Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet

"Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet" should be excruciating, but miraculously it's a pretty fun flick - provided you're into the B movie thing (and if you aren't, why on earth are you looking this "masterpiece" up?)

First, a little historical note. Although the American version of the film features the great Basil Rathbourne and that monotonous beauty Faith Domergue, these two thesps were in fact added in to the original footage in order to increase its appeal for a U.S. audience (the movie is actually Russian - or maybe Swedish). They aren't supposed to be there, and you can sorta tell, since they never get involved in the action. Sadly, they end up dragging the movie down, since all they do is communicate with each other by radio, slowing the action to a crawl with lots of pointless dialogue like, "I hope everybody's okay down there on Venus. Keep your fingers crossed..."

Now for the rest. Just about every scene in the movie falls into one of three categories:

(1) Tedious (2) Silly Fun (3) Genuinely Interesting

For #1, you've got lots of milling around in quarries and spaceship sets. For #2, you've got cool rubber monsters and the world's lamest aircar, which waddles along slower than your granny could hobble. For #3, you've got some cool cryptic references to the Venusian civilization, which pretty much remains a mystery for the entire film. I was particularly impressed by the single, indistinct, mysterious shot of the native aliens, and by the carving hidden in a hunk of rock. Too bad the whole movie doesn't deal with tracking down clues about the alien civilization, but alas, it's mostly concerned with techno-talk and survivalism.

Overall - quite good, if you're in the right company.

I'm of the opinion that film is powerful, powerful enough that large segments of our imagination is guided by cinematic relationships. That even the nature of reasoning is affected, even as deeply as how we reinvent practical logic. There are lots of examples to show and arguments to be made -- they are in a collection I am incubating.

Science fiction is a special case, at once more obvious. Not all as subtle as what I study. But surely it had as profound an effect on daily lives.

To understand this film, you need to know some history. Alas, many readers will not appreciate the cold war that was the overriding impetus for the two largest political entities from the 50s through the 80s.

Some dates for you. In 56, the US saw "Forbidden Planet," with a superintelligent robot, space travel and mind augmentation. It was based on Shakespeare's most interesting play and is still among the best scifi films.

In 57, Russia launched a satellite and declared that they "owned" space (and would put nuclear bombs over the US ready to "drop"). Also, that soon, they would have men in space.

In 58 one of the most successful Russian filmmakers (Klushantsev) made a film about "cosmonauts" and space travel that was enormously successful with the Russian public (and their captive peoples). That film was the beginning of a deeper than usual partnership between Klushantsev and the propaganda arm of the Kremlin.

In 1960, an unknown in East Germany made a film (Road to the Stars) about cosmonauts on Venus. It was a runaway hit. In the following year, Kennedy made his famous pledge to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade.

The Soviet moon program had some catastrophic disasters, in large part resulting from lies told to the old Stalin regime by Soviet scientists working on ballistic missiles supposedly (but not really) capable of destroying the US. Khrushchev had these scientists destroyed or imprisoned. That meant no moon program.

But the people already were convinced that Venus was the prize, so the space propagandists seized on this and retooled their manned program as a race to Venus, forget the moon. As a consequence, Klushantsev was given a (for the times and conditions) vast budget and told to make a film of the heroic Soviet nation exploring Venus. This he did in the 62 "Planet of Tempests," known in the US as "Planet of Storms."

The effects developed by this team would be used in strange circumstances for the next 8 years. This crew filmed fake footage of real spaceflights. The Kremlin was never so bold as to fake a success when everyone knew the missions ended in fiery death. But they did decorate their successes with these true-fake movies. The most famous was the 65 spacewalk of Leonov, wonderfully believable until you wonder who is holding the camera. Oddly, the propagandists assumed that the camera eye was such a magical omnipresence that no one would ask.

Anyway, that 62 film was somehow procured by the infamous Roger Corman. He shortened it and dubbed in English. He substituted the blank female (who says in an orbital craft) with an even more blank female. One wonders why; Faith Domergue had been hot 15 years earlier but here is wallpaper. And he adds an earthside leader who radios a few times, played by the already embarrassing Basil Rathbone. Something interesting could be said about his Sherlock Holmes here.

