The mysterious appearance of an unknown planet brings miniature people, a monster, beautiful women and undaunted heroes to the screen. The self-contained planet “Rheton” has the ability to move in and out of galaxies to escape their enemies. After two missing expeditions, Earth sends a third astronaut team to investigate. One astronaut survives a crash to stand trial and help the aliens fight off a monster after a Solorite attack.
Director: William Marshall.
Stars: Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, Anthony Dexter, Francis X. Bushman, Richard Weber, Al Jarvis, Dick Haynes, Earl McDaniels, Mike Marshall, John Herrin, Mel Curtis, Jimmy Weldon, Akemi Tani, Lory Lyons, Richard Kiel.
I saw this when it first appeared in 1961 and greatly disliked it. Seeing it again as an adult & in a colorized version allowed me to enjoy it more for its campiness and psychotronic silliness. I also think it is one of few examples I can think of which actually benefits from colorization. The film contains the lovely horror queen, Colleen Gray & the grey-haired legend of the screen, Francis X. Bushman (who played Ben Hur back in 1926), plus the ex-warbler, Dick Haynes in a non-singing role. There are reasons to watch THE PHANTOM PLANET, especially if you have a hard to explain nostalgic love affair with 1950’s & ’60’s cheesy science fiction films. While lead Dean Fredericks had a solid career in film & television, his character here is not very likeable.
I enjoyed watching this movie. It took me back to my childhood, and I like the colorization. John F. Phillips.
Film has a stock music score which, IMO, makes the film seem richer than it really is — gives it a variously epic & dreamy flavor beyond its meager resources. Many symphonic cues were taken (bootlegged?) from a great 1958 re-performance of Leith Stevens’s seminal 1950 DESTINATION MOON score. Other cues — neat early electronic stuff — are the work of the eclectic British composer Desmond Leslie [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Leslie]. “In the early 1950s, [Leslie] designed the world’s first effective multi-track sound mixing desk which he had built by Rupert Neve. It can still be seen in his family home Castle Leslie, Monaghan, where it has been an object of reverence for visitors such as Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney.”