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Glossary and Character Taxonomy  Breakdown by Country of Origin   Bibliography   Table of Contents    The Best of the Encyclopedia

Gene. Gene was created by Hy Freedman and Gerald Geraghty (Tom Morgan) and appeared in the film serial The Phantom Empire (1935).

Gene is a heroic, two-fisted cowboy with a problem: a gang of crooks have discovered that the land on which Gene’s ranch sits is full of radium, and the gang is trying to make Gene leave. Unfortunately, the gang then discovers that Gene’s land also has an entrance to the subterranean city of Murania. The Muranians are descendants of the people of Mu and are physically and technologically superior to humans. Gene pursues the crooks into Murania and helps the Muranian rebels against the evil High Chancellor Argo. At film’s end Gene and his friends return to Gene’s ranch as the Muranian rebels destroy Murania through the use of a death ray.

* I'm including The Phantom Empire in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of its imagination and because its sheer damn goofiness transcends ridiculousness to become sublimely so-bad-it's-good. The only fantastika film (that I'm aware of) that Gene Autry, Cowboy Extraordinaire, ever acted in, The Phantom Empire begins with land-jumping owlhoots and ends with the destruction of a city via a death ray. Along the way there's so much wooden acting that they must have stripped the redwoods clean, crudely effective special effects, some actual goshdarn imagination at work, some really fun costumes (including that of the cowboy robot seen in the image above on the right, and Gene Autry nobly trying to keep up. Highly recommended for those with a taste for so-bad-it's-good or for primitive (in every sense) cinematic science fiction. 

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