First Spaceship on Venus (1962)

I'll never turn down the opportunity to watch an old sci-fi or horror B movie. They represent some of my favorite guilty pleasures. But this one didn't work for me at all.I have a feeling that the dubbed script didn't translate properly. I'm also sure the available version has been cut to shreds - at least I hope it was because I could make little sense from of any of it.The plot may potentially have been interesting but I was lost from the opening moments over the frenetic analyzing of the "spool" (or whatever it was). The casting went way overboard in trying to make the crew into a miniature League of Nations. I'm sure it was intended as a fine gesture but it was so contrived as to be irritating. The various creatures and situations encountered on the planet were all over the map (Venusian map that is). At some points I wondered if a different movie had been inadvertently spliced in during the editing process.I really don't like giving low scores to movies like this because I believe they need to be rated in an alternative manner but I'm stretching just to give it a 3.

Well it started out super boring, I fast-forwarded it to the just over a half of an hour mark and stopped to watch again. What caught my eye was them on Venus in their sparkly silver suits, a robot running around and a pretty eerie looking atmosphere. I watched for a few more minutes then was so bored with it I had to fast-forward to the end.I enjoy some of the Mill Creek 50-pack hidden gems but this film is not one of them to me. I found it in their Sci-Fi Classics collection. The film was jittery but that I can handle, I just can't handle the boredom it gave to me. It just was not my style.2/10

This East German/Polish film called Der Schweigende Stern(The Silent Star) is a really good. The movie is based on a novel called The Astronauts, by Stanislaw Lem. Who also wrote Solaris and that would later be made into a movie in 1972. *** This review may contain spoilers ***The story starts with a mysterious alien artifact is discovered in the Gobi desert in the year 1970. It is found out that it might have come from Venus. An international crew along with a R2-D2 like robot call Omega are sent to Venus and find an apocalyptic landscape with melted buildings and alien shadows on the walls. The astronauts explore the planet and discover that the Venusians were about to attack the Earth but a nuclear war wiped them out. They head back to Earth and warn humanity with an anti-nuclear message. One of the many things I like about the film was the Kosmokrator rocket ship. It's such a unique design like the Luna rocket from Destination Moon(1950)and the Ark from When Worlds Collide(1951).

An artefact from Venus carrying a cryptic message prompts an eminent linguistics professor to travel with a team of experts to the nearby planet where they make a shocking discovery, making sacrifices to save the Earth from imminent catastrophe. It's reminiscent of any number of modern sci-fi tales that involve a group of astronauts defending the Earth, emerging as heroes ("Mission to Mars" or "Sunshine" being more recent exponents of this trend) and probably not as bad as it initially sounds.While the epic idea doesn't quite receive the epic treatment, this German-language sci-fi starring Eurasian leading lady Yoko Tani does manage a watchable level of sophistication in its production values, coupled with some attempts at character development. Tani is attractive if nothing else while Gunther Simon essentially occupies the leading man role, as a friend of her late husband and now neglected romantic interlude. The rest of the cast look professional, though not aided by the clumsy English dubbing.Intricate sets add colour and texture, while there's moments of genuine tension, action, melodrama and humour, even earnest attempts at pathos in the heroic conclusion. The 79 minute version I saw seemed to rush through the climax (though it still conveyed the essentials), although viewing the 93 minute version might possibly be a bit beyond the pale.