The Phantom Planet
| The Phantom Planet | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | William Marshall |
| Produced by | Fred Gebhardt |
| Screenplay by | William Telaak Fred De Gorter Fred Gebhardt |
| Story by | Fred Gebhardt |
| Starring |
Dean Fredericks Coleen Gray Francis X. Bushman |
| Music by | Leith Stevens |
| Cinematography | Elwood J. Nicholson |
| Edited by | Hugo Grimaldi |
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Production
company |
Four Crown Productions Inc.
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| Distributed by | American International Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Phantom Planet is a 1961 independently made American black-and-white science fiction film, produced by Fred Gebhardt, directed by William Marshall, and starring Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, Anthony Dexter and Francis X. Bushman. The film was released by American International Pictures .
In 1980 the United States Air Force's Space Exploration Wing has bases on the Moon and is on the eve of a mission to Mars. When another of their two-member crew Pegasus spacecraft mysteriously disappears, rumors begin circulating of "space monsters" and "phantom planets". Mars mission pilot Captain Frank Chapman and his navigator Lt. Ray Makonnen are ordered to investigate.
During the search, their spaceship suffers damage from a meteor shower, requiring that both men go outside to make repairs. A bullet-sized particle, however, pierces the air hose on Chapman's space suit, rendering him unconscious. Makonnen is able to repair the hose, but as he opens the airlock hatch, he is fatally struck by a similar particle. Makonnen's last act before being propelled away into deep space is to push Chapman inside and close the airlock hatch. Chapman comes to and finds Makonnen gone and himself unable to communicate with the lunar base. He records a log entry about the preceding events, noting that he must now make a forced landing on an asteroid, that it is somehow pulling in his Pegasus spaceship.
Exiting his ship but still feeling the effects of his accident, Chapman collapses and sees tiny humanoids about six inches tall approaching. Once his helmet visor is opened, he is able to breathe but shrinks to their size due to the asteroid's atmosphere. He is dragged underground and placed on trial for attacking one of the small aliens.
Sesom, the aged and wise ruler of Rheton (the native name for the rocky and seemingly lifeless planetoid that Chapman has landed on), explains that though his craft was brought safely down by their gravitational tractor beam, they had not been able to do same with the preceding crafts which were destroyed with their crew when they crashed into their surface. He then tells the angry Chapman that although as a result of his sentence he will now have all the rights of a citizen of Rheton, he can never leave and his ship has been sent back into space whilst he slept so that the secret of Rheton's existence and more importantly of the gravity-controlling technology that allows them to fly their wandering world through space will be preserved.
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Wikipedia