User reviews

Judged by viewers post 2001, post Star Wars, post War of the Worlds, even post Star Trek, of course this movie will get bad reviews, for unscientific plot holes, for poor special effects, for bad acting, for dumb costumes, for simplistic sets, even for Black and White filming.

But this was made in 1961! Seen as a moment in the history and evolution of Sci Fi on film, it's a great way to spend some time. It's available as a free legal download too. Go to www.archive.org and check under Feature Films to find the movie available as part 1 and part 2.

The captain's tape recorders anticipate Kirk's "Captain's log". The cheap special effects had to be inspirational to the makers of Dr. Who. And it's a pleasure to have to use your imagination instead of having to be spoon fed with spectacular special effects.

To hate this movie is to hate a jazz 1940s jazz piece because they used acoustic instruments instead of synths and cut to vinyl instead of digital to CD. Look beyond the limitations of the error to the art, and you'll find a 5 out of 10, not a 1. As the co-pilot said....

Thirty comments on this film and no one so far has mentioned the obvious inspiration for The Phantom Planet. This is a science fiction update of Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Too bad that Jonathan Swift's classic didn't inspire a better film.

And that's a pity because the idea is intriguing. But this was low budget film, very low budget, so the production values and special effects were kept to a minimum. Also too bad that Jonathan Swift's gift for satire in late Stuart Great Britain didn't bring forth a better script.

The film is set in what the writer's mind would be 1980 and we are on the moon and using it as a base to explore the solar system. Two ships have been lost in the asteroid region between Mars and Jupiter have already disappeared. A ship commanded by Dean Fredericks has been sent out to find out what happened and it crashes on an asteroid.

It's really a small planet with people about half a foot tall led by a leader Sesom played by Francis X. Bushman. The movie is about Fredericks' adventures on the planet and his attempts to leave. Like in Gulliver's Travels he helps the people fight off some nasty alien enemies called Solarites who live in a world between Mercury and the sun. With all that heat to contend with, small wonder they're such nasty tempered folk.

And if you want to know how the story ends before seeing the film, I won't say, but read Gulliver's Travels.

Phantom Planet is great example of a lousy film becoming a cult classic. Players like Francis X. Bushman, Coleen Gray, and Anthony Dexter have all done so much better stuff.

Phantom Planet is a fun sci-fi film with minimalist production values and special effects, both matching its budgetary constraints but with interesting ideas such as anti-gravity and magnetic fields. Unfortunately, it fails to launch far enough away from the world of 1950s film sci-fi and take the viewer into the brave new world of the future.

The story sounds like something out of Gulliver's Travels but set in an alien land of Lilliput.

The film does indeed raise some interesting questions that humanity will need to consider as it ventures further out into the cosmos. As stated in the introduction:

" What is his earth in relation to the inconceivable number of other worlds? Is his speed truly the fastest? His achievements the greatest? Or is he a mere unimportant piece of driftwood floating in the vast ocean of the universe? Could there be life similar to our own on other planets? Is it not possible that atmospheric conditions of relative environments control their shapes and forms? If so, would they be giants.... or could perhaps the opposite be true? Could their intellect have reached a scientific level far above man's dreams?"

Phantom Planet will, however grow on you after a couple of viewings.

An astronaut finds himself stranded on an asteroid inhabited by intelligent lilliputian beings. Once our hero breaths the atmosphere, he shrinks to size of the asteroids inhabitants and gets involved in various court intrigues and an interplanetary war.

Although I consider myself a completist of old science fiction movies, I only saw this film for the first time very recently. THE PHANTOM PLANET is one those of films thats pretty bad, but you wish you could like it more. To its credit, this film has the air of being made by people who were trying to make something a little different. The special effects -although obvious, are ambitious and elaborate. The writers appear to have tried to come up with a slightly unusual story line, but the film is over plotted and makes little use of the central gimmick. The dialog is lame and the acting is indifferent. A few scenes are of interest, such as when the tiny Rhetonites approach the giant astronaut and peer through his space helmet. Some shots of the rockets in space I thought looked attractive.

