This Blu-ray disc includes the final six episodes of a 15-episode serial from 1936, during an era when going to the movies meant the main feature would be preceded by a short chapter from a limited series. The idea was that audience members would get hooked by a serial and come back every week to see the next installment, regardless of whatever feature was on tap. A generation later, these mini-productions found their way into afternoon and Saturday television programming for Boomer kids on local affiliate channels or independent stations. Today, these things are fun curiosities and that's how The Phantom Rider is presented. A gripping western, The Phantom Rider stars Buck Jones as the titular masked hero, Buck Grant, who gets involved with a fight to save the property and mining interest of a young rancher, Mary (Maria Shelton). The villain is a gang intent on taking all those things for themselves, with a possible mole, Delaney (Harry Woods), in Mary's orbit. (Buck suspects he might be in cahoots with the bad guys.) Buck makes his way through a thicket of hostile Indians to find Mary's mine, where he encounters a grizzled guardian, Hudson (Clem Bevans), who has no intention of letting him by. Meanwhile, Buck's horse, the all-white stallion, Silver, seems smarter than anybody, always intuiting a dangerous situation and deciding just how to help. There's a certain enchantment in all this, like something out of Greek mythology, with magic animals and a Cyclops figure protecting a cave. Efficiency is the name of the game with these quickie pulp tales, but one is also reminded while watching just how good the directors, cinematographers, stunt people, and pool of character actors were for these disposable entertainments. Every episode has a cliffhanger ending, always putting the hero or someone else in a deadly, precarious situation. It's all good, hardy if cornball fun. Strongly recommended. Aud: E, I, J, H, C, P. (T. Keogh)