30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 22: The Phantom Creeps (1939)

The task at hand for today's 30 Day Movie Challenge is one that I usually reserve for Sundays when I do Sundays At The Classics as that is usually to watch films made before 1969. The task for today however was to watch a film that was made before 1960 and easy enough I found the 1939 action/horror film The Phantom Creeps which was directed by Ford Beebe (Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe) and Saul A. Goodkind (Tailspin Tommy in The Great Air Mystery). The film stars the late and great horror legend Bela Lugosi (Svengali/White Zombie) as famed scientist Dr. Alex Zorka, a man that has been doing experiments that the US government has no idea about the could be dangerous if placed into the wrong hands. After he figures out that they know, Zorka will try everything including faking his own death to try and get away with his most prized experiments, but can the government stop him before it's too late. The film also stars Robert Kent (King Of The Royal Mounted) as Captain Bob West, Dorothy Arnold (Secrets Of A Nurse) as Jean Drew, Edwin Stanley (The Man Who Came To Dinner) as Dr. Fred Mallory, Regis Toomey (His Girl Friday) as Jim Daly, Jack C. Smith (Hittin' The Trail) as Monk, Ed Wolff (The Phantom of the Opera) as The Robot, Dora Clement (The Philco Television Playhouse) as Ann Zorka, and Edward Van Sloan (Dracula) as Jarvis.

There was honestly so much potential with this film that it started going downhill the deeper the film went. I mean the story just started to get too dumb and they made the government look really stupid with how many times an item was stolen and then retrieved only to be stolen again and then only to be retrieved again. It was almost like they kept running out of stuff to write about so they were like hey just have this guy steal it only to be returned. There were things that I did like about the film and one of them was definitely Bela Lugosi for one who was superb as usual and the other thing was the robot that they created which has ended up on the stage of Rob Zombie when he performs live and in some of his music videos. The robot even moves on stage exactly the same way he does in the film which I always thought was really cool. I definitely thought that there should have been more of him, but I understands why they chose to save him at times. The final sequence is kind of funny because they show archived footage of the burning Zeppelin and they show that  it was Zorka's fault for that happening as he plans to show the world his wraith. Again, I thought it was a film that had a lot of great ideas that just were not executed to it's full potential, but it's still a fun movie to watch which is why I am going to give it an B- for a final grade.