El planeta fugitivo

'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.

Has anyone ever watched this movie and FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE back to back? Yes they are both classic examples of B movies but these two movies in particular seem to be cut from the same cloth. In both movies astronauts from Earth land on far distant planet where the dominant race is in some dire trouble and the Earthmen just happen to possess the know-how to get them out of it. In PHANTOM PLANET the people have the technology to have turned their entire planet (or asteroid which is what it really is) into a spaceship but they live in caves and sleep on marble beds! (The whole race must have back problems) What gets me though is that just below the surface of the plots of both movies is the same male fantasy. In both movies the macho Earthment encounter ineffective males on both planets and races of totally submissive females who wander aimlessly around barefoot and miniskirted waiting for some man to notice them. In PHANTOM PLANET the women mostly just stand around while the men argue, fight and wonder what to do next. In both movies the strong assertive woman turns out to be the villain! Okay, I know to keep saying "It's only a movie" but couldn't the tough girl have also been the nice girl?

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

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!!!!

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.