In this week’s installment of his New York Times DVD column, Dave Kehr embraces the “indigenous American surrealism” of The Phantom Empire, the 12-chapter 1935 Mascot serial that is “very likely the world’s first singing-cowboy science-fiction adventure.”

Gene Autry, beloved in his day as “the Singing Cowboy,” plays a singing cowboy named Gene Autry. He runs Radio Ranch, a dude ranch that’s also the studio for his daily live radio broadcast. Gene’s two kid sidekicks, Frankie and Betsy Baxter (Frankie Darro and Betsy King Ross), lead a club — the Junior Thunder Riders — who pretend to be armored knights of an unknown civilization, dressing up in capes and water-bucket helmets to play at riding “to the rescue!” (Darro also pops up on DVD this week as the teen gang leader in Mayor of Hell, part of Warner Brothers’ new Gangsters Collection Vol. 3.)

A chance to be real heroes occurs when Betsy, Frankie, and Gene are kidnapped by the real Thunder Riders from the super-scientific underground empire of Murania. Undetected by us “surface people,” Murania is a giddily trashy future-opolis complete with towering skyscrapers, menacing tin-box robots, ray-guns, elevators that extend miles beneath the surface, and an icy, evil blond queen, Tika. On the surface, a gang of “renegade scientists” — led by the boo-hiss villain Professor Beetson — plan to invade Murania and seize its radium deposits. Meanwhile in Murania, revolutionaries — led by Lord Argo, the Muranian High Chancellor — plot to overthrow Queen Tika. Smiley Burnette appears as Oscar, the comic relief, and afterward became Autry’s partner in many more films. Why the subterranean super-science empire of Murania needs an armored cavalry to every once in a while take the miles-long elevator trip to the surface and ride around Gene’s ranch goes unexplained.

“It’s a lot for Gene to handle,” observes Kehr, “particularly since he has to get back to Radio Ranch by 2 p.m. every day for his broadcast, which he carries on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.”

Kehr reports that Phantom Empire, “long a victim of third-rate, public-domain releases on home video,” has received a respectful restoration and is now available as a two-disc set from VCI Entertainment. VCI also threw in another complete Autry feature, 1937′s Boots and Saddles.

By the way, VCI’s site showcases a variety of vintage, off-beat cinema and TV releases. Among their upcoming titles is the complete 30-episode series of Honey West, which during the 1965-1966 TV season brought us Anne Francis, in a black bodystocking and driving an AC Cobra, as the first female detective to be featured in a weekly American television series. Our fave retro-babe Cinebeats reported this back in January, with a YouTube clip of the show’s opening titles, and it’s great to see it right there taunting us at VCI’s site.