The Phantom Planet (1961)

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Captain Frank Chapman (Dean Fredericks) is on a mission to look for two vanished spaceships. He encounters a mysterious planet named Rheton, which can freely travel through space. (As the MST3K gang noted, it also looks like a piece of extra crispy KFC.) Chapman's ship is drawn to the planet, whose people are about six inches tall. As soon he breathes the air, Chapman shrinks down to the Rhetons' height. (Atmosphere controls your size. Don't question it!) While on Rheton, he helps defeat their enemies, the Solarites (who resemble a dollar- store version of the "Star Wars" Tusken Raiders).THE PHANTOM PLANET strikes me as made by people who weren't just looking to turn a quick profit. I'm thinking the filmmakers wanted to tell a story that was not mere formula. Alas, the end result fell short of that laudable goal. While the premise is intriguing, it was severely underused; the characters don't even qualify as one-dimensional; to call the acting "wooden" is an insult to trees; the visual effects are as half-baked as any I've seen in this type of film; the costumes are uninspired to the point of seeming like an afterthought; the Solarite costume (worn by a young Richard Kiel) is just pathetic; and the errors in physics are too numerous to count.Item: When Chapman first appears on screen, he looks at his wrist as if checking the time; but he's not wearing a watch.Item: When the astronauts exit their spaceship to make a repair, they are untethered and walking freely on the ship's wing—a neat trick in zero gravity!Item: As Chapman's ship is pulled toward the asteroid, he is sitting in the left-hand seat; but once the ship has landed, he's in the right-hand seat.Item: The Rhetons are able to translate all languages with voice- tone waves. (Sure they are!)Item: A mute woman suddenly becomes vocal when she gets the crap scared out of her. Speech therapists, take note.

The Phantom Planet is one of the most boring, pointless movies I've ever seen. Pathetic even by the standard of 1950's B-grade sci-fi, Planet has less action than 2001 A Space Odyssey, with none of that film's originality, vision, or sense of wonderment. Angry Red Planet and This Island Earth are hot stuff compared to this.Like so many other sci-fi schlock-fests, this one begins with endless narration about the wonders of the universe, what man may find as he travels farther from earth, and all those other generalities that sound impressive to kids who haven't heard the same spiel in a dozen other movies. Then we're treated to a boring scene of a rocket crashing into an asteroid that looks suspiciously like a piece of fried chicken, which explodes into the film's title. From there an expedition is sent in search of the lost ship, and the crew's sole survivor finds himself trapped on the titular planet, where he experiences tedious adventures that you will have to see for yourself (or hopefully not).Phantom Planet contains nothing interesting, nothing original, and nothing well done. The plot is nonsensical and shoestring thin, even with a tacked on romantic subplot. All the characters and dialog are off the shelf, and all acting is wooden. I doubt the actors could have shown less emotion or been less believable if they'd been reading their lines off a sheet of paper. And no expense was taken on the special effects, which would have been underwhelming twenty years before this was made. The monster is on par with Ro-Man from Robot Monster, the flaming meteors appear to be flaming wads of newspaper, and the spaceships are clearly children's toys.As a result of these shortcomings, none of the scenes generate any excitement; not the asteroid field scene, not the first encounter with the tiny natives of the mysterious planet, and certainly not the ridiculous Duel of Raytar. Even the hallucinations are boring. The only part that provides any amusement is the explanation of the Phantom Planet's scientific phenomenon, and then only for the sheer incredulousness it generates. Even Flash Gordon had better science than this.So the whole movie is a meaningless snooze fest that couldn't entertain anyone with the intellectual capacity to read this review. At the very end, as the narrator intones, we see the words 'The Beginning' appear on screen. I think we can all be thankful that this prediction did not come true, and that nothing was ever heard of the asteroid/planet/fried chicken piece again.

