Rainey Dawn So an alien crash-lands on Earth, kills a couple of people because they didn't like his spacesuit, it scared them. The alien runs into other humans and they start reporting their encounter to officials. The alien takes off his spacesuit and is the invisible alien running around trying to get away from Earth's government. He ends up with them, wearing only his helmet and he tries to communicate with the people by some type of morse code but the humans can't figure out what he's trying to communicate to them.This one has it's ups and down, some boring stuff and some entertaining stuff. As others have mentioned, this film is very talky without much action most of the time (except for the beginning and ending).I liked it to a degree but it's definitely not on my toplist of 1950s Sci-Fi.4/10

Bezenby A spaceship crashes somewhere in the US and hulking spaceman escapes, ending up killing some poor dude and going on the run. A veritable army of civil servants, police and scientists go on the hunt for this guy, slowly realising that when this dude doesn't have his suit on, he's completely invisible. Cue 'invisible man' style shenanigans.While this film doesn't exactly set the world on fire with it's plot, it's kind of fun to watch all the invisible man style effects. Y'see, the government gets a hold of the guy's suit, but the guy needs his helmet to breath properly so has to keep going back for a quick sniff of methane or whatever it was the scientists were blabbing about. You get to see keys floating around on there and such stuff.Turns out the alien isn't so bad after all and may have been trying to communicate with man kind (only a dog can hear him speaking!), and the films ends on a kind of sad note. Not too bad a film if you're looking for a vintage time waster.

midge56 This sci-fi wasn't bad & could have been much better without the unrestrained barking dog & blatant stupidity of the characters. When told to keep the dog away from the invisible spaceman... the characters blunder into the room allowing the dog to freely enter & run wild creating all kinds of mayhem & irritating noise.These same characters... supposedly respectable experts, allow a newspaper reporter to wander into sensitive situations & PO the spaceman with a flash camera while they are trying to communicate, resulting in disastrous results.Then they tell the creature they mean no harm but chase it with guns, cameras & a dog running wild. They make feeble little effort to communicate or help it to breathe or find out why it is here.Then we have the tobacco company funding where the actors all offer & light up cigarettes in every scene. The worst being at the end where they all light up for a smoke as they stand staring at the vaporizing body with an "Oh, well" attitude.The tobacco companies monetary controls over movies between the 40's and 60's were the cause of deaths for so many fine actors. Yul Brynner, John Wayne, Lee Remick, Rod Serling, Michael Landon, Susan Hayward, Patrick Swayze... just to name a few. Filming near the radioactive Nevada test site didn't help. The smoking was a distressing fact of the movie business requiring the celebrities to hawk their tobacco products to get funding for their films.Who really cares if the phantom wore boxers or not. They couldn't have him running naked or exposing his package in tights on the highly censored 50's films. It was quite daring they managed to get away with a naked death shot as it was.I liked this movie in general but it saddens me to see the exaggerated smoking in excess of other films at the time. I also don't care for scenes with utter stupidity of the characters going our of their way to not listen & do just the opposite of what they are told... in any film. This is the fault of the screenwriter. They seem to be oblivious that character stupidity is a gross irritant & point of disgust for the audience. Stupidity ruins movies.If not for the absurd smoke fest, the unrestrained barking dog & the character displays of stupidity I could have really enjoyed this movie.I still recommend it with those notable exceptions.

zardoz-13 W. Lee Wilder, brother of renowned "Some Like It Hot" director Billy Wilder, directed the low-budget, science fiction fantasy "Phantom from Space." This modest thriller spends most of its 73 minutes to the authorities as they try to corner a murderous alien from outer space clad in a helmet and suit. Wilder and scribes William Raynor and Myles Wilder adopt a "Dragnet" documentary style with heavy reliance on narration and the constant reminder of the time and place of each scene to enhance its verisimilitude. Wilder imitates special effects that the "Invisible Man" franchise used when the Phantom dons his uniform and helmet. This is the kind of science fiction invasion epic where the alien attacks only when threatened. Moreover, the alien cannot speak English so nobody can understand his demands."Phantom from Space" opens with a brief overview of the constant surveillance that our vigilant military maintains on land, at sea, and in the air. An unidentified flying object appears on radar around 7:19 p.m. over Point Barrow, Alaska. The U.F.O. hurdles southward at 5,000 miles per hour, but it gradually loses both speed and altitude. Eventually, its vanishes off the radar in the vicinity of Santa Monica, California. No sooner has the UFO vanished from radar than people start complaining to the Los Angeles Communications Commission office about radio and television interference. The LACC dispatches mobile units to deal with the complaints. Lieutenant Hazen (Ted Cooper of "Arizona Manhunt") and his driver Charlie (Tom Daly of "Mighty Joe Young") in Mobile Unit 1 encounter Betty Evans (one-time only actress Lela Nelson) near picnic grounds at the beach. She explains an individual in a deep-sea diving outfit and a helmet assaulted her husband Ed and their friend Pete. Betty and Pete knew each other because they attended school together. When the ambulance and the police arrive, they find Betty's husband Ed dead and bandage Pete's head injury. Later, when the police question him, Pete tells inquisitive Lieutenant Bowers (Harry Landers of "Charro!"): "How would you feel if somebody with a helmet with crazy pipes sticking out of it came for you in the dark? And look, I know this sounds--sounds crazy, but there was no head in that helmet." During the interrogation, Bowers receives news about another murder near the beach and leaves to investigate. A neighbor, George Nelson (Harry Strang of "Detour"), tells Bowers that he found the body after he experienced interference on his television. Hazen rejoins Charlie, and they keep tabs on the interference. They cruise out to the Huntington Beach oil fields. An explosion at the oil field facility claims the third victim. Hazen catches up with Bowers again. Initially, Bowers suspected both Betty and Pete may have killed her husband. However, he changes his mind when he believes a connection may lie between the interference and the homicides. A police sketch artist draws a picture of the mysterious killer that looks like the assailant that confronted Betty and Pete. An oil field facility night watchman (Michael Mark of "Jet Pilot") verifies that the sketch resembles the individual he saw by a tank when it blew up.The Central Bureau in Washington, D.C., has Bowers contact Major Andrews (James Seay of "Vera Cruz") and Dr. Wyatt (Rudolph Anders of "Magnificent Obsession") at the Griffith Institute Observatory. When Andrews and Wyatt examine the sketch, Andrews believes the so-called "phantom" may be connected with an earlier U.F.O. sighting. Andrews and Wyatt express skepticism about the presence of an alien spaceship. Furthermore, they rule out any possibility that the U.F.O. was either a missile or meteor because of its extreme speed and direction of travel. Wyatt's assistant, Mrs. Barbara Randall (Noreen Nash of "Giant"), pokes her head to inform Bowers that a newspaper reporter Joe Wakeman (Jack Daly of "Raintree County") wants to talk to him. Bowers tells Wakeman nothing that the reporter doesn't already know. About 25 minutes into the action, the Phantom (Dick Sands of "Casanova's Big Night") makes his first appearance in his space outfit. Andrews, Wyatt, Barbara, Bowers, Hazen, Charlie and Wakeman converge at a brickyard where they have located the Phantom. They wield a Geiger counter follow his trail of radiation. At one point, Wakeman snaps a picture of the Phantom before it enters a building and sheds his apparel. Our heroes confiscate the Phantom's wardrobe and perform tests that surprise them. They struggle to cut, tear, and burn the suit without success. Indeed, they discover the Phantom's outfit is magnetic. Wyatt, Andrews, and Barbara figure out the Phantom uses the suit to protect himself in the atmosphere beyond the Earth. Moreover, the helmet supplies the extraterrestrial with gases to breathe because he cannot use oxygen. Later, when Barbara is by herself in the lab, the Phantom enters and then locks the door. It taps out a code with a pair of scissors, but Barbara doesn't understand it. She does spot one of its huge footprints when it steps on powder. Barbara's husband Bill arrives, cannot open the door, but hears her voice. The Phantom escapes from the lab with Barbara. Our heroes pursue it through the planetarium. The Phantom returns to the lab and puts on the helmet to breathe. The others show up just as the Phantom exits through a window. After the Phantom's departure, the space suit disintegrates. Barbara discovers under ultraviolet light the Phantom is visible. Wyatt explains to Bowers they are dealing with a super-human form based on the large size of the footprint, the sophisticated technology of the suit and helmet, and the creatures' acumen. Wyatt postulates the Phantom must have entered the Earth's atmosphere accidentally. They chase it into the big space telescope chamber and watch it fall to the floor. Before their eyes, the naked man turns to dust."Phantom from Space" qualifies as a tolerable sci-fi film that audiences can skip without missing anything.