Perhaps this type of moviemaking was still too new for this lesson to be learned. But I've always felt that - regardless of your budget - if you're gonna try to deliver a message, then don't allow it to be degraded by cheapness and unbelievability. You could certainly extract a moral here, but instead, MY recollection is of the chintziness and unreality of the production, such that it fits into the mold of a 50s, sci-fi, get-'em-with-the-title, Saturday matinee, which the kids'll find boring, if not laughable. The man-in-a-beast-suit hangs out around a radioactive beam (which is probably responsible for it's appearance) on the ocean floor and kills those who ROW into it's neighborhood. (How co-incidental - they and the boat always wash up onto shore TOGETHER and in the SAME PLACE. The unchanging current, I suppose.) Meanwhile, a scientist's research into radioactivity is of surreptitious interest to a female agent from a competing country. Other characters include the professor's daughter, who is romanced by an oceanographer, enlisted by the government to check up on her dad; the father's male assistant; a snoopy gal Friday; and a federal investigator, who hasn't been told that Romeo is also assigned to the case. This flick got a very low number from me.
Review of The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues
