The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues10,000 leagues, you say? I guess they don't know that one league equals 3 miles, and I'm pretty sure the earth's diameter isn't even 30,000 miles, but let me do a little research first....yup, I was right, the earth's diameter is about 7,926 miles.This one starts out with a guy fishing on a rowboat in the ocean. There's a bright light at the seabed and a goofy looking monster too. How anticlimactic. We've already seen the monster and we're not even one stinkin' minute into the movie. The guy starts pulling in his net when all of a sudden, tip, into the drink, and there's the Phantom...The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues. Credits end and the guy is washed up on shore...unconscious? Didn't the phantom eat part of him or something? A jogger walks up to look at the body but runs off when he sees a guy in a suit walk up. Run away from the body, good idea. Another guy in a suit shows up. They talk about the body. The body and the boat have been charred (didn't look like it when we saw the body a few seconds earlier). Man, this lighting is awful. I can barely see a thing. A guy with a spear gun pulls up in the distance and watches the conversation through the bushes. Ted Baxter and William S. Grant are the names of the two guys. Turns out that Ted was on his way to see a professor at his home when he stumbled upon the body. So do you always walk on the beach in a suit when you're going places? Guy in the bushes is named George Thomas, he's professor King's assistant. William looks at him and asks, You planning on doing a little diving, this late at night? Um, night time? What is he talking about? Looks pretty bright out to me. And if it's so late, what is Ted Baxter doing walking around in a suit on the beach going to the professor's home for? And why is William there? He's a special investigator from D.C. but we're left to assume that he was somehow notified about this mysterious charred body. Some mystery. The guy jogging was actually Professor King and now he's at his home with his daughter complaining about his nosy secretary, Ethyl. Ted knocks at the door but the professor doesn't want to talk to anyone so he tells his daughter to tell Ted that he's been asleep for an hour. Ted ain't buying it and when he makes the daughter check on the professor again, the professor has escaped through the window. Ted leaves. William is on the beach and picks up a turtle. Interesting. I hope there are more scenes like this. George is spying on him from the bushes like he doesn't want to see the turtle get hurt or something. So William likes turtles, huh? That's nice to know. Ted is combing the beach when William comes up and exposes Ted for who he really is, Dr. Stevens. Turns out Dr. Stevens is an oceanographer who has also dabbled a bit in the field of...radiation death rays! That's quite a jump from oceanography. George is there again sneaking around in the bushes. Ethyl and Andy (the janitor) talk about the unusual current events when Professor King walks in on them. He places his books on Ethyl's desk and goes to the coat rack to put his lab coat on. Ethyl notices a slip of paper in between the books that wasn't there when he first set the books down. Be that as it may, she's very interested in the piece of paper; after all, according to Professor King, she's a sneaking, prying female. She gets her chance to see what it is when it falls out from between the books as the professor enters his lab. George walks in on her. George is the professor's assistant but he's also trying to figure out what the professor's up to for some money. Ethyl threatens to expose her so George pulls a spear off the wall and says, You could, but you won't. I think she got...the point. Dr. Stevens takes a rowboat out into the ocean (don't any of these oceanographers who live next to the ocean have a real boat?) and does a belly flop into the water. Meanwhile, Professor King is doing some work in his lab. While he's working, the viewer is treated to some footage of a turtle sitting on a light bulb who then turns into the phantom. I'm guessing Professor King has something to do with this phantom, what with his radiation experiments and all. Dr. Stevens sees the phantom and high tails it on out of there. Ted runs into Lois (Professor King's daughter) and convinces her not to go in the water, as if three recent burn victims weren't enough to convince her on her own. Ted goes to have a talk with the professor. Ethyl is promptly kicked out of the office but that doesn't stop her from hiding around the corner and listening in on their conversation. They talk about the deaths and a bunch of stupid crap and when Ted opens the door to leave, there's Ethyl's gigantic shadow. Busted! Come on Ethyl, you can do better than that. This girl seriously needs to be fired. The professor makes his way back to his lab and finds a book that he has that was written by Dr. Ted Stevens. Here's a little clue for ya Dr. Stevens, when you've written a book called Biological Effects of Radiation on Marine Life with a picture of your head shot and your name is in all caps in 36 point font on the front, don't try to pose as someone else when visiting oceanographers, they just might know who you really are. I thought that was a no-brainer. Ted and the professor decide to meet at the professor's home. Ted was given the open door policy to his home. Ted walks in and Lois is in the shower. He makes himself comfortable by sitting right in front of the bathroom door (see where this is going?). Lois walks out of the bathroom with a towel around her and gets nearly four feet out of the bathroom before she decides to act surprised to see Ted sitting five feet away from her. It's hilarious. He hands her her clothes and she pulls the ol' help me with the zipper on my dress routine. Professor walks in and they talk about the uranium deposit in the ocean that's been