Sunday, May 20, 2018

Brief Thoughts - PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953)


Each time I think that I've seen every 1950's science fiction or monster movie one pops up that reminds me that I still have not.

I know I've seen the poster art and the title of PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953) for years and I think I've gotten it mixed up with the film KILLERS FROM SPACE (1954). That means that for a long time I thought that I knew this film and was avoiding a rewatch. Instead it turns out that I had never seen PHANTOM FROM SPACE until last night. It was a slow night!


After the first few minutes I realized how exciting it was to discover a science fiction / horror movie from 1953 that I haven't seen yet. Twenty minutes later I realized that I really regretted having finally located this film. I'm sure there are fans of this one out there and more power to you if that is the case. But I have to say that this dull 74 minutes was nearly unendurable. If it wasn't for the fact that I was watching with someone else who joined me in poking fun at the oddities that are part of the film I don't know that I would have made it through in one sitting. Sometimes having a movie buddy will get you through something much faster and with much less pain. The film feels painfully drawn out to feature length with several scenes of people standing around and regurgitating information we already know. Then they sit around smoking and discussing the things we already know. Maybe just to make sure the audience knows it? Maybe.


Needless to say PHANTOM FROM SPACE is an interesting curio from the early 50's independently produced science fiction film genre but it's an awfully slow affair. It was fascinating to wallow in the idiosyncratic elements of the film that are attributable to the period when it was made (see all of the smoking, all of the time) but there's just so little here of interest that there's no way I could ever recommend it for anything other than a group of people wanting to get drunk and joke around. If there are fans of this movie out there, please let me know what  I missed. But otherwise I doubt I'll be revisiting this long slog sober again in my lifetime. I usually love 1950's SF but this needed to be about 20 minutes shorter.

I do like the poster art though.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

I kind of like this movie. Admittedly, it’s pretty lame before the Phantom shows up. Once he does, it’s pretty fun. It has an interesting concept and I like seeing the invisibility effects.