Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women

Probably one of the more haunting experiences and viewings as a child I remember because often it was aired at alternative times by it's previous venture, "Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet". I remember feeling confused as to the differences, but by far, "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" presents the better use of the original Russian footage. The closing scenes with the women surrounding their "new god" the lava-destroyed robot, "John", are simply eerie in contrast to the previous scenes from the 1962 Russian film. The voice-over dialog by Mamie Van Doren, while "hokey" in parts, sets the mood perfectly. To appreciate this film for what it is, one needs simply to view it ALONE...in the quiet dead of night. It gets under your skin and stays there. One of the more noteworthy and curious (in my opinion), albeit "lessor known" of Corman's "cut and paste" classics.

I saw this movie as a kid, around 1972 or so, and spent years trying to see it again. Yes, I know, I need a life. I finally found it on DVD in one of those 50 sci-fi movies for $20. The movie itself is pretty bad, but if one enjoys 'bad' sci-fi, then this one is perfect. I still can't figure out how they got their 'space-car' to float around like it did. It looked pretty real, as did a Brontosaurus, but the Pterydactyl looked very cheesy, like it was made by a bunch of 7th graders. Anyway, I watched "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet", then I watched "Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women" back to back. There must have been a gun to my head, I know. The movies use the exact same dubbed Russian "Planet of Storms" footage, but each movie spliced in their own additional footage, and the results produce 2 similar, but different story lines. "Prehistoric Planet" has Basil Rathbone in separate footage, as well as Faith Domergue in her own footage-they are in different space stations.....making for a clumsy (but enjoyable) plot involving rescuing the men on Venus. The robot seems to have a bigger role in this movie, although it is used to some effect in the other. "Prehistoric Women" has Peter Bogdanovich's voice-over narration, and the spliced-in women in clam shell bathing suits (Mamie Van Doren is the leader), who communicate telepathically. I found this one to be much more interesting of the two. The Earth men and Venus women seemed destined to meet each other, they look for each other most of the movie, but alas because it is separate footage, they never do! A somewhat surprise ending makes the movie that more interesting. I do have to comment on the eerie female singing/crying throughout the movies, made it pretty haunting. Also, some of the noises coming from the console of the space-ships sounds exactly like those heard on the original Star Trek TV show. Well, I probably spent more time talking about this movie than the production crew who actually shot the movie!

This film is so awful it's brilliant.

The film is actually a re-edit of a Soviet science fiction film with extra footage of young American girls. Very low budget. The two sets of actors never actually meet.

All the voices are dubbed on afterwards. This covers up the fact that the astronauts are speaking Russian. The "Prehistoric women" communicate through thought waves, so none of them have to talk and act at the same time! I watched this on Sumo TV in the UK. The version I saw still had all the cinema adds spliced in. The adverts for ice cream, popcorn and hot chocolate were still there. There was also an advert for CocaCola.

The whole thing looks like someone had filmed the thing from the stalls on an old Cine camera. Picture blurred and fuzzy, colour almost bleached away.

Unfortunately none of the US actors ever went on to do anything of any significance. The leading lady, Mamie Van Doren, seems to have built her reputation around being a former Hollywood starlet who was supposed to be the next Marylin Monroe and spent five years dating Howard Hughes, from the age of 15! Directed by Peter Bogdanovich (Famous director and also Dr. Elliot Kupferberg in The Sopranos TV series)

Any prospective actor/producer/director should see some of this.

Like many of the reviewers, I watched this after the "Prehistoric Planet" film. I was astonished that there were no changes to any of the previous footage, other than the Bogdanovich voice over and the disappearance of Faith Domergue (Marcia). What has been added is a set of blonde women who hold sway on Venus and worship a Pterodactyl. They have scallop shell bras and hip hugger pants with bell bottoms made of a sheer material. I do remember that Mamie Van Doren was really quite a good looking lady and these really are some attractive women. But they never really speak. They are telepathic. They are there to show that they actually caused much of what happened to the Astronauts in the previous movie. This had to be made for the drive-in crowd to neck and ignore, simply to fill space on a triple feature. It certainly wasn't worth much time and effort.

There's not too much going for this movie. It has a poor plot and poor acting. At the start of the movie, the special effects seem promising but even this quickly disappears and reverts to much lower standards. It seemed to me that the film is far behind the quality of special effects available in 1968. It seemed to be several years behind the times. The actual quality of the film is even poor. The so called prehistoric women did not in the least look prehistoric. To me they just looked very strange. I didn't find this movie to be very interesting and would go as far as calling it boring. I've seen a lot worse but this film is definitely near the bottom of my list and is one that I would not recommend.