Sunday, January 18, 2015

PHANTOM PLANET 1961 (TREELINE)

Underrated and almost forgotten sci-fi from the early 60's

I've talked about this film before on this blog, but it has been a while and this film is almost a forgotten one.

Dean Fredericks stars as Capt. Frank Chapman, an astronaut that crashes on an asteroid and shrinks to 6 inches in height. All of the inhabitants are small and they try to get the reluctant astronaut to join their society.

Chapman wants to get back to his world even though the leaders tempt him with such lovely women as Liara (Coleen Gray) and Zetha (Dolores Faith). The tiny aliens also fight off a race of what they call Solarites, a violent race of monsters who attack with fire.

One of the aliens has been help captive on the asteroid but it escapes and attacks the leader Sessom (Francis X. Bushman). Chapman finally gets to return to his world in a somewhat bittersweet ending. Richard Kiel plays the Solarite monster.

The rest of the cast is rounded out by Anthony Dexter, Al Jarvis, Dick Haynes and Mike Marshall. This isn't a bad film at all and makes for great Saturday morning viewing.

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