THE PHANTOM PLANET is one of those films that I wish I could say more good thinks about. Its badness is anything but the result of cynical motivation, but the result of makers who ambitions far exceeded the skills of its makers to deliver

Low budget production but the script is visionary in regards to anti-gravity and magnetic fields. Nuclear physicist Robert Lazar who worked at Area 51 in Nevada during the 1990s, says his job was to back-engineer a spacecraft that apparently used anti-gravity for propulsion. While, he and other scientists could theorize about anti-gravity, they and nobody else had the knowledge to create or utilize such.

Also, magnetic walls have long been studied and attempted by U.S. Department of Defense research scientists.

So, while it is easy to dismiss this film due to hokey characters and cliché love story, the script is visionary for a 1961 movie. There are many other sci-fi films far worse than this such as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians with Pia Zadora. If you want bad, this is not bad. However, it is good for low-budget films but it is not good in the context of big budget sci-fi films.

This movie obviously isn't Oscar-worthy or one that will change your life. Heck, it's pretty cheap and silly as well. However, despite this, the movie is entertaining and despite many technical problems, it managed to keep my attention.

The film begins in the future...1980! There are moon bases and interplanetary travel is the norm. However, this travel is called into question when two ships crash into a planetoid that just appears directly in front of the ships with no warning! In other words, any space ship COULD just crash into this planet at any time and at any place...bummer. So, the best astronauts are sent to look for(?!) this hidden planetoid. Naturally, things don't go quite right and one of the astronauts is stranded on this place. Oddly, he is shrunk by the artificial atmosphere until he is itty-bitty just like the rest of the inhabitants. On this odd appearing and disappearing rocks, he has many adventures--a fight to the death, a sexy mute girlfriend and some silly looking bug-eyed aliens. While the sets and costumes are a bit silly, the film has so much action and plot devices that it does manage to entertain. You'll enjoy it provided you have an appreciation for this sort of sci-fi film.

This is the sort of Grade-Z "quickie" that can best be appreciated when seen at 1:00 a.m. on the Late Show while gnawing on a slice of cold pizza. Though undistinguished in most of the usual respects, it does offer something not often seen in the sci-fi films of its era -- "beefcake." Yes, leading man Dean Fredericks whips off his shirt for a rather-extended fight sequence with Tony Dexter. Though Dean was only about 36 when this movie was made, he's already showing a bit of middle-aged softness around his middle, but the hair across his pecs has been left gloriously unshaved and his physique clearly outranks that of his older, shorter opponent. (One other point of interest: Francis X. Bushman, looking sadly old and tired, pops up as the leader of the alien world on which our hero accidentally crashes.)

Several American space rockets have mysteriously disappeared so Capt Frank Chapman and his navigator are sent to investigate. Frank's companion is already dead before the craft is pulled in by a planetoid, or the Phantom Planet. Incredibly it is occupied by aliens who look perfectly human and speak in English! They are tiny, about six inches tall, and soon Frank is seen shrinking inside his space suit, quite a good special effect. Frank falls in love with one of the women, adding some romance to the plot, but then they are attacked by a hostile alien race called Solarites. Richard Kiel, who went on to play Jaws in several James Bond films, plays one of them. Despite their menace they are one of the strangest - and funniest - looking ETs that I have ever seen, I recommend watching this movie for this. Set in 1980 but the fashions, technology etc look 1950's , though the film was released in 1961, I thought it looked a little older. Dean Fredericks plays Chapman, tall, lean, handsome and blond, your typical 1950's hero. The plot is very silly, not helped that it is played straight, and it looks low budget but overall I enjoyed it, especially those funny looking Solarites!

Ah, middling sci-fi. There's so much of it. This one features Richard Weber in a minor role as the hero's copilot delivering this stultifying line in the first act: "You know, every year I become more and more convinced that it's wisest and best to focus on the good and the beautiful." In the only other movie in which I've seen him act, 12 to the Moon, and in a much larger role, he again gets to deliver bad lines, but that movie is packed with bad lines. I don't think any other actor could have made Weber's lines come across as anything but idiotic, but being such a bad actor, they made his scenes memorable howlers in both movies.

Otherwise, the acting in good enough. The movie has a wild and stupid story, cute young women, a fight over one such woman, and goofy-looking aliens, all seen in a number of films from the era. I think it all started with "Cat-Women of the Moon". I like it because of the women, it doesn't bore, nostalgia, and the inadvertent humor.

If you can't see that sometimes what's bad in movies is funny, you have my pity as you'll never be able to fully appreciate what they have to offer. These things were funny to audiences at the time, and still are.

I actually found this to be a decent movie. Yeah it suffered from some silliness and goofy stuff like the scene where they space walk to repair their ship and their tool of choice? A wrench, ha!! However, from the point where the astronaut landed on the asteroid it was pretty good. The story was well written for the most part and the acting wasn't that bad. The girls were really cute and if i had landed there, id probably stay and enjoy myself!!! This truly played much like an episode from star trek, with another actor subbing for captain kirk. Some of the special effects on the asteroid were pretty decent, especially when the main character shrank in his space suit. The bad alien crashing rocks into his invisible prison out of frustration was pretty cool too, but the alien itself was kinda stupid looking. There were some genuinely touching scenes: the astronaut saying the Lord's Prayer while he floated helplessly doomed in space, and the final goodbyes there at the end. This was released in 1961 so maybe that explains why its a notch or two better than the typical fifties stuff. I actually enjoyed this one. I'm sure audiences in 1961 weren't let down. Heck they might have caught this one and The Three Stooges Meet Hercules at a drive in double feature. Cool!!!!

The Phantom Planet was one of the many victims of TV's Mystery Science Theatre 3000 back in 1997 where its failings provided a rich source of comment. When watched away from such mockery, it doesn't prove the tedious slog that other MST3K choices have sometimes proved in their original, un-tampered versions. A sucker for 1950s and 1960s space movies - Destination Moon, Conquest Of Space and the rest - I have a weakness for those films informed more or less by the hard science of the times. In which men risk space travel in curiously stripped-down boiler-tank interiors, served by a few lights on a console and clunky readouts, belt-up in space recliners, and when they land, high concept meets low culture.

Having said that, most of the 'science' in The Phantom Planet occurs at the beginning, and again at the end, and what falls between, despite some speculations about the revolutionary properties of gravity, is more than a little daft. Director William Marshall, whose only other credits were two late Errol Flynn movies, returned a decade later for this last effort, based on a script by the producer. Essentially a love triangle set on a Lilliputian planet (revealing this won't spoil any of the wooden drama it attempts) The Phantom Planet's early scenes are reasonably proficient and suffer most with the benefit of technological hindsight. But once hero Captain Frank Chaplin (western regular Dean Fredericks) lands on asteroid Rheton, any scientific integrity deflates as quickly as the spacesuit he wears, the astronaut shrinking down to local size courtesy of the planet's uniquely affecting atmosphere.

If the script had called for Chaplin to remain an intergalactic giant among alien pygmies, then perhaps the film's central triangle would have been more problematic and interesting. But, as it turns out, the interpersonal relationships and jealousies engendered by Chaplin's unscheduled arrival are the most mundane elements of the story. His principal love - an infatuation, incidentally, sprung upon the viewer at a very late stage - is a mute girl, Zethra (Dolores Faith). Along the way he is also tempted by Liara (Coleen Grey), the daughter of Rheton's ruler Sesom (an elderly Francis X. Bushman, here reminiscent of the controller in Plan Nine From Outer Space). The fly in the ointment is Herron (Anthony Dexter), jealous of Chaplin's attractions to his preferred mate. Thus all the worthy speculations of the opening space drama are reduced to an off-world soap opera.

Rheton is a peculiar place, an asteroid-deemed-planet by dramatic contrivance and insistence of its inhabitants. Despite a surfeit of women, there are relatively few people around outside of one or two gatherings. In environmental styling it often reminds one of the early Star Trek, with severe (i.e. cheap) décor, moulded rock faces and limited vistas. But it has its attractions, apart from the feminine majority: for action fans there are the 'disintegrating gravity plates'. These form a key part of a scene where, in echo of Kirk's bare-chested arena battles to be on TV a few years later, Chaplin and Herron fight a duel to the death. They also lead to the demise of the film's principal alien, a stranded representative of Rheton's principal enemies and potential destroyers, the Solarites. Played by none other than Richard 'Jaws' Kiel in monster costume the Solarite is, despite all efforts, relentlessly un-scary and cheap-looking, shambling around before attempting to grope Zethra.

