Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
it's about time, December 1, 2008
It's about time somebody finally but out a decent print of "Phantom from space". I've been so sick and tired of finding copies that always have blurred images in them. Case in point is when a car goes by and the headlights leave a streak across the screen. I've been looking for a good copy of this film for quite awhile now and i have finally found it. I thought the picture quality was very good and the sound quality excellant. Other copy's I've seen left a lot to be desired. I've always wondered how some company"s can but out a product of inferior quality and dumb it on the general public when it come from and inferior source. I feel I am being ripped off. But Legend Films has out done them selfs with this film. Good picture and good sound. In my book this one is worth the money. I have not watched the colorized version of the film since I have no interest in faked color film. The color always looks unatural and I prefer my films in there original Black and White and aspect ratios.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Half "Invisible Man", Half "Radar Secret Service", June 26, 2004
"The Phantom From Space" is a sci-fi cheapie from 1953. The first half is pretty boring, as most of the action involves driving around in ridiculous old cars with ludicrous antennae on their roofs looking for disturbances. This takes place in California, so there are some other wacky things going on, but just to make sure we understand, the bulk of the first half hour or so is narrated. As the narrator drones on over the scenes of stock footage, and the cars drive around endlessly, something finally happens! A murder by a guy in a diving suit happens, to be specific, but unfortunately for the audience, all that results for our entertainment is some really tough (not!) interrogation of the prime suspect. Ultimately a couple of people get killed and a refinery gets set on fire. As the movie gets over the hump and starts picking up steam, we see some silly police foot chases of the diving-suit being that go on a bit too long, but ultimately corner the guy in a lab with a pretty female scientist. To evade capture the being takes off his suit and turns out to be invisible unless exposed to ultraviolet light. They chase him around until he needs to put his helmet back on while he practices Morse code with the lady scientist. She figures out that he needs to breathe methane (hence his attraction to the refinery...see how it all makes sense) but thanks to the comic relief newspaper reporter who is forever screwing everything up (at least they got that part right) he drops and breaks his helmet. Eventually we see him shriek and burn up in what I believe may be the Griffith Park Observatory, his mission having utterly failed. This film is a borderline two or three star movie, but I decided to go with three as it was quite well made considering that it was from 1953. I liked that the film didn't attempt to make the invader from space into a killing machine, and that in the end actually made the audience feel sympathy for him. The special effects are not so special by the standards of today, but remember this was made 51 years ago, and I think was a pretty credible effort for the time. The acting is average, and the script is too. The biggest weaknesses were pacing and the whole silliness with the cars with ridiculous antennae. The second half is entertaining, and the creature actually looks good when we finally get to see him. If you can get past the first half, this is better than average for mid 1950s sci-fi.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing special, but I enjoyed it, September 30, 2003
W. Lee Wilder had a penchant for making enjoyably average yet largely forgettable science fiction films. In Phantom From Space (1953), he introduces us to a much more agreeable alien than that found in his more familiar Killers From Space of the following year. Okay, so the phantom does kill a few people and cause some serious oil fires, but it's not all his fault. He's just not a people person, you see, what with being invisible and all. He's also not that bright, choosing to ditch his spacesuit and helmet rather than fall into the clutches of the humans on his tail. He needs something akin to a methane gas atmosphere in order to breathe, and a helmet-less jaunt on earth with its oxygen-based atmosphere threatens to cut short his visit in a most significant way.The film starts out with an unidentified object hurtling from Alaska to the California coast, where the object seems to disappear. Mobile communications folks are sent out to determine the source of interference suddenly wreaking havoc in the area, and these guys keep bumping into cops investigating murders and other acts of destruction. Soon, these different forces team up with an army man and a scientist, and everyone eventually comes to the amazing conclusion that the source of all the trouble is actually a humanoid not of this world. The ending is not exactly a bright and chipper one, but it is just about the only plausible ending possible and, in its own way, it works pretty effectively. I actually enjoyed Phantom From Space, despite a number of slow scenes in the first half of the film. The actors are reasonably good albeit colorless, and I was amused at the way the lead scientist seemed to become more and more German as the action progressed. There are certain limited parallels between this movie and Monster a Go-Go, and I feel compelled to state that the conclusion of Phantom From Space is far, far better than what you will find in its B-movie cousin. There's nothing here to make this film stand out, but it is a relatively painless and occasionally interesting cinematic diversion.
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