The Original “Cowboys and Aliens”

Today’s installment of 37 Minutes is a guest post (our first!) by aerospace historian, archivist, professor, and author Dr. Anne Millbrooke, our new historian-in-residence. Follow Anne on Facebook
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Cowboys fight Martians in Cowboys & Aliens (DreamWorks & Universal, 2011). I responded to the media hype for that film by recalling one of my favorite bad movies, The Phantom Empire (Mascot, 1935). Cowboys fight aliens of a different sort in The Phantom Empire, produced as a 12-part serial starring Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, and set at Radio Ranch.

Producer Nat Levine of Mascot Pictures had entered sound film with King of the Kongo (1929). He produced the serial The Miracle Rider (Mascot, 1935), notable for Levine shooting all 15 episodes in only four weeks and for 55-year-old Tom Mix starring in his last film. Mix earned $10,000 a week in pay, $40,000 total, and Levine earned over a million dollars from The Miracle Rider.

With Mix retiring from films, Levine needed a new star. He found Gene Autry singing in Chicago, brought him to Hollywood, taught him to ride a horse, and The Phantom Empire became Autry’s first starring role. Whereas The Miracle Rider is a traditional western with Texas Rangers, Indians, and murderers, The Phantom Empire combines science fiction and western genres.

The “phantom empire” is the underground Scientific City of Murania. Muranians descended from the survivors of the lost continent of Mu, which like the lost island of Atlantis, sank into the sea. Mu was antediluvian, before the Flood, though it was glaciers that drove the Muranians underground. Abundant amounts of radium power Murania. Murarian science had produced ray guns, television, surface-to-air missiles, and wireless phones.

People living above ground have radio. In this movie Gene Autry has a contract to broadcast a regular radio show. Autry and his Radio Riders open the musical entertainment with “Uncle’s Noah Ark” (“. . . the duck went quack, the cow went moo . . .”). Despite that, Autry’s radio program attracts guests to Radio Ranch. Guests arrive by train, horse, and automobile, and now by airplane.

The evil Professor Beetson seeks to discover the underground survivors of Mu and get rich on the radium at Radio Ranch. But visitors, and even Autry and his partner, make secret exploration difficult, so the professor adopts murder as a method of exploration. Autry is a target.

Other threads wind through this story. Ruled by Queen Tika, Murania has rebels in its midst. The ranch children form a club called Junior Thunder Riders, who adopt the motto “To the Rescue!” etc.

This 6-hour, 12-part serial has adventure in each episode: 1. Singing Cowboy, 2. Thunder Riders, 3. Lightning Chamber (a death chamber), 4. Phantom Broadcast, 5. Beneath the Sky, 6. Disaster from the Sky, 7. From Death to Life, 8. Jaws of Jeopardy, 9. Prisoners of the Ray, 10. Rebellion, 11. Queen in Chains, and 12. End of Murania.

The Phantom Empire, all 12 episodes, is on YouTube, but I prefer Archive.org, where I routinely watch movies. By the way, Timeless Media released The Phantom Empire on DVD in June 2011.