Nebo zovyot

I'm giving this movie a 5/5 because it's impossible to judge as it exists today.

NEBO ZOYOT is the proper name for a pioneering 1959 movie made in the Soviet Union as an official state-sponsored arts project under the direction of Mikhail Karzhukov & Aleksandr Kozyr. By all accounts it was a breathtaking, visually intimidating project dominated by special effects work the likes of which had not been seen before. Roughly telling the story of a Russian space crew sent to find out the fate of an earlier mission to intercept an alien probe on collision with earth, the movie combined DR. STRANGELOVE anticipating interior sets, functional looking science fiction props & space wear, and miniature model effects that make the George Pal & Captain Video oriented Americanized science fiction of the day look like laughable kitsch. Even the trend-setting science fiction work of Italian director Antonio Margheriti looks klunky and flimsy alongside of what is left of the movie.

There are reports of the original film running over 2 hours, a grand celebration of the forward thinking ideals of Soviet Russia where technology, human ingenuity, and tightly controlled communist propaganda promised a brave new world. Fortunately or not, Roger Corman anticipated the fall of the Eastern Bloc, managed to catch a screening of the film, and was talented enough to realize that nothing of it's like had ever been seen in the west before. Corman wasn't necessarily a "good" filmmaker but he had an eye for talent and bought the North American distribution rights for the film, determined to wow audiences with a science fiction spectacle the likes had never been seen.

Bringing in a young director/editor of promise named Francis Coppola, Corman oversaw a "redefinition" of NEBO ZOVYOT into a standardized American-ish Sci Fi potboiler about an astronaut crew sent into space to do battle with various space monsters. Corman had Coppola jettison half of the film's somewhat ponderous setup depicting the preparation & departure of the alien probe from it's home world -- one of the most visually striking sequences ever filmed -- opting instead for "new" inserted footage depicting the space monsters doing battle on the hull of our heroic space ship.

Sigh ... the result is more than a bit of a mess that manages to water down the impact of the original material, complete with an illogical story arc that is mostly explained in voice-over narration & awkwardly dubbed English dialog concocted from whole cloth and edited in to fit the on screen action (more or less). The monsters are absurd: One looks like a giant disembodied vulva bedecked with a row of razor sharp teeth, and the looped footage of space suit wearing astronauts standing around -- apparently under the influence of 1g gravity -- does little but elicit snickers of laughter from viewers who get enough pure oxygen every day. Somehow he made this movie look stupid.

Yet there are segments where the original Russian made vision shines through: The opening launch sequences have a kind of majesty to them that Gerry Anderson would never be able to quite achieve with his THUNDERBIRDS creations, the interiors of the space ships all look spot on real enough for Mercury program era technology, and the Russian segments of the film have a texture to them that is mesmerizing ... And make the inserted Coppola-made footage seem all the more absurd. Today it seems hard to understand why Mr. Corman would have advocated trying to fix what ain't broke in such a hamfisted manner, but that's 1962 for you, and fortunately the visual power of the surviving Russian segments worked to cement the film with a fervent cult following that allowed even some of it to survive for forty-five years.

Hopefully with a 50th anniversary of the original film soon coming a restoration effort can be made to show the film with only it's original Russian segments & appropriate language subtitles, like has recently been done with FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS and Pavel Klushantsev's PLANETA BUR, both of which have turned up on excellent DVDs that show the movies without Mr. Corman's interference. Retromedia shows the film under it's Americanized title BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN on a double movie DVD with the Italian space operetta STAR PILOT, and while contemporary audiences may not "get" the funky 60s approach to science fiction I cannot recommend it highly enough.

5/10

1997: after a catastrophic atomic war, the Earth has divided into two rival nations, the North Hemis and the South Hemis, both sides locked in a battle to be the first to land on Mars.

Battle Beyond the Sun started life as a state-sponsored Russian sci-fi movie called Nebo Zovyat— a breath-taking, prophetic vision of the Soviet Union's journey into space; in the disrespectful hands of opportunistic producer Roger Corman and a young and eager-to-please Francis Ford Coppola, what was once awe-inspiring becomes laughable, the pair badly dubbing and drastically re-editing the original two hour epic to a mere 64-minutes of clumsy space melodrama (albeit it with impressive effects), 'enhanced' by silly inserts of space monsters that look suspiciously like genitalia.

It's dull going as the two nations race to the 'Red Planet' only to fail with the finishing line in sight, and the feel-good moral of the tale—that rival nations must co-operate if they want to achieve truly great things—does little to compensate for the sheer shoddiness of the whole cut-and-paste approach and the frustrating fact that the wonders of Mars remain unseen.

BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN opens with a seemingly endless narrated segment, featuring an array of spaceship models. The basic plot involves a race to put together a mission to Mars.

Originally a Russian sci-fi epic, it was bought, Americanized, and sensationalized by none other than Roger Corman. In typical fashion, the story was condensed and new scenes were added in order to heighten the drama and thrills. Corman knew his audience, and that the unaltered film would never make any money at the drive-ins.

Admittedly, American audiences at the time of its release would probably have slept through much of it. Even in its truncated form it's pretty dull., in spite of the dramatic music. That is, until the forced satellite docking. Cue the rubber monsters!

So, another Soviet era space adventure is Corman-ated...

Although bearing the AIP logo and giving the characters all-American names like Craig Matthews and Paul Clinton the credits give the game away by revealing that it's actually a Mosfilm production in characteristically hot colours bought by Roger Corman's Filmgroup who engaged the services of his illustrious protege Francis Ford Coppola (credited as Associate Producer) depicting an international endeavour to colonise Mars; which seemed a far more imminent prospect sixty years ago that it does today, with a couple of monsters thrown in that manage to be both absurd and Freudian in equal measure.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by M. Karzukov and Aleksandr Kozyr (reworked version by Francis Ford Coppola); Produced by Tatyana Kulchitskaya for Dovzhenko Film Studios (reworked version by Roger Corman, released in America by American-International Pictures. Photography by N. Kulchiskiy; Music by Yuli Meitus (reworked version by Carmine Coppola). Starring Ivan Pereverzev and Alla Popova; plus voices by Andy Stewart and Aria Powell.

Another waste of a foreign sci-fi film (from Russia), chopped up, dubbed and voice-over narrated to no avail. Beginning with a boring prologue expressing the authors' inflated view of the film's historical importance, this set in 1997 tale of the race of Earth's two powers (North and South hemis) to claim Mars is virtually devoid of continuity or interesting stuff. Nothing really happens, and just to punch up the action, a foolish fight between a giant insect creature and a headless hulk with eyestalks is inserted amidst otherwise straight science fiction.