Bad movie lovers will find a lot to enjoy in The Phantom Planet even away from the marauding Solarite terror. The rifle shot sound effects ringing out in space during the climatic space battle for instance; the Solarites' burning cotton wool ball spacecraft (an effect worthy of Edward D. Wood), as well as the earnestness of all involved. Then there's clunking pieces of dialogue. A solemn narrator, heavy on the significance, starts and ends the film. It is he who firsts suggests, with a heavy hint, that there might exist races both larger and smaller than our own, and that mankind might only be "unimportant driftwood... floating in the universe." This faux high manner emerges a few times elsewhere in the film, as when Chaplin's doomed co-pilot speaks directly to camera and informs us solemnly that "Every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful" - a quote apparently lifted wholesale from a more prestigious source, and here ludicrously self-important. Incidentally, the same speaker is responsible for one of the movie's best moments: during his untimely demise, drifting helplessly off into the void and realising the inevitable, he relaxes calmly and starts off on the Lord's Prayer.

I've given this film an above average score as, for those with a taste for this type of thing The Phantom Planet remains entertaining, if daft. There's an innocence here, typical of the period, which makes up for shortcomings and that's helped along by Marshall's adequate direction. And ultimately I suppose such innocence can be seen as a legitimate response to a universe that has become more confusing and complex a generation on

Astronott lands on mysterious planet, where he shrinks to the size of its tiny citizens and helps to combat some royally goofy aliens!

Ultra-silly drive in sci-fi of the early 60's is pretty much what one would expect from a low-budget 'space age' movie of this era. The special FX are very silly looking - planets that look like flying fried chicken and big bug-eyed dog looking aliens for villains! Yet, through it all the films stars do decent performances. Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, and Anthony Dexter aren't bad actors for this kind of film.

Silliness and cheese abounds, but the right viewer will enjoy this number.

** out of ****

This movie is not that bad when you consider the type and time this movie was made. It was a 50's science fiction (even though it was made in 1961). It does have a plot-astronaut is on a mission to check out why rockets keep crashing on asteroids. Crashes into one, shrinks, meets good looking girls and helps fight evil space invaders. Typical sci-fi 50's movie. If you want good acting, see Casablanca or Citizen Kane. This movie was entertaining enough. I rate it 6/10 for a 50's type sci-fi.

An astronaut finds his ship pulled to a large asteroid, where he encounters a race of people who live inside it. His ship is jettisoned and he is told he will have to live with these people forever, Which,k of course, he resists, even though there are about a hundred young women in tunics who would love to give the guy a go and help replenish the population. He is on hand for an attack on the asteroid by other aliens, and engages in a badly staged fight with one of the enemy (Richard Kiel in a laughable plastic costume). Special effects are on par for the time. The music isn't half bad. Veteran actor Francis X. Bushman plays the head guy on the asteroid. You may recognize several other actors, such as Anthony Dexter who performed in many B movies and TV shows. Definitely for the kiddies, so we don't get to see any mating or nudity. Have a six-pack on hand to get through this one.

There seemed to be a lot of dodgy thinking going on, considering this was space exploration. For instance, spaceships going along a certain route keep on mysteriously disappearing, and the man in charge simply decides to send one more ship at a time, along the same route. What's going to happen when he runs out of men? And there are many other instances that defy all attempts at logic. This is one of those films that would have given Spock a sleepless night, let me tell you.

As I'm finishing up my now-legendary Mill Creek 50-pack, 'Nightmare Worlds', I watched this, and it was fun, fine and downright decent. I had a good time, and it was very enjoyable with some interesting ideas (and Richard Kiel in a rubber monster suit), once I put my brain into suspended animation. As of yet, I haven't bothered with MST3K or its related ilk, as I fail to see the point--the idea seems stupid and condescending. It seems like if the neighbourhood prostitute regularly charged say, $5, and for $50, you would have the experience, but with two losers there, laughing at her and explaining to you why she was a whore. At least to my estimation, cinema shouldn't be experienced like that. Every film is like a woman, appreciates its own love and understanding, and furthermore, deserves to be treated like a lady.

