La planète fantôme

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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!!!!