El fantasma de las 20,000 leguas

If you really like movies, if you like to understand them, then you need to balance your viewing.

Sure, there's a short list — an amazingly short one — of films that are whole creatures and that you should watch.

But you really should spend some time with these artificial creatures as well.

Why?

Because when you have a stable genre, when everything is thoroughly predictable, the shell of the movie sort of falls away. You no longer have to look at the movie, you can look at the machine behind it. That's something that's harder to do with stuff that actually engages, like Tarkovsky.

In this case, we have all the standard pieces: radiation, a marine monster that happens to be the right geometry to house a man, foreign spies and so on. Every element is from the catalog. Every assembly is from a mass production rulebook. The music is also off the shelf: viola for suspense, harp for underwater movement and so on.

But look and see the famous "rule of twos." Sooner or later you'll have to make up your mind about the extent to which structure in art is an impediment or an aid. But before you get that far, you have to see the structures that are being used.

Here we have two government investigators, one brainy the other brawny. We have two women, one young and alluring the other old and vengeful. We have two scientists, one honorable the other not.

There are minor, very minor plot twists as we switch all of the doubles. Each of the pairs has a hidden third: the embodied "government," the dead son, the girl friend (a third woman) who is an espionage seductress.

Already, in your mind's eye you can see the chart.

Is this an aberration of nature, like the monster within the story? Is it a creation that can give power in the short run, but at costs? Is is good science or black magic?

Before you jump to conclusions, see my comment on "Seabiscuit" for another example of the rule of twos, but in an environment of higher production values.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues is directed by Dan Milner and written by Dorys Lukather and Lou Rusoff. It stars Kent Taylor, Cathy Downs and Michael Whalen. Music is by Ronald Stein and photography by Brydon Baker.

Plot, for what it's worth, sees an amphibian like creature suddenly start killing any unfortunate human being that strays near its lair. And just what is that glowing thing down there? An absolute hack job attempting to cash in on the success of far better films of its ilk that were all the rage in the 1950s. It's the sort of Z grade film that gives the fans of creaky creature features and sci-fi schlockers a bad name. Right off the bat the makers commit a big error by introducing us to the man in the rubber suit straight away, a hopeless creation that's about as scary as the insipid dialogue that litters the production. Dialogue that's delivered by a cast of wooden actors who bring laughs on account of the fact they seem to be taking their roles seriously!

Milner's direction accounts to being a number of similar scenes strung together at different intervals, with the creature's appearances being as rare as any suspense is. While the 10,000 Leagues aspect is rendered a big joke since the creature is in water that's only about 5 fathoms deep! I wonder if the makers realised that just one league is 3 nautical miles?!

Is it in the "so bad it's good" category? Absolutely not! There's a modicum of science interest involving genetic tests and atomic energy dabblings, but this is lost amongst the laborious pacing as the characters do incredibly dumb things. While somewhat surprisingly Ronald Stein's foreboding music is decent and deserves a better movie. It also has a great title, with awesome poster art to match, but all told it's a major "league" clunker and only makes one cherish even more the likes of Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. 2/10

A respectable drive-in flick deserving of its long shelf life. Recommended only to fans of the B-movie genre, Phantom contains all the cheesy elements that make these movies so much fun.

There are a couple of inaccuracies in the title -- 1) for a Phantom, the creature manages to get spotted by everybody who even goes out on the water (all in the same rowboat, by the way; there must have been a 'No motors' sign posted for this ocean), and 2) the only way to go 10,000 Leagues under the ocean is horizontally, not vertically. As it is, this creature was always close enough to the surface to spot that unlucky rowboat every blinkin' time. People always screamed bloody murder whenever that rowboat tipped over, too, as if they knew a monster was doing it. Usually, when I tip my canoe over, I just shout something unprintable here -- but from now on, I'll suspect the Phantom, and scream appropriately.

The sets in this movie show the sad lack of budget that AIP always handed their directors. Lots of ceiling to floor curtains in the background, even hiding the mad professor's Top, Top Secret Death Ray Project. The entire College of Oceanography set consisted of the outer secretary's office (where the professor always took off his suit coat to put on his lab coat), and the professor's locked inner lab (where he always promptly took off the lab coat he had just put on, and changed into his radiation suit, apparently to protect him from rads given off by the Top, Top Secret Death Ray behind the flimsy curtain. When leaving the lab, the professor dutifully put on the lab coat again to walk through the door to the outer office, where he once again changed to his suit coat. I'll bet that lab coat never had to be washed.)

The real bucks were spent on the set of the Professor's beach house, where three doors were required -- one to enter from the outside, one to the Professor's bedroom, and one to the bathroom for the obligatory hubba-hubba shower scene of the Professor's daughter, Lois.

Lois is a bright spot in this picture. Not only does she take showers, but she also falls in love with the dashing scientist-turned-federal investigator, Ted Stevens. Lois listens to a lot of Ted's investigator stuff, and a whole lot of her father's mad scientist deathless dialogue (boy, can that guy mangle metaphors!). But mostly, Lois lounges. She lounges in the cabana chairs in front of her home, and she manages to be the only lounger on a totally deserted beach, but still gets stepped on by Investigator Ted, who happens to be looking the other way, where he just saw the Phantom.

Lois must get pretty tired of listening to Dad, because she doesn't shed a whole lot of tears when Phantom and Daddy pieces come blasting out of the ocean at the climax. Probably, she's wondering how she can get Investigator Ted to go back down there with a tackle box of dynamite, too. Then it'll be no more listening to exposition, and back to the lounging for Lois. As long as she doesn't do it in that snakebit rowboat.

The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues gets a respectable B-Movie 4 out of 10.

Phantom From 10,000 Leagues is a terribly wooden movie. The acting is wooden, the dialogue is more wooden, and the script is even more wooden. The story concerns the discovery of a radioactive deposit on the ocean floor, and the creature that is said to be guarding it. It looks as though Professor King might be the main man responsible for the devastation the radioactive deposit creates, and the creature that kills almost all who come near the deposit. Professor King has a slimy assistant who has a thing for spear guns, and an ultra-nosy secretary. A mystery man reveals he is Dr. Ted Stevens, and has been assigned to act as a sort of science detective to the findings of bodies with radiation burns. There is also a real detective around, and the two join forces. Dr. Ted Stevens finds romance with Professor King's daughter; while a blonde spy torments the slimy, spear gun-toting assistant. Phantom From 10,000 Leagues is a science fiction thriller without thrills, a horror movie with little horror, and a detective story that really offered nothing to draw me into the movie. There's dullness many times, and nothing that really provokes thought. A fisherman's body washes ashore near the beginning of the movie, and the two men who come across the radioactive burned body don't seem to be upset or excited at all. -- They go about their conversation concerning the corpse in a total deadpan manner. The mystery and crime aspects do not work. The horror aspects do not work. The creature is barely shown moving from it's spot, and is not well crafted. I will say the movie was not badly shot, but that is not enough to keep Phantom From 10,000 Leagues from sinking to the bottom.

This is a group of horrible mediocre people doing horrible mediocre things.

Boring and uninteresting.

The creature...blah.

Give it a miss unless you can make a drinking game out of it!