The Phantom Creeps

Rating:
Summary: Lugosi Destroys the Hindenburg!
Review: "The Phantom Creeps" (1939) is 12 chapters of Universal serial hokum. In other words, it's a lot of fun. Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Zorka to the hilt, ably assisted by Universal's vast catalog of stock footage and classic music scores. The final chapter is particularly memorable, as mad scientist Lugosi gleefully brings down the Hindenburg. Universal did not make the best serials, but "The Phantom Creeps" is one of the studio's better efforts with Lugosi in top form.

Rating:
Summary: Lugosi Destroys the Hindenburg!
Review: "The Phantom Creeps" (1939) is 12 chapters of Universal serial hokum. In other words, it's a lot of fun. Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Zorka to the hilt, ably assisted by Universal's vast catalog of stock footage and classic music scores. The final chapter is particularly memorable, as mad scientist Lugosi gleefully brings down the Hindenburg. Universal did not make the best serials, but "The Phantom Creeps" is one of the studio's better efforts with Lugosi in top form.

Rating:
Summary: Unfathomable phantom
Review: I bought this DVD to replace a Beta tape version I had made several years back. I like my tape better. This is a great, campy serial, but the terrible source quality of this DVD version makes it a poor choice. The original film (16 mm.?) jumps in spots; the dark contrast makes some scenes impossible to fathom; and the soundtrack is muffled and uneven.

Rating:
Summary: Creepy Bela
Review: The Phantom Creeps was Bela Lugosi's last serial. Lugosi is Dr. Zorka another mad scientist looking to take over and control the world. He tries to achieve this World domination with a number of gadgets. He has built an 8-foot robot, a belt that makes him invisible, and a gas that suspends animation, which he delivers with mechanical spiders. Through the 12 episodes an Army intelligence officer and a newspaperwoman chase him.

The 12 episodes are:

1) The menacing Power
2) Death Stalks the Highway
3) Crashing Timbers
4) Invisible Terror
5) Thundering Rails
6) The Iron Monster
7) The Menacing Mist
8) Trapped in the Flames
9) Speeding Doom
10) Phantom Footprints
11) The Blast
12) To Destroy the World

I purchased this DVD because Bela Lugosi was in it. I was not disappointed - I have really enjoyed it. The quality is not bad. There are options to play each episode or play all 12 continuously.

Rating:
Summary: Good Serial, Bad DVD
Review: The Phantom Creeps, Bela Lugosi's final movie serial, holds a special place in my memories for being the first complete chapterplay I had seen. I had seen portions of others but never a complete one before this. Lugosi steals the serial as Doctor Alex Zorka, a brilliant scientist who has made a series of inventions from a meteorite he found in Africa--via footage from "The Invisible Ray" for the Africa sequence. He wants to sell his secrets to the highest bidder, but the US Government wants to stop him. What is unusual for this serial is that I feel that Zorka was initially the good guy of the story before the US and a spyring start looking for his secrets and thus hounding him into insanity. The DVD for this is painful. The print used retains the Commonwealth (TV?) logo instead of the normal Filmcraft or Universal logo. Sound is muddy at quite a few places. Picture will be dark in a few places--sometimes in a daytime scene. They use only one set of opening credits for the 12 chapters. Normally, Universal would use a opening which showed the main cast for its first 3 episodes while the remaining episodes would use an opening that merely lists who the actors were. It is this second opening that is on the DVD and is only used once for all 12 chapters. There are no extras on this disc, such as a trailer, although you can choose to play it all at once or select an individual chapter. There is an insert with information on Lugosi. There are better VHS copies out there and in my own collection at one time I had an actual film print which had the Universal logo. I can't really recommend this DVD unless you don't have a copy of this serial at all. I wouldn't buy another disc from Whirlwind Media, the releasers of the disc, unless it was an extremely rare serial that probably would not be released any other way. Now if only Universal would get off its duff and start releasing their own serials instead of letting people with Public Domain prints do it, I might be a little bit more happy.

Rating:
Summary: wacky editing mania
Review: This tape is nuts. When it arriaved at my house I was very dissapointed to find that it was only 80minutes long. The other version said that all the twelve episodes fill about 200 minutes. So i was bummed that i only got volume one out of 3 or something. But It turns out that this tape is a compilation of the best moments throughout the serial. This procedure of turning 200 and something minutes into 80 minutes a fun and wacky ride. There are so many jambled up plot lines, people running into scenes then back out in a cut, and then peopleliving through speeding plane wrecks and car explosions (With no explination). Over all the tape is rockin and I highly recommend it. A Cheasy Good Time!