My main reason for adding to the glut of existing reviews of this popular serial is to note differences between the DVDs from VCI, Timeless and Grapevine. Details below, following a short obligatory description of the serial, but the VCI, with its extra features is best for most purposes, with the Timeless being the closest to the original film.
Mascot's 12-chapter serial "The Phantom Empire," released in 1935, was Gene Autry's first starring role, playing himself, broadcasting daily from Radio Ranch. The combination of singing cowboys, evil scientists, an advanced civilisation 25,000 feet beneath the surface of the earth and kids riding "to the rescue" wearing buckets on their heads has been popular since its initial release, despite, or maybe because of the over-the-top acting, absurd plot and the low-cost high-tech underground city with recycled robots, radium bombs and a Disintegrating Atom-Smashing machine capable of destroying the Universe created by dressing up the studio's lighting equipment. Unfortunately the original negatives have long been lost, and existing prints have a number of problems.
VCI's DVD edition, # 8502 (ASIN: B0011Z5NFK) is on two discs, the first double-layer, currently supplied on "burned" media (DVD-R) according to their website. The image is sharp, and most of it has adequate gray scale if contrast is a little high, and there isn't much in the way of dirt or scratches. The sound, for a 1935 Mascot serial, is fairly good, usually free from significant distortion, though a couple reels have some high-frequency loss, flutter and minor dropouts. Dialogue is clear enough, and there are only a few splices, though a couple minor interruptions in Autry's opening song are from video editing to remove "blanks" in the picture that had been added to the film to avoid such jumps in the soundtrack. VCI is fairly conservative in most of their "clean-up" efforts, but they tend to overdo the "restoration" of the titles and chapter introductions. While it helps identify pirated copies of their edit, the intro text gets turned into a slide-show, still frames with fake transitions between them that don't always match the originals, to "correct" the minor bits of dirt, scratches and wobble that make it look like part of the rest of the film. And as with many editions of this serial, the title "Featuring the Scientific City of Murania" following the cast list had been spliced out of most chapters, a point at which television stations used to insert "messages of interest and importance" before running the chapter. Several of the "next week" titles have been "recreated" and while the style is close, the content isn't quite right for the last chapter. But the faults are minor; VCI's edition is very good, and as "extras" they include the trailer for the serial, Autry's 1937 feature "Boots and Saddles" and excerpts from his first film appearance in the 1934 Ken Maynard feature "In Old Santa Fe." There are also two items by Clifford Weimar; a text "Biography" of Gene Autry, and one with background material about the serial, narrated by Jonathan Webb, which includes a before-and-after example of the restoration. A "Photo Gallery" has 34 pictures, including 21 lobby cards from other Mascot serials.
The DVD set from Shout! Factory / Timeless Media (ASIN: B004WD1J6K), "authorized by Gene Autry Entertainment" and "sourced from Gene Autry's personal film archive" is supplied on three discs, but single-layer so the available space was no different than VCI's. Timeless makes no claim of "digital restoration," and the film has not been extensively "cleaned up." Some minor patching was attempted; the sound for the opening credits of Chapters Two and Three was copied from Chapter One, which unfortunately has different music than the rest of the serial. The Chapter Two title is out-of-place, directly following the main title instead of being right before the "recap." More surprising is the ten-second piece gone from Gene's song in the second chapter about Pete and Oscar, given that this is the authorized edition from the Autry estate. Still, presenting the film in a form reasonably close to the condition of the existing print preserves what authenticity it had, and in addition to including the "Scientific City of Murania" credit this is the only edition I've found with all the original "next week" titles. The image is nearly as sharp as VCI's, sufficient to read the small letters in the opening titles, and the gray scale is better, showing a few details in the darker areas that are lost in VCI's print. On the down side there is a little visual trash including scratches, dirt, fingerprints and, while small and fairly dim, "Gene Autry Entertainment" logos that pop up in the lower-right corner about every three minutes. Overall the sound is slightly worse than VCI's with more distortion in some reels, but in Chapter Eight, Gene's song "I'm Getting a Moon's Eye View of the World" is free from the flutter afflicting VCI's and other editions of this serial. Timeless includes an "extra" made in the 1980s for a cable channel as an introduction to the "feature" version of the serial, with Autry and some of his old film associates.
Grapevine's edition (ASIN: B01MG5C1NA) is on two single-layer DVD-R discs, lacking any "extra" features. There are a few more scratches than the Timeless DVD has, but most of it is failry clean and there are no pop-up logos. Unfortunately the image isn't very sharp, worst in Chapters Three, Four and Nine, and the image is a little oversize in Chapter Eight where the bottom line of the intro text goes off-screen. Highlights are kept under control and only occasionally does the image burn out, but some chapters have a slight murkiness so there isn't much advantage over VCI's in the darker areas. Only about half the chapters have the "Scientific City of Murania" credit and several of the "next week" titles have been "recreated" by replacing the title in a frame from another such title, made obvious by the sharpness of the new lettering. The "blanks" are present in the first chapter, avoiding the minor glitches in the sound heard in VCI's edition, but unfortunately there is a splice in another part of the song. Title music for Chapter One has been replaced with that from the later chapters, clashing at the chapter title. Sound is decent in most chapters, though there is quite a bit of distortion in a couple of the opening titles. Most chapters run a few seconds longer than those on VCI's DVD, though I don't think the difference is significant for the content.
The VCI edition has the most going for it of these three, carefully transferred and with good extra features. My favorite is the Timeless DVD for its better gray scale and less "meddling" with the credits, a good alternative when found at a competitive price, though it was originally expensive. Either of these deserves a five-star "I Love It" rating. Grapevine's seems to have few advantages, with the lack of sharpness a major drawback, though like the Timeless it avoids the excesses of "restoration" in the chapter recaps. But as with any serial, don't try to watch it without a day or so between chapters, to preserve the effect of the cliffhangers, regardless of how silly they are in this example of the art form.
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