Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

davidcarniglia The best thing about Phantom Planet is its title. But it's not terrible; there's an earnestness about the tone that makes you want to see what happens, given about a ten-year-old's sense of adventure.The plot's pretty good too: once stuff gets in gear on Rheton, we've got a primitive/advanced civilization living underground with new-age doodads poking out of the rocks, a formal duel over the coolest girl, a Snauffaluffagus monster, and invading flaming marshmallows. The cunning strategy that the Captain and his rival go in on makes sense and provides a convenient resolution for the story.I can't figure out how the monster gets loose if he's supposedly walled off with a force field. Thankfully he's dumb enough to stand on the anti-gravity thingie before he makes off with the dark-haired chick.What hurts Phantom Planet is the long lead-up to the landing on Rheton. I agree with the reviewer who sees the poignancy in the astronaut praying as he realizes that he's doomed to drift in space. But what's an astronaut doing trying to fix a spacecraft with a crescent wrench? Not to mention the fact that there's a bit of an atmospheric issue when he wrenches the inspection plate off, obviously ruining the oxygen inside the ship. Phantom Planet is worth a look for a decent story, and for special effects, some fairly cool and some just dorky. But ten stars for some pithy comments from other reviewers: especially zardoz-13's description of Rheton as "crispy chunks of fried chicken," and dougdoepke likening the spacecraft to "a candied dart." Those are some slick sci-fi fans right there.

dougdoepke Uneven sci-fi that fails to achieve much impact despite unconventional ending. What's needed is more snap. Too bad lead actor Fredericks walks through his role in unemotional fashion despite Capt. Chapman's surreal plight. Then too, director Marshall seems uninterested in playing up the dramatic points. Instead, he simply shoots the script without apparent engagement. Thus there's little suspense or tension despite the perilous predicaments There're lots of special effects-- some good (the control booths), some not (the space flights and a space ship that looks like a candied dart). On the other hand, the indie production gets good economical use from the planet's unusual stony sets. However, I could have done without all the scientific gobeldy-gook that appears to do little more than pad the script. Anyhow, I'm soon blasting off to the phantom planet, hoping to meet up with either Liara or Zetha, the Elizabeth Taylor look-alike. Plus there's all those scantily clad "jurors" who could revolutionize the whole idea of a "trial". Just goes to show that Hollywood is always Hollywood regardless of where we are in space. Anyway, enough of my glandular reactions. Overall, the indie flick fails to work its positive points into anything beyond drive-in mediocre.(In passing- Catch fine A-picture actress Coleen Gray as Liara; too bad she's largely wasted here. Also, there's Anthony Dexter as Herron; his career was launched in 1951 as silent star Valentino but quickly petered out. And, of course, Francis X. Bushman, a giant of the silent era as Sessom. Such 'name' players are worth noting, I think, for an indie production.)

Richard Chatten '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'. 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.

Red-Barracuda An astronaut is forced to land on an asteroid. He encounters a race of tiny people and soon he too shrinks to their size. It turns out that this 'planet' has an atmosphere that shrinks people to six inches in height. Soon he joins forces with them to battle their evil alien enemies, the Solarites.Strictly speaking The Phantom Planet should really have been called The Phantom Asteroid. But let's be honest, glaring details like this don't matter very much when it comes to 50's/60's sci-fi B-movies! Hilariously, set in the distant future of 1980, this is more of the usual trashy stuff those who have seen many of these films will have come to expect. But, in fairness, this flick is as least a little strange and does have a memorably ridiculous plot-line. There isn't any real reason for the tiny people in this film. Once they have shrunk, other than the giant space suit, there is nothing to indicate their tininess and it never has any real relevance to the plot thereafter. It just seems to be an unusual plot development and not much more. But at least it is different. Also, the Solarites themselves make for amusingly daft looking aliens. One of which is held prisoner on the Phantom 'Planet'. Interestingly, he was played by Richard Kiel, who would go onto play the title character in the trash classic Eegah and then to worldwide fame as the character Jaws in a couple of James Bond movies.All-in-all, this is hardly good but it is strange enough to make it worth a watch if you have a liking for 50's/60's sci-fi nonsense.