Phantom from Space

Phantom from Space (1953)

The movie opens with an identified flying object being followed on radar all the way down the west coast until it disappears over the ocean off of California. While agents from the government try and track down a signal that is interfering with radio and TV broadcasts they run across a hysterical woman. It seems that her husband and friend were attacked by a mysterious figure in a diving helmet! Eventually the local authorities figure out that the figure, radar signal, and interference all seem to be related. You see an alien has crashed and is wandering around, but what are it’s intensions? To further complicate matters the alien is invisible when it takes off it’s space suit. Which of course makes it difficult to track down!

If you are looking for a little cheese with your movie then this is the one for you. The story is a carbon copy of every other sci-fi flick from the 50s with the alien terrorizing the locals and killing a few off. Of course the alien might just be confused and the movie has one of those, “Gee was he really all that bad or just misunderstood” endings. The film is populated with the standard characters. You have “scientists” spouting off theories that are questionable, even for the 50s. A beautiful female assistant (this time with a husband so no love story!) that can out “scientist” the guys, while being kept out of harms way. A general that doesn’t seem to have any soldiers to command, but runs around himself chasing down the alien. Hell there is even a local police detective that accepts the theory of the alien without ever having seen anything himself! And of course there is the alien himself that is invisible for most of the movie, but ends up looking a lot like the alien from Thing from Another World. The movie hints at the fact that the alien wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but was just confused. This of course is a familiar theme in this sort of movie.

So I imagine by now it sounds as if I hated the movie, but I didn’t. While Phantom doesn’t break any new ground or is at all innovative it does manage to be entertaining. The action starts early and never lets up, with the characters always in motion. And while the characters aren’t anything new the cast does a decent job portraying them as real people, which help make the movie a bit more watchable. Another thing the movie has going for it are some decent effects given the low budget of the movie. The filmmakers do a good job with the invisible alien effects; using an array of old Hollywood tricks to pull it off. And when the alien is visible the makeup used is more than passable and goes far beyond the papier-mâché or gorilla suits that many other low budget sci-fi flicks fall back on.

So the Phantom from Space isn’t a great movie. But it does end up being much better than I had expected it to be, based solely upon the low budget and reputation as a sci-fi cheapie from the 50s. I don’t recommend a purchase unless you are a huge fan of this sort of movie (like me), but I do think it is worth checking out once, maybe as a rental. This is the sort of movie that was a staple of the late night show back in the day and will bring back memories for anyone who grew up watching cheesy sci-fi.

This movie is available from the fine folks at Legend Films. For more information please check them out at http://www.legendfilms.net/

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer