Nearly a Century Later, Sci-Fi Western Film Serial ‘The Phantom Empire’ Still Feels Like the Future

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.

First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult film actually worth recommending?”

The Bait: Welcome to Film Serials, Where the Genre Is Made Up and the Points Don’t Matter!

So, a caveat to start this one out. Ali messaged me on Thursday about doing an After Dark, and picking something that was short. Maybe even a short. She’s put out a couple of really incredible reported pieces this week. I have been on Emmy Watch all week. It’s been a long week. Could I think of something easy, and fun, and short, as a treat? 

Well, you shall have to decide for yourself how much fun it is, dear reader, but I can always think of a technicality. I proposed we watch the first episode of the 12-part film serial, “The Phantom Empire,” from 1935. Taken together, the whole thing runs about four hours. There’s also a 1940, 70-minute film that cuts down the series into the barest bones of the thing — I guess because who wants to have like 24 reels of “The Phantom Empire” in storage in 1940? 

But the first episode, which is only 30 minutes, is both bonkers enough to satisfy the After Dark remit, and kind of Missing Link-enough to talk about how some of the best TV shows and films of 2026 play with genre, serialization, and dramatic formula in the same way that this Mascot Pictures adventure lark did, nearly 100 years ago.

The plot… look, I don’t want to summarize the plot and you don’t want to read a summary. You are going to get through the first five minutes — wherein an apparent stage coach robbery turns into a bunch of cowboys singing “Uncle Noah’s Ark” into a radio show about some trick-ridin’ kids (who did their own stunts!!), into a flashback about escaping a cadre of robot-y guys riding horses into direct address to camera into more radio show into fancy science lads on an airplane who are scheming to steal Radium (?) from the ground beneath Radio Ranch — and… and either you will be grinning ear-to-ear about the irrepressible ridiculousness of this story, or you will have a headache. And if you have a headache, you should turn it off. 

Suffice to say that “The Phantom Empire” is considered to be among the first science-fiction Westerns on film; it instigated a tendency to combine the expansiveness of the American frontier with the wonders and dangers of technology in such a way that still impacts both science-fiction and Westerns — not to mention the playthrough of “Jedi Survivor” that I finished a week ago. 

Parallels to the original “Star Wars” film are easy to spot in the details, and, although I can’t find Lucas talking about sound serials anywhere, there’s no way he and Spielberg weren’t influenced by them. There are some crazy laser rays, goofy wipe transitions, robots who are menaces to society, to be sure. But the visual inventiveness and the outlandish plot taken earnestly (if not always seriously) are as much reference points for blockbuster actioners like “A New Hope” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” is.  

“The Phantom Empire” represents a whole bunch of storytelling ideas we take for granted now, but were, at one point, really scrappy, unashamedly childish and unabashedly bonkers alternatives to The Feature Film™. 1935 is when Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” came out. It’s the year of Astaire and Rogers in “Top Hat.” “Mutiny on the Bounty” won the Oscar. And yet, on the margins, you had something theaters could play in the morning for kids that was like a cross between “Silo” and “Outer Range,” with musical interludes thrown in; plus the kind of warm assurance that every chapter would end on some impossible cliffhanger, and next week you could be delighted by how Gene Autry and pals got out of trouble this time. 

Sound serials were high-concept TV before high-concept TV, fandom before Comic Con, cinematic universes that iterated and expanded before anybody had ever heard of “Phase 2.” If nothing else, “The Phantom Empire” shows that whatever the popular Hollywood consensus is about what cinema should be — be it feature length and self-contained in a 1935 Picture Palace or the latest eight hour limited series on Netflix — that consensus will evolve; and that the flicks made on the margins can often show us ways for cinema to evolve. 

I was first introduced to “The Phantom Empire” in a college class called “The Cinema of Action and Adventure.” It was taught by Professor Scott Higgins, who’s also written a book called “Matinee Melodrama: Playing with Formula in the Sound Serial” that has some promotional art from “The Phantom Empire” on its cover — a sign of both the enduring appeal of this particular story, and of how much this particular professor loves robots in hats. And I think one of the reasons he showed it to us (the robots in hats were a bonus) is that once you’ve seen “The Phantom Empire,” you can kind of see its influence all over. 

I see “The Phantom Empire” in the way that “Widow’s Bay” swings between tones; I see it in big action films that nonetheless employ intricately crafted, visceral, episodic cliffhanger/release sequences like “Disclosure Day.” I see it in films that play with genre, or audience positioning, in films that are committed to play. 

