AustLit

'"Phantom Gold" is interesting because it takes Central Australia as its scene, and aborigines as some of its principal characters. The story tells of Harry Lasseter, the prospector, who set out in 1930 with the intention of finding again a rich gold-bearing reef which he had stumbled on during an earlier expedition. He attained his objective; but on the return journey he died of thirst and hardship. This lugubrious plot Is set forth in silent action, while a commentator describes what is going on. Could the verbal description have been made as gaunt as the pictorial record, or, alternatively, could the visual aspects of Lasseter's suffering have been presented with more dramatic realism, the film might have turned out quite a creditable production. But, as matters stand, the contrast between Si Meredith's inflated, sometimes positively dithyrambic, mode of speech and the utter artlessness of everything seen on the screen rapidly becomes grotesque.'

Source:

'Phantom Gold', Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 1937, p.6.