ThiefHott Too much of everything

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Richard Chatten 'The Phantom Planet' is an extremely dull and talky sci-fi quickie set in 1980, by which time (as in Gerry Anderson's 'UFO') we Earthlings have established a base on the moon (where the communications officer interestingly enough is played by a Japanese actress (Akemi Tami), although we see and hear very little from her).Most of the music (plainly library material) is actually pretty good. And it's so far, so dull until we eventually arrive on the surface of the planet Rheton (actually an asteroid), which resembles an enormous Chicken McNugget. It's at this point that the film delivers it's one real surprise, which I won't divulge here as so many others have, as it has remarkably little bearing on anything else that follows.The Rhetons' costumes look as if they were left over from a movie set in ancient Rome; while the sets and the duel fought stripped to the waist between the film's two alpha males over the heroine anticipate one of the cheesier episodes of 'Star Trek'. Rheton's elderly ruler, Sesom (Francis X. Bushman) explains the primitive drabness of their present existence by claiming that the ill-effects from the unprecedented amount of leisure time resulting from labour-saving technology were solved by abandoning modern technology and returning to the simple life (late 20th Century capitalism certainly did a good job of licking this particular worry, if little else). Not that we see much evidence of good honest toil taking up much of the time of those Rhetons that we actually meet; all twenty of them. (Maybe all the real work is being done by slaves.) Nor do we see any bookcases, so it presumably didn't occur to the Rhetons to use all that unaccustomed leisure to read or write books. Their frugal existence, however, hasn't stopped them from harnessing "the magnetic forces of Rheton" to create a hi-tech defence system against attacking enemy ships piloted by aliens called Solorites (in scenes which recall the climaxes of 'This Island Earth' and 'Star Wars'), and creating force fields within which to imprison a captured Solorite (played by an uncredited Richard Kiel) and 'disintegrating gravity plates' in the floor to vapourise anyone who stands on them.

talisencrw There seemed to be a lot of dodgy thinking going on, considering this was space exploration. For instance, spaceships going along a certain route keep on mysteriously disappearing, and the man in charge simply decides to send one more ship at a time, along the same route. What's going to happen when he runs out of men? And there are many other instances that defy all attempts at logic. This is one of those films that would have given Spock a sleepless night, let me tell you.As I'm finishing up my now-legendary Mill Creek 50-pack, 'Nightmare Worlds', I watched this, and it was fun, fine and downright decent. I had a good time, and it was very enjoyable with some interesting ideas (and Richard Kiel in a rubber monster suit), once I put my brain into suspended animation. As of yet, I haven't bothered with MST3K or its related ilk, as I fail to see the point--the idea seems stupid and condescending. It seems like if the neighbourhood prostitute regularly charged say, $5, and for $50, you would have the experience, but with two losers there, laughing at her and explaining to you why she was a whore. At least to my estimation, cinema shouldn't be experienced like that. Every film is like a woman, appreciates its own love and understanding, and furthermore, deserves to be treated like a lady.

flapdoodle64 This is typical of the schlock era of scifi, the time when budgets, technology and expectations were all low, and drive-in theaters kept demand for product fairly high. The cheese will either put you off entirely, or you will find it mildly charming, as I do.One highlight of this film is the spaceship designs by Bob Kinoshita, who later designed the interior of Jupiter II and the Robot on Lost in Space. These designs aren't spectacular, but are fun and functional. Another highlight is the creative shrinking effect used to miniaturize our astronaut hero...it is not realistic per say, but not nearly as silly as most FX of this era.The script for this film is variously ingenious and silly, but the writer should be commended for creating rationalizations for the cheap sets weak action. For instance, you have a super-advanced race of people who possess hyperdrive spaceflight yet who nonetheless live in rock caves and eschew comfortable furnishings and conveniences...the incongruity is explained by stating that they have adopted a spartan philosophy regarding daily life.Our hero is a sort of low-rent Nick Adams type, but less likable. There is a lovely mute girl as the love interest, thus telling us something about the director's attitude toward women. There is a silly ceremonial fight. There is space battle against an alien race featuring primitive yet creative FX.This film contains no socio-political commentary or other food-stuff for the brain, the only value is for escapism, ridicule value, or curiosity. There are certainly worse schlock scifi, although perhaps this film would have been helped if the writer and director had taken a few more risks, put in something shocking, subversive, or bad taste...this one appears aimed more toward the 12-year-old's at a matinée than at teens at a drive-in.

Wesley Elsberry I'm giving this four out of ten because it has that certain "so bad it's entertaining" quality to it.I remember seeing this on our local UHF station back in the 70s. Strangely enough, it aired just a couple of weeks before "Star Wars" premiered. I was struck at the time that the sound effects for screaming Solarites and attacking Tie fighters were uncannily similar, plus the shots featuring Solarites piloting their fighters presaged the view of Darth Vader in his fighter. It was a bit jarring to note any similarity at all between a fifteen-year-old B-movie and George Lucas' epic.If you have an hour and a half to set aside to enjoy a bad movie being a bad movie, this one will fit the bill. In the pre-opening-credits segment, a doomed scout ship pilot logs that he is 21,000 miles from his base on the moon, as if that is some great distance. One can overlook cheesy special effects and cheap monster suits much more readily than glaring faults in scripting. One means you didn't have money to burn, but the other means that you just didn't care. Watch for actors displaying unnaturally slow reaction times in fight scenes and the like, which screams "not willing to shoot another take", so an actor will just space things out until the other actor gets into position. I have not seen the MST3K send-up of this movie, but other people say they do a nice job of puncturing the pretension.