AustLit

Dramatisation of the adventures of the Kelly Gang, framed as the flashbacks of an artist (script-writer/director Rupert Kathner) who is sketching in the area in which the Kellys operated.

'"Bluey" Lloyd and "Darkie" Valli, mates in the last war, both secure employment with a horse owner and are given instructions to take a two-year-old colt, "Outback" to be destroyed. Their pleas to be allowed to try and cure the horse are successful. Their efforts are rewarded, and how the horse is cured and what happens when he wins his first race go to make up the story.'

Source:

'The Pictures: Coming Attractions', Illawarra Mercury, 29 May 1942, p.1.

'The story deals with Fifth Columnist endeavours to get hold of the plans of a wolfram deposit somewhere west of Alice Springs In the Northern Territory.'

Source:

'Roxy Theatre', The North Western Courier, 28 October 1940, p.1.

Little is known of the film, except that it involved coal mining.

'"Phantom Gold" is interesting because it takes Central Australia as its scene, and aborigines as some of its principal characters. The story tells of Harry Lasseter, the prospector, who set out in 1930 with the intention of finding again a rich gold-bearing reef which he had stumbled on during an earlier expedition. He attained his objective; but on the return journey he died of thirst and hardship. This lugubrious plot Is set forth in silent action, while a commentator describes what is going on. Could the verbal description have been made as gaunt as the pictorial record, or, alternatively, could the visual aspects of Lasseter's suffering have been presented with more dramatic realism, the film might have turned out quite a creditable production. But, as matters stand, the contrast between Si Meredith's inflated, sometimes positively dithyrambic, mode of speech and the utter artlessness of everything seen on the screen rapidly becomes grotesque.'

Source:

'Phantom Gold', Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 1937, p.6.