'The Phantom Planet' is an extremely dull and talky sci-fi quickie set in 1980, by which time (as in Gerry Anderson's 'UFO') we Earthlings have established a base on the moon (where the communications officer interestingly enough is played by a Japanese actress (Akemi Tami), although we see and hear very little from her).

Most of the music (plainly library material) is actually pretty good. And it's so far, so dull until we eventually arrive on the surface of the planet Rheton (actually an asteroid), which resembles an enormous Chicken McNugget. It's at this point that the film delivers it's one real surprise, which I won't divulge here as so many others have, as it has remarkably little bearing on anything else that follows.

The Rhetons' costumes look as if they were left over from a movie set in ancient Rome; while the sets and the duel fought stripped to the waist between the film's two alpha males over the heroine anticipate one of the cheesier episodes of 'Star Trek'. (Ironically, Angelique Pettyjohn, who memorably played gladiatrix Shahna in 'The Gamesters of Triskelion', here appears unbilled in a non-speaking part as one of the jurors.)

Rheton's elderly ruler, Sesom (Francis X. Bushman) explains the primitive drabness of their present existence by claiming that the ill-effects from the unprecedented amount of leisure time resulting from labour-saving technology were solved by abandoning modern technology and returning to the simple life (late 20th Century capitalism certainly did a good job of licking this particular worry, if little else). Not that we see much evidence of good honest toil taking up much of the time of those Rhetons that we actually meet; all twenty of them. (Maybe all the real work is being done by slaves.) Nor do we see any bookcases, so it presumably didn't occur to the Rhetons to use all that unaccustomed leisure to read or write books. Their frugal existence, however, hasn't stopped them from harnessing "the magnetic forces of Rheton" to create a hi-tech defence system against attacking enemy ships piloted by aliens called Solorites (in scenes which recall the climaxes of 'This Island Earth' and 'Star Wars'), and creating force fields within which to imprison a captured Solorite (played by an uncredited Richard Kiel) and 'disintegrating gravity plates' in the floor to vapourise anyone who stands on them.

Capt. Chapman (Dean Fredericks) lands on an asteroid which is unexpectedly inhabited by six-inch tall humans. When the atmospheric properties reduce him to their size he not only finds himself working to save their civilization but ensnared in several romantic complications and rivalries as well. While it sounds slight, the plot is actually cohesive and many of the concepts involved are unexpectedly ambitious--but as it happens, the 1961 PHANTOM PLANET has a less-than-B-movie budget, and the result is a film that alternates between being interesting in terms of ideas and often hilariously bad in execution.

Some of the special effects are pretty good for 1961, but then again some of them are ludicrous beyond belief. The space sequences are reasonably done until the asteroid appears on screen; depending on how you look at the thing, it might be a clump of trail mix or a deep-fried chicken wing. The sets and costumes are adequate until the monster of the piece appears on the scene; even by "B" movie standards it is pretty silly stuff. And then there is the cast.

The most interesting of the actors is Francis X. Bushman, one of the great stars of the silent era and perhaps best recalled as Messala in the 1925 version of BEN-HUR--a film in which he gave a noticeably stagey performance. By 1961, however, Bushman had shed such mannerisms, and he gives a performance here that leads you to suspect he could have had a more distinguished career in sound film if he had gotten the breaks and the scripts. The rest of the cast, however, ranges from merely adequate to down right atrocious, with leading man Dean Fredericks a case in point.

Ultimately, PHANTOM PLANET reads very much like an Ed Wood movie but without hilarious inadequacies of plot and script that you expect from such. Fans of sci-fi "B" pictures of the era will likely enjoy it, and I give it three stars for them, but if you are looking for an unintentionally comic bad movie you'll find this one neither as bad nor as good as you might expect.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Even though it was made in 61, I would include this film in the classic 50s genre of science-fiction. The script, for what it is, is fairly tight, as is the able direction of the actors, who are quite believable in the context of the film. Although one monster looked like ET on steroids, one is able to suspend disbelief just for the fun of it. These movies were FUN. It was not necessary to spend millions of dollars on special effects; the producers, with creative set designers, a creative script, and reasonable stretches of the imagination, were able to allow viewers to use their imaginations, instead of spoon-feeding every idea and emotion to the audience, like most modern sci-fi films do (with rare exceptions). The rating of Sci-Fi movies needs to be changed. The simple A or B ratings are too general. It is the same as rating students in a classroom. There are other ways to classify students other than A or B. An A film like Space Odyssey or Star Wars, is obviously an A film. This would obviously be a B film. But there are dozens of horrendous sci-fi films that are lumped in with the good sci-fi B films. Those films should be rated as C films. Does it take that much of a leap in understanding cinema to be able to rate films on three levels instead of two? Recommended to see how good sci-fi can be made on a limited budget.