If you like 60's babes, closeted homosexuality and lots of dials, then this is the movie for you. The first 20 minutes is basically your standard spaceship movie, no...worse, cockpit movie. Under the guidance of their crack ground team of hopeless supporting "actors", our hero Captain Chapman (Dean Fredericks) and his slightly more masculine co-pilot Lt. Makonnen (Richard Weber) search for the title "planet", which is actually an asteroid that looks more like a cross between bat guano and dog poo. Of course this involves an eye-feast for all you dial lovers out there. Plenty of switches, dials, VU meters, and meaningless flashing lights to distract you from the wooden delivery of bad dialog. It took three guys to write this turkey of a script which includes the classic bad movie ploy of trying to insert a deeply philosophical line between the mindless cockpit banter and story exposition. Here's a sample, as our co-pilot suddenly receives an unexpected close-up and says, "You know captain, 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.....if you just take the time to look at it." To which our hero replies profoundly, "You're some guy Makonnen." Shakespeare would be proud. Fortunately our co-pilot Socrates floats off into space shortly thereafter, sparing us any more of his words of wisdom. Our hero ends up on dog poo planet where everyone is 6 inches tall and we are treated to our hero's POV as he awakens from a stupor, signified by a violent and extremely annoying camera vibration. He shrinks (I'll spare you the details) and is quickly put on trial where his jury is comprised of a row of hot 60's babes who couldn't act their way out of a paper sack. Who cares? His next dilemma is which 6 inch babe he wants to mate with, though his interest in the opposite sex is doubtful. Dean tries to butch up with his best Peter Graves impression but I'm not convinced. First there's the hair. 'Nuff said. Second, he can't seem to button his shirt and is repeatedly finding ways to take it off. Also the one cuff fold is a dead give away, either role them up or leave them down Dean. The director lends a hand by staging a Mano a Mano duel that involves a sweaty struggle to handle a big pole, with shirts off of course. And finally, Dean delivers the most passionless heterosexual kiss I've ever seen. He couldn't kiss a girl if he was paid to...and he was! Anyway, he has to chose between the King's conniving daughter blonde Liana (Coleen Gray) and the mute sexy brunette Zetha (Delores Faith). I'd take the silent spooky girl in a second, but of course it takes Captain Fabulous most of the rest of the movie to make up his mind. Delores is enchantingly beautiful and gives an unexpectedly sensitive portrayal of Zetha right up until she suddenly, and unfortunately for us, develops the power of speech. There is a battle between the monstrous Solarites and the dog poo people during which victory is achieved by means of the waving of hands over what looks like a panel of broken wine glasses, and a Solarite prisoner escapes to terrorize Zetha. The Solarites are remarkable for several reasons. First and foremost are those ridiculous eyes....worse than Killers From Space, and the lumpy heads whose texture appears remarkably similar to the paper mâché walls of the caves. Next is their enormously hypertrophied shoulders which delightfully serve no purpose, and their shaggy coat and boot hair which conveniently cover the margins of Howard Kiel's costume. Only Kiel can silently walk slowly towards you with his arms out like that. What a pro. And finally, what is it with movie monsters that have no idea what to do with beautiful women? They are apparently most aroused by picking them up, just carrying them around, and setting them down again. Our hero of course eventually escapes, ponders his choice of leaving the beautiful babes behind, and blah, blah, blah. And the movie tells us at the end that it's only the beginning. Oh god no, say it isn't so. Great fun for bad sci-fi movie fans like me and certainly bad enough to be funny, but "regular" people would probably rate this lower than my 3 of 10. That's because they are the sort that "fix their attention on the good and the beautiful".

I'm giving this four out of ten because it has that certain "so bad it's entertaining" quality to it.I remember seeing this on our local UHF station back in the 70s. Strangely enough, it aired just a couple of weeks before "Star Wars" premiered. I was struck at the time that the sound effects for screaming Solarites and attacking Tie fighters were uncannily similar, plus the shots featuring Solarites piloting their fighters presaged the view of Darth Vader in his fighter. It was a bit jarring to note any similarity at all between a fifteen-year-old B-movie and George Lucas' epic.If you have an hour and a half to set aside to enjoy a bad movie being a bad movie, this one will fit the bill. In the pre-opening-credits segment, a doomed scout ship pilot logs that he is 21,000 miles from his base on the moon, as if that is some great distance. One can overlook cheesy special effects and cheap monster suits much more readily than glaring faults in scripting. One means you didn't have money to burn, but the other means that you just didn't care. Watch for actors displaying unnaturally slow reaction times in fight scenes and the like, which screams "not willing to shoot another take", so an actor will just space things out until the other actor gets into position. I have not seen the MST3K send-up of this movie, but other people say they do a nice job of puncturing the pretension.