Dan Milner formed Miltner Brothers Production Company in order to make The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues. The company only produced one other feature, From Hell It Came, before dissolving. I assume that Milner’s motivation in the creation of the company wasn’t due to artistic integrity but based solely upon the fact that no one would touch this film with a ten-foot pole.
A uranium deposit that has been activated just offshore has created a monster which, if the radiation doesn’t fry you, the monster will soon follow. Bill Grant (Rodney Bell) arrives via government assignment and finds one Ted Baxter (Kent Taylor) ogling over a recently washed up corpse. Grant shoos the civilian away after the latter notes that the body looks to have several severe radiation burns upon its surface and that his alibi for being in town is to visit Professor King (Michael Whalen), the head of the Pacific College of Oceanography, when a figure in the nearby bushes is spotted, which Baxter states is King’s assistant, George Thomas (Phillip Pine).
Once Baxter arrives at his designation, King’s house, he discovers that King’s daughter, Lois (Cathy Downs) is covering for her father, saying he’s unavailable. The next morning, Grant finds Baxter hovering over the corpse with a Geiger Counter. Grant announces that he is aware of Baxter’s true identity, a world-renowned biologist named Ted Stevens, and demands an explanation for the pseudonym.
I’ll end here for several reasons. First, as noted, the “Phantom” is not found at 10,000 leagues, but rather right offshore. Two, a government agent would know all the potential figures involved in a case prior to entering the scene and, at the unlikely chance of an information slip, he wouldn’t proudly declare he reconciled the error by locating the person’s true identity by finding two books the latter had penned, one of which had a large photograph of its author adoring the cover. Third, Grant doesn’t pause when a seemingly average person makes a highly educated scientific observation pertaining to the assignment at hand. Next, we have the great scientist in question merely shifting his surname from “Stevens” to “Baxter” without bothering with his first name. Fifth, I admit I don’t have much of a physics/chemistry background, but from what I gather, if uranium is glowing, I don’t believe that any creature will be “guarding” it for very long. Sixth, if King is a scientist with a secret, he is excessively secure in where his secrets lie in that, instead of being the reclusive, anal-retentive hermit genius that the genre has established, he tells Stevens to freely walk into his house because he keeps the door unlocked. Seventh, . . . oh, why bother?
Milner attempted to add to the science fiction creature features canon of the 1950’s with another message of doom in relation to man’s capacity for harm via science. However, aside from its implausible plot and poor reasoning, the pacing doesn’t allow the wooden dialogue, uttered in a monotone by disinterested actors, to qualify this film as a “so-bad-it’s-good” midnight cult favorite. The viewer is left with the feeling that Milner wasn’t aware of the inconsistencies, non sequiturs, and the rest which flooded his production and, thus, didn’t have sense enough to play it up to make a fun, campy B-movie out of the work. As a result, the movie is merely tedious. The most fun which can be had with this flick is citing all of the errors which, if you’ll notice I barely began to explicate the plot before futility set in, is more than abundant
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
