The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues

While this Science fiction story lacks any real sense of credibility and our monster-The Phantom disappoints due to a lack of action and a rather plain appearance, there's enough inherent strangeness and weirdness going on here to make this an intriguing watch to fans of cult movies - the science fiction variety. Seeing Kent Taylor and Philip Pine is a treat here as always and they , along with Cathy Downs and Michael Whelan do give competent performances. Recommended mainly to those with a lot of patience and a love for Grade-Z movies.

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!

Most of the cast seems glad to be working if not half snockered in yet another tale of misguided radioactivity that didn't have much extra going for it other than a wide screen format. A world weary scientist finds a common fresh water turtle on the beach where with the use of his new fangled death ray mutates it into a large snapping turtle and then into a man in a hilarious rubber suit that has to be weighted down to keep the actor from floating belly up to the surface.It's a fast 78 minutes and with all of it's cheapness and faux pas it's hard not to like.It's not as good as Creature From The Black Lagoon but not nearly as bad as it's DVD co-feature The Beast With A Million Eyes.

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.

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.