Kubrick's 1968 2001, used many conventions from this shop, even when they went against the science of the thing. And ever since, on through "Star Wars," we have that single vision of what space SHOULD look like.

Anyway, when you see this, you are seeing all these layers. Straight fiction, political fabricated truth, the unreal as more real than the real, the persistence of cinematic imagination, and the crass, stupid exploitations of the whole thing by Hollywood.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Before you view this film, you should read some of the comments on it here on IMDb. Most of the film is lifted from Planeta Burg, a Soviet sci-fi film made around 1960 by none other than legendary American workhorse B film-maker Roger Corman. Corman added Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone and some poorly dubbed English, but, thankfully, left the plot, soundtrack, visuals and most of the dialog intact. What's enjoyable about this film is the original film included within it.

The story line is pretty simple. A manned space flight to Venus encounters many unforeseen challenges, including a great diversity of life forms, including, possibly, intelligent beings. Braving the elements of this tectonically unstable planet, an unbreathable atmosphere and dangerous creatures are several cosmonauts and a powerful and intelligent robotic android (somewhat derivative of Robbie the Robot).

This is a nice piece of mid-twentieth century pulp sci-fi. While it doesn't carry the weight of many of its contemporaries - such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, or Forbidden Planet, etc - it's enjoyable for its clever low budget visual effects, eerie atmospherics, and inventive technological ideas. Great film for sci-fi buffs and film history fans.

The first of two modified versions of a well-done Russian movie, filmed in 1962 under the title "Planeta Burg" ("Planet of Storms") by the Leningrad Studio of Popular Science Films. No kidding.

The original story involves a manned landing on Venus, during which a group of cosmonauts and their seven-foot robot get separated from their comrades while exploring. The designs of both the robot and the astronauts' spacesuits are very impressive. Ditto for the land cruiser the cosmonauts use; it's a floating car that resembles those wonderful "cars of the future" which Detroit produced during the 1950s. In one scene the robot carries the cosmonauts on its shoulders across a lava flow.

Venusian life forms include a few non-animated dinosaurs, but they aren't very threatening other than an attack on the floating car by an ungainly flying reptile. The plot is pretty sedate and actionless, but the dialogue is intelligent. After finding evidence of a low-level civilization, the astronauts speculate on the possibility that Martians tried to colonize Venus but somehow slipped back into more primitive state! Cool idea . . .

In 1965 Roger Corman bought the rights to the film, added some scenes with Faith Domergue ("This Island Earth") and Basil Rathbone, and then released it in America as "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet".

In 1968 he took out the former additions, added more footage, and released it again as "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women". In this third version, Mamie Van Doren and several other well-endowed beauties lay around on rocks by the ocean and make thoughtful faces while they have a telepathic debate concerning the "alien invaders" from Earth. The girls worship a dead pterodactyl until the end of the film, then they pull the wrecked robot from the ocean and start worshipping it instead (proof positive that a blond is a blond, regardless of what planet she's from).

The cosmonauts and the girls never come face to face -- which is no surprise, of course, since their scenes were filmed six years apart on two separate continents. Mamie's scenes were directed by Peter Bogdanovich under the pseudonym Derek Thomas!

It's no secret that until probes were sent to it in comparatively recent times, Venus was thought by the scientific community to be an earthlike planet. That isn't important, of course- the film version of H.G. Wells's THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON postulated the existence of a highly-organized society of intelligent, air-breathing creatures living inside the Moon, and that film was made in the mid-1960s. Hence, when viewed as pure fantasy, I'm willing to grant this movie artistic (and scientific) license.

Yes this one's primitive, but the Soviets didn't have much to work with. I enjoyed this film thanks to the sheer imagination that went into it.

And I've heard the comment before that the Command Ship pilot refers to "propellors." She doesn't. Her reference is to "propellants," i.e., rocket fuel.