Things are developing nicely here on the blog and it's certainly growing from what was a lockdown project on a whim to start watching and talking about bad films again into something a bit more fleshed out. I've started incorporating Disney Week where we focus on lesser talked about, more obscure Disney films, there's the newly named FTW Week where we look at independent, loose license, low budget movies available to watch for free online, and both these mini projects sitting alongside the main project; to work my way through the most disliked, poorly received, and universally awful movies ever put to motion picture film. But aside from the main project, I also wanted to use this blog to look at some really old Sci-Fi films, because they're films I just really like watching, especially old monster movies, and I really want to feature them more as the blog develops. I've already covered Invasion of the Bee Girls and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and tonight, I watched Phantom from Space!
Hazen (Ted Cooper) is sent to track down the source of mysterious radio and broadcast signal interference coinciding with the tracking of a UFO to the San Fernando Valley. His investigation leads him to meet with Lieutenant Bowers (Harry Landers) who is currently investigating an attack by somebody on a trio out picnicking. After a few other incidents in the area, a description is formed of the assailant who appears to be a man in some kind of deep sea diving apparatus. Meeting with Dr Wyatt. (Rudolph Anders) and his assistant Barbara Randall (Noreen Nash), they opine that the assailant's appearance coinciding with the UFO detection means he might not be of this world. Continuing their search, they track the figure down to an abandoned construction site where on the verge of being discovered he has to strip out of suit and remove his helmet, which is recovered by Hazen, Bowers and his team and returned to Dr. Wyatt's lab. Unbeknown to our team, the figure is now completely invisible outside of his suit and he hitches a ride back to the lab undetected in the back of the car. Attempting to retrieve his suit, the figure accidentally catches the attention of Barbara who discovers that he can be visible under ultraviolet light and requires the helmet to breathe, but he is startled and flees before he can completely retrieve it and his suit evaporates in the process. Now trapped inside the lab, the figure attempts one more time to retrieve his helmet but is startled by a reporter, who broke into the lab trying to take a photograph and flees to the indoor observatory where Hazer, Bowers, Dr. Wyatt and Barbara follow but can only watch on as the figure suffocates and dies, returning to a state visible to the human eye.
I apparently watched a colourized version of this film, with the original being in Black & White, produced at a later date, and I think the colourization actually adds to it; the muted colour scheme and desaturated colours do give it at least something a bit more interesting than a standard Black & White 50's Sci-Fi but unfortunately that's about where anything individually interesting about this movie comes to end. Everything about this was just dull... the entire film is mostly just talking, lot's of talking, lot's of people sharing opinions and only really in the last 15 minutes of the film does the action really start to... get tepid? I guess? before the movie abruptly ends.
The plot doesn't really develop much beyond; we are tracking somebody, or something, we found it, it's... invisible. Then it dies. The end. There's no real elaboration on why... or how.. well, to a degree; Dr Wyatt opines that the "creature" might be a silica based lifeform and therefore invisible to the human eye, but there's not much fleshing out of anybody's character really! I barely even knew the actual names of the Police Detective (Bowers) and the Government Agent (Hazen) and the other supporting characters were mostly forgettable or bought nothing to the plot anyway.
See what I mean? So that was disappointing because, or at least for me, the whole appeal to these movies is to have the eponymous character causing trouble, being the central plot driver, but here the films focus was more on people running around a building site, or running through corridors or speaking on the phone to other people, it was all just exposition and no real action. Culminating in a somewhat anti-climatic ending when the Phantom just... suffocates... and dies... and everyone walks away like it isn't some great tragedy that this visitor from another world just died in front of them. They looked bemused by it all if anything.
There's also your allsortment of trappings of a low budget movie here; the sound mixing was spotty in areas with some lines of dialogue almost inaudible, but for the most part (and given that the film was 98% dialogue!) they did ok. There was more than a good handful of shots filmed in poorly contrasting light with big dark shadows invading the frame and distracting from the focus of the scene with shadows cast across the characters that just gave it a really amateurish feel. There was also a nice sprinkling of scenes shot slightly out of focus presumably in one take that again cheapened the production values. I also found it a bit difficult to follow the continuation; there were scenes that looked (and I assumed?) to be shot at night, but then a pan to a different shot would show it clearly being day time. Early on Hazen and his assistant pull over to look at a fire at an off shore oilrig, in the shot of the van coming to a stop it's daytime, and when the scene changes to the oil rig fire it's night time? At one point Dr Wyatt mentions that he will need Barbara to stay for the evening, and in the next shot it's very clearly daylight?
So regrettably Phantom from Space really bought nothing to the table, for me, that I could enjoy. Ironically a film titled after an invisible alien didn't really feature enough of the invisible alien to make it interesting, and even the peril implied by an hostile alien visitor wasn't properly fleshed out enough for the viewer to digest. Instead this was more a film about men in nice tailored suits chasing around a radioactivity reading and giving their opinion on Sciencey matters. I wouldn't waste your time if I was you... like I did. 2 out 5. But only because I like the colourisation.