burning everybody up. The light in the ocean is explained to be activated hydrogen isotopes, activated by uranium. They talk for a bit and in the end Ted tells the professor that all the recent discoveries, the phantom, the deaths, the uranium, have all been man made and that the secrets are going to be sold. Ted leaves and the professor interrogates Ethyl. He threatens her with a spear gun (this is twice now that she's been threatened with a spear gun). George has a run in with a girl in a discreet location. George is being paid off to get the professor's research and he's to meet the girl later at Colby's Point. Meanwhile, Ethyl has met up with William to give him some information. He asks her to make wax impressions of some of King's locks. The girl that met up with George is eavesdropping right behind them. A couple is seen rowing out into the ocean. Hmmm, wonder what's going to happen to them. Ted and Lois meet by the beach to go on a date, George is watching them from the bushes. Gosh, there certainly is a lot of spying going on around here. Back to the couple on the rowboat. All these rowboats look exactly the same. Even after they've been charred by the uranium. Do I even have to watch this next scene to know what's going to happen to them? Oh no, it's the phantom! Imagine that. Good thing the phantom's suit weighs like 200 pounds and the guy inside can barely even move in it. The couple gets back into the rowboat, which now somehow has an inch of water in the bottom of it. Up comes the phantom, down goes the couple. Oh my goodness! How lame! The boat tips and a few seconds after it's tipped you can totally see the girl swimming out of the shot underwater. Ted and Lois stumble upon the dead couple. Aside from the fact that these two appear to have drowned rather than eaten by the monster, I also notice that the girl isn't wearing the same bathing suit as when they pushed off earlier in the evening. George is watching from the bushes, of course, and shoots a spear at Ted. The spear lands at Ted's feet. Ted and William meet at the morgue. William says, I think it's about time we did something about this? How about closing off the beach about three mysterious deaths ago? They decide to work together. They're going to make a dive at 6 am the next morning. Well, the next morning rolls around and their shadows make it look like it's about 1 in the afternoon. They take another rowboat (this is like the ninth rowboat in this movie) out into the water. William passes out as he puts the oxygen tank on. Someone's put some sort of a toxic pill inside their tubes. Looks like someone doesn't want them making this dive. Ted gets within two feet of the phantom and decides this would be a good time to surface. William misses with the spear gun, but again, the phantom can't swim worth jack so they make it back to the boat. George meets up with Wanda (his accomplice) at Colby's Point. George isn't doing his job too well so Wanda lets him know that their superiors are probably going to kill him if he doesn't get his act together. King discovers that Ethyl's been snooping around his lab. Ethyl goes for a little walk along the beach, and guess who's hiding in the bushes (no surprise here), it's George. Oops, spear in your back, Ethyl. As Ethyl falls the spear goes flying around. I wonder if the spear was just a branch taped to the back of her shirt? The next few minutes shows all the characters unraveling that George has been behind all the recent events. Everyone knows what's going on, the professor is no longer a suspect and now they're looking for George. Ted and Lois are sitting at home waiting for the professor to come home. They decide to go out and look for him. As they step out onto the porch they see a gigantic cargo ship making its way over the uranium death ray. Ka-Boom! I guess the only good thing resulting from that is that we got to see a different kind of ship. Lois asks Ted why the ship just blew up. Where have you been the past hour, Lois? There's a frickin' uranium death ray up in this hizzy! A cop and William meet up with Wanda at Colby's Point (somehow the cop knew that George likes to go there, guess it's not really 'your spot' now is it, George?). George walks up to the umbrella (this take took about four tries judging by the footprints in the sand) and POW! an uppercut comes out of nowhere. Back at King's lab. King has busted up all his equipment and taken off. The janitor's in there cleaning up when Ted and Lois walk in. I didn't take Lois to be such an airhead before but this pretty sweet dialogue sealed the deal for me. Lois: But why destroy all this, his experiments, his life work? Ted: I'm afraid only your father can answer that? Lois: I still don't understand. Do you know why he did this? Ted: I think I do. First of all, Lois, Ted didn't answer your question the first time, so why did you ask him the exact same question again? And Ted, get your stories straight. Either you don't know why he did it or you do know. Which is it? The professor is on yet another row boat with a bomb. He dives down into the water and sets the bomb down. Surprise attack from King's six o'clock gets him in a struggle with the phantom. The phantom's arms look like they start at his waist. What's up with that? The clock is ticking on King's bomb. 5...4...3...2...1...boom! Yeah, let's take some dynamite down to a uranium deposit, good idea. Ted, Lois, and the gang see the explosion from the shore. Ted comforts her by saying, He paid for his mistake. Real smooth, Ted. They have some pretty deep philosophical conversation and come to the conclusion that King blew himself up on purpose to keep this abominable secret from coming out in the open. But did King do it on purpose? It looked like he was caught by the phantom on accident. Oh well. Who really cares? The End. Return to B-Movie Heaven bob jim` - 06:33:46, Sep-25-08 the phanton is not real get the message u silly billy's |