THE PHANTOM PLANET (1961)

In the far-off year of 1980, two space pilots from the American moon base find their craft drawn to an unknown planetoid object that had been invisible just moments before. The ship crashes and the object vanishes again. This isn't the first time something like this has happened, so Captain Frank Chapman (Dean Fredericks) is taken off the Mars Project to investigate. On the way, Chapman has to do a spacewalk to fix a part but his air line breaks and when Chapman's co-pilot tries to save him, he winds up floating to his death in space (shades of 2001!). Chapman gets back in the ship only to see that same small planet suddenly appear. He is able to crash land and is thrown from the ship, unconscious. In a scene right out of Gulliver's Travels, a band of tiny inhabitants of the asteroid find him. As he begins to wake, his body inside the spacesuit shrinks to the size of the men (we later discover it's because he breathed in their air). Naked, he is taken to an underground lair, given clothes, and meet some residents of this phantom planet: the old wise sage leader (silent film star Francis X. Bushman), the lovely dark-haired mute girl Zetha, the full-figured blonde Liara, and the cocky native Herron who is immediately jealous of the impact the studly Chapman makes on Liara, his sweetie—the bleach blonde Chapman spends much of the movie strutting around in a half-opened shirt, showing off his moderately hirsute chest.

We get some backstory on their small planet, Raethon. Years ago, their race was technologically advanced but too much free time made them lazy so they have deliberately chosen a more primitive lifestyle (this also explains the low-budget cave surroundings with no need for bigger-budget flashy settings). They refuse to let Chapman go back home because they don't want their existence known. But they face a serious problem: an alien race called the Solarians. They have imprisoned a Solarite (Richard Kiel under too much make-up to recognize him, looking like a sad-eyed dog monster) but soon more of them come determined to free the prisoner and wreck havoc on the Raethonians. Eventually, after Chapman and Herron engage in a duel during which Chapman saves his rival's life, the two get chummy, and Chapman helps his hosts defeat the attacking aliens and they let him go back to Earth.

This is cheap-looking with plot loopholes galore, but it's fun in that 60s sci-fi way. Fredericks doesn't have a wide acting range but he certainly satisfies the demands of this role: to be handsome and manly and have a way with the ladies. Mostly ditto for Anthony Dexter as Herron (pictured top right with Fredericks). Richard Weber plays Chapman's co-pilot who leaves the movie early but makes an impression with an exaggeratedly earnest speech he makes about the beauty of life, delivered to Chapman while Weber (pictured at left) looks as though he's lost in hero-worship or love. It's a moment that is both sweet and laughable. Bushman, almost 80, is just too old and tired to be convincing as a leader of the alien race. The women are there as eye candy; just after a ferocious battle with Solarians, the absence of Zetha, in case we cared, is explained away because she went to bed early. But despite the many unintentionally funny bits (MST3K justifiably mocked this one), there is just enough of a kiddie matinee feel to this that isn't too hard to get through. [YouTube]