That is what is waiting for you at Radio Ranch, pardners. The chance to play cowboys and robots. Doesn’t that sound like fun? —Sarah Shachat

The Bite: That’s It. We’re Getting Bucket Hats.

Having spent the summer marathoning the animated “Lord of the Rings” movies together, Sarah and I routinely lament living on separate coasts. I could easily see us kicking back to watch the rest of “The Phantom Empire” together, but having read her description of seeing genre everywhere thanks to its influence, I fear we might simply be too powerful in the same place. (Would the Salem witch trials have ended differently if the accused conspired long distance?)

The first time Sarah and I started talking about film serials, she brought up “The Phantom Empire” to help me parse through an idea I had about horror overtaking the superhero genre at the box office in a way that’s culturally confusing. (Don’t ask me or Sam Raimi about The Conjuring/Evil Dead multiverse theory I’m nursing; absolutely no one has the time!) That’s anecdotal proof she’s not only telling you the truth about the way her mind works but also an intriguing instance of me doing the exact same thing in my area of expertise.

You wouldn’t know it judging by how often we agree, but Sarah and I are remarkably different writers. Among IndieWire’s most esteemed historians, she’s been with our craft department for about as long as I’ve been covering grassroots audiences and midnight movie culture. From production design and cinematography to the evolution of genre conventions, her work often reflects a deep appreciation for the early half of last century — and an uncanny ability to trace its fingerprints across the movies being made today.

Conversely, I like old movies… but really old movies aren’t always my thing. Among Sarah’s first After Dark selections, 1965’s “Bunny Lake Is Missing” is now one of my favorite films. But I’ll tell you right here, right now: When the American Cinematheque asked me to present a black-and-white movie at the Aero in Los Angeles last summer, I picked Otto Preminger’s film because it was one of the few genuinely surprising and challenging monochromatic classics I’d seen. And, in keeping with Sarah’s theme, I literally projected that experience onto the big screen.

Since then, my curiosity about this particular repertory blind spot of mine has deepened to an extent. Still, seeing credits for filmmakers Otto Brower and Breezy Eason — two of the most utterly ancient-sounding names I’ve ever heard — open 1935’s “The Phantom Empire,” I was afraid my esteemed colleague, put under the metaphoric gun by my scheduling problems, may have programmed the rare After Dark miss. But, oh, oh, how wrong I was.

So spectacularly strange to behold that I almost forgot I wasn’t high, Brower and Eason’s mind-boggling mix of sci-fi and cowboy antics offers a masterclass in decision-making. From the alluring SCIENTIFIC CITY OF MURANIA slate at the start to the flickering monochrome flames of a rancher’s campfire, “The Phantom Empire” isn’t chaotic so much as hypnotic. It’s the kind of flick that makes you routinely ask yourself, “Wait, did that really happen?” before each time responding to its own implied question with a bold yes-and.

There’s too much happening in the middle of this thing for me to properly unpack where the bonkers tale of Gene Autry’s singing cowboy and Dorothy’s evil space queen is going. But even enjoying just the table-setting of a twelve-part story, it’s easy to spot the brilliant strategic and structural choices “The Phantom Empire” employs within a single episode. I suspect, much like Sarah and me, the creatives behind this movie understood the importance of producing a narrative experience that, even at its most outlandish, makes sense to itself.

Watching just a clip of siblings Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Betsy Baxter (Betsy King Ross) out of context, it’d be easy to dismiss their introduction at the Radio Ranchers microphone as an example of antiquity. Covering your sister’s mouth and describing her as “static” before saying you don’t want girls in your club is a very “Andy Griffith”-era thing to do, and those black-and-white TV types were still 30 years removed from this serial outing.

But considered closer, Frankie’s insult to his sister sets up a pivotal moment later. He thinks he heard humans coming through his amateur signal — but no, the inspector tells him. That was just static on his airwaves. Of course, having watched “Chapter 1: The Singing Cowboy,” you know better, and so do I. It’s those sorts of artistic flexes that don’t just help you stay interested in a retro cult selection you might otherwise view as a slog but that also paved the way to serialized storytelling as we know it. (OK, OK, the Conjuring/Evil Dead theory revolves around the end credits of “Evil Dead Burn” and the chronology of the next “Conjuring” prequel. That is all I will say.)

As always, Sarah was spot-on with this After Dark selection. “The Phantom Empire” does indeed have the ability to reorient how you see the modern expression of genre history. And what’s better viewing for a film club built on curiosity than a tale about a club bursting at the seams with curiosity? We don’t have a motto yet, but “TO THE RESCUE!” isn’t half bad. I’m just worried if Sarah and I keep brainstorming this much, we’re going to need bigger bucket hats. —Alison Foreman