The Phantom Planet, although made by a lot of the same team that made the hilariously inept '12 to the moon' has none of the clueless charm of the latter. It does, however, have somewhat better effects, shapely space babes in mini-dresses and a few pre-Kirk bare chested fight scenes for the leading men to sweat through. Now that I think about it this could easily have been the inspiration for at least 2 Star Trek episodes I can think of, possibly 3. As a Trek episode it might have stood a chance, but with these actors and effects it just comes over as more grade-f 50's sci-fi. It might be worth watching if it was on a late-night double bill, and as always the MST3K version is great fun. The women folk are well worth watching, and although I cant vouch for the same quality in beefcake from the leading men, they do at least get their shirts off and roll around for the entertainment of the ladies.

A friend gave me a cheapie DVD of this movie and I left it around the house for months, figuring that it would be a dud, remembering a picture spread on the movie in SPACEMEN, a great pre-Starlog SF movie prozine, possibly the first of the genre.

Anyway, I remembered Dean Fredericks for his great portrayal of STEVE CANYON back in the 1950s, so what the heck, I ran it and was suitably surprised. In fact I sat back for the entire 82 minutes and actually ENJOYED it! Forgetting the weird asteroid-planet and Richard 'JAWS' Kiel in the monster suit, the cast performed credibly via a sound and at times quite good, in fact intelligent, script. The tight direction and excellent B/W photography, coupled with a number of extremely attractive girls, made the viewing experience worthwhile.

Not recommended for young viewers due to the less-than special effects but for old-timers brought up on 50s SF, good entertainment.

This movie has it all. Wooden acting, ridiculous plot, special effects from the local army-navy store. No point in going over the plot, since it doesn't make any sense anyway. The only comment that can be made about the hero is that at one point he is offered a choice of two women, one of whom can't speak. He initially is attracted to the one who can speak. The kzinti would not have understood. Eventually he corrects his error, but I lost all respect for him Then there is a war with some sort of sun people. They are supposed to be able to destroy the asteroid the hero is trapped on, but don't seem to be able to manage it. The phantom planet people have captured one of the bad guys who apparently can kill them all if he gets loose. He does get loose, and just goes for the woman. The one who can't speak. At least he has better taste than the hero. The sun creature by the way, looks like the creature from "This Island Earth" on a really bad hair day. All in all,Iliked the movie, not because it was good, but because it was so terrible I couldn't tear myself away.

'The Phantom Planet' is almost your archetypal silly low budget 50s/60s sci fi movie. Set in 1980(!) the story concerns a couple of astronauts on a mission to search for some colleagues who have inexplicably vanished. The team is led by the fearless Captain Chapman (a wooden Dean Fredericks), who soon finds himself a prisoner on "the phantom planet", shrunk to miniature size, and forced to choose between two alien beauties (one of whom is played by 'The Killing's Coleen Gray), while clashing with suspicious planet person Herron (Anthony Dexter, who also appeared in the supremely silly 'Fire Maidens From Venus'), all the while plotting his escape. The acting is poor, the dialogue lame brained, the special effects as inept as you can imagine, all in all great fun if you dig this kind of moronic camp fun (and I do!). The cast also includes veteran Francis X. Bushman who already had a film career spanning fifty years(!!) when he made this, and an uncredited Richard Kiel (best known to most movie goers as "Jaws" in a couple of 1970s Bond films, but also fondly remembered by trash fans for the idiotic horror flick 'Eegah' made shortly after this) as the utterly ludicrous Solonite monster. This may not be the best bad movie I've ever seen, but fans of the genre will have a great time watching it.