. Gabby Hays and Howdy Doody and the Merry Mailman and Officer Joe showing The Three Stooges. Some shows eventually presented original programing but even a 6 year old know that Tom Corbet landing his spaceship on the bottom of the universe was bogus. The thing is I saw Phantom Empire in Reform School when I was 6 years old and I saw the same episode twice, which was a literal cliffhanger with the boys hanging from a rope over the cliff with the rope stretched over a road. The perusing horsemen ran over the rope which broke which sent the boys hurtling into the canyon. TO BE CONTINUED. Twice! I never saw what happened until 40 years later as it was shown on cable. Apparently they all got away and no one was hurt.

[–] copeland_399 12 years ago

That was the thing with the kids' Saturday Morning cinema serial though, they always showed them going over the cliff to certain death one week and then the next week they never actually went over and always got saved in the nick of time - haha! We fell for it every week too and were convinced that "our hero" had perished.

[–] zotch40 11 years ago

I also saw the entire serial on TV long ago and was VERY disappointed with the cut down 70 minute version I just saw. Television was still a project in development at the time (1935), but wireless telephones were not dreamed up for decades to come and that ray gun at the end can be compared to a laser. So interesting how some fantasies turn out to be real given time. Robots actually were possible in that era, but they needed a lot more development.

[–] stanleyhetz 10 years ago

I also saw the entire serial on TV long ago and was VERY disappointed with the cut down 70 minute version I just saw. Television was still a project in development at the time (1935), but wireless telephones were not dreamed up for decades to come and that ray gun at the end can be compared to a laser. So interesting how some fantasies turn out to be real given time. Robots actually were possible in that era, but they needed a lot more development.

Scientists are often inspired by sci-fi/fantasy flicks. Although, to be honest, The Phantom Empire (1935) did not come up with the idea of wireless telephones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones

[–] grendelkhan 10 years ago

First saw this on Matinee at the Bijou, on PBS. I had never heard of it and caught it while changing channels. I sat back to watch the fun. Funny thing is, I saw it after Cliffhangers came and went on NBC, with the Secret Empire. I never saw more than a few minutes of the tv series, and always the Dracula part, never The Secret Empire. So, I was ignorant of the fact that it was essentially a remake of the Phantom Empire, minus the singing and kids with bucket helmets.

Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!