Redundant and unnecessary.

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This sci-fi wasn't bad & could have been much better without the unrestrained barking dog & blatant stupidity of the characters. When told to keep the dog away from the invisible spaceman... the characters blunder into the room allowing the dog to freely enter & run wild creating all kinds of mayhem & irritating noise.These same characters... supposedly respectable experts, allow a newspaper reporter to wander into sensitive situations & PO the spaceman with a flash camera while they are trying to communicate, resulting in disastrous results.Then they tell the creature they mean no harm but chase it with guns, cameras & a dog running wild. They make feeble little effort to communicate or help it to breathe or find out why it is here.Then we have the tobacco company funding where the actors all offer & light up cigarettes in every scene. The worst being at the end where they all light up for a smoke as they stand staring at the vaporizing body with an "Oh, well" attitude.The tobacco companies monetary controls over movies between the 40's and 60's were the cause of deaths for so many fine actors. Yul Brynner, John Wayne, Lee Remick, Rod Serling, Michael Landon, Susan Hayward, Patrick Swayze... just to name a few. Filming near the radioactive Nevada test site didn't help. The smoking was a distressing fact of the movie business requiring the celebrities to hawk their tobacco products to get funding for their films.Who really cares if the phantom wore boxers or not. They couldn't have him running naked or exposing his package in tights on the highly censored 50's films. It was quite daring they managed to get away with a naked death shot as it was.I liked this movie in general but it saddens me to see the exaggerated smoking in excess of other films at the time. I also don't care for scenes with utter stupidity of the characters going our of their way to not listen & do just the opposite of what they are told... in any film. This is the fault of the screenwriter. They seem to be oblivious that character stupidity is a gross irritant & point of disgust for the audience. Stupidity ruins movies.If not for the absurd smoke fest, the unrestrained barking dog & the character displays of stupidity I could have really enjoyed this movie.I still recommend it with those notable exceptions.

Phantom from Space (1953) ** (out of 4) W. Lee Wilder directed this well-made sci-fi flick about an invisible alien who lands on Earth wearing what looks like a diver's outfit. A few locals are trying to track down the creature but when he takes the outfit off it becomes nearly impossible to find him. PHANTOM FROM SPACE is basically The Invisible Man with an alien. The film runs 75-minutes, which at times feels long but there's also no question that this film tries to do a bit more than your typical drive-in fluff from this period. I thought the screenplay was actually decent as it tried to bring some real thought to the stuff going on. This includes the various ways they try to figure out what this creature is. I thought Wilder actually made a good looking film that at least looks very professional and it's even more impressive considering the budget and the no-name cast. As for the cast, the performances really aren't the greatest but I think for the most part they're good enough for this type of material. Another major plus is the look of the actual alien when we do finally get to see it. I'm not going to ruin how it's revealed but once you see it and the position he's in, it's certainly not something you'd expect to see from 1953. There are still many problems with the film including the pacing, which isn't all that strong. Another problem is some of the early stuff where stock footage and narration are used to tell the story. PHANTOM FROM SPACE certainly isn't a classic but fans of "B" films will know there's much worse out there.

This is the story of an invisible alien that can talk only via ultrasound. It has trouble breathing on our world and everybody who gets a whiff of him tries to attack it. A merry bunch of scientists, men of action and the ubiquitous woman with a good heart are trying to communicate with it and fail miserably. The dog can see and hear him, but nobody bothered to understand dog, either.The acting is decent, the story interesting. The only problem is that it is a black and white movie from 1953, with people acting like they're on speed. All in all not a bad movie and surely at least average for its time and genre.

Looked at solely from a technical and directorial perspective, "Phantom from Space" is a far better film than you'd expect. The acting is consistently competent, and the director keeps things moving briskly, without the longueurs that afflict most low-budget films. Scenes often use multiple camera setups, virtually unheard-of in films shot in a couple of days.I have to take exception to the reviewer who complained about the cheapness of the special effects. They are exceptionally good, done by Howard Anderson, at that time one of Hollywood's leading opticals/effects houses. They wouldn't be out of place in a bigger-budget film (eg, "Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man").Don't get me wrong. This is not a particularly good movie, its principal problem being the lack of a compelling story. Had it had one, it might have become a classic.