As is most often the case, movies are shot on a budget and while some can be quite large, some can also be quite small. When a picture like Phantom From Space comes along and its main antagonist, the monster or creature or what have you, is invisible for the most part and is just a regular human underneath the suit, you have to know that the only reason this was done was because there was no money left in the coffer. Suffice it to say, for a science-fiction film about a possible invasion where you rarely see the invader, they had to work pretty hard to make it believable for the audience. While they would somewhat succeed, it turned out to be quite a turgid romance. There was little to love here and while there was some slight suspense at times, this is a case where both seeing the monster and not seeing it, worked against the picture rather than with it.

Most of that can fall on the shoulders of producer and director W. Lee Wilder, if blame was to be assigned. It was not as if the man did not try to deliver the next great masterpiece of science-fiction cinema, he tried. The fact of the matter was that if the script had been a lot stronger and the actors being able to sell it just a bit more, it could have worked out. Such as it is, the film did not have those things though and in the absence of that, seeing the alien without his spacesuit, no matter how poor, did not help matters all that much either. At approximately seventy-three minutes long, you would think that the time would fly by and sadly, it is the opposite. There were moments where the picture could be slightly suspenseful, but they were outweighed by those that were not. It seemed a lifetime just to make it to the finale of the film which thankfully picked up, but was far too late by that point and it ended on a cliché.

All in all, it was not a terrible movie, but Phantom From Space could have used a little help which in the end, would have made it much more memorable.

2 out of 5

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