Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)

Not copyrighted by Roger Corman Productions. U.S. release through American-International Pictures in 1965. 85 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Landing on Venus, astronauts encounter numerous adventures amongst pre-historic animals.NOTES: Assembled from the Russian film, Planeta Bur ("Planet of Storms" or "Storm Planet"), made by the Leningrad Studios of Popular Science Films in 1962. Kyunna Ignatova played the Marcia character but her footage has been completely replaced by Miss Domergue.PRINCIPAL MIRACLE: Learn how to buy a foreign film and then re-assemble it for American audiences for practically nothing.COMMENT: Now that the full-length American version is now available on DVD, we can appreciate the original's imaginative expertise and rather jolly special effects, despite the loss of some color definition from the Sovcolor sequences. One outstanding scene with the robot ferrying the cosmonauts across a lava flow is worth the cover price alone. Rathbone has only three or four brief scenes and looks both tired and dispirited, though his voice is as powerful as ever. Miss Domergue has quite a lengthy role by comparison but has lost all her heyday appeal. Although the script fails to build up as much tension as it should (we really don't know the characters well enough to be completely absorbed in their fate), Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet offers more than just a simple curiosity interest.

Three rocket ships have been sent to the planet Venus to explore it. As they orbit the planet one is hit by a meteor and destroyed. So with one spaceship in reserve the other descends. It quickly loses contact with the other rocket ship and so all but one of the astronauts are sent from the spaceship in orbit down to the planet to attempt a rescue. What follows is about as dull and sterile of a movie as anything I have ever seen. The dialogue was awful as each of the crew members seemed to be reading their scripts instead of simply talking to one another. Likewise the acting was stiff and awkward with the robot displaying more personality than anybody else in the cast. The creatures they encountered were also quite bad. About the only good things about this film was the aforementioned robot, the air car and the carnivorous plant. In short, while I like movies from this particular time period, I have to say that this was a dull film and not really worth the time spent to watch it.

Derived from a magnificent, early 60's Soviet sci-fi about a manned trip to Venus. The models, sets, vehicles, weapons, robots, costumes, and other tech items are equal to or better than the best of its Western contemporaries in terms of imagination and realism. Co-starring Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone - yes, Sherlock Holmes - in overdubbed scenes designed, I guess, to make you not notice that in the rest of the movie, the dubbed English audio track doesn't follow the Russian lip movements. The original Russian story does come through, of a fantastically complex world explored by men from Earth employing high tech contrivances. In fact, the quality of the engineering is so good, they must have had input from Soviet industry and/or academia. All in all, a fascinating peak into Soviet sci-fi and how Hollywood had to mask its Soviet pedigree to have it accepted by Americans.

"A spaceship orbits the planet Venus, piloted by astronaut Marcia (Faith Domergue). On the surface, two fellow astronauts and a robot companion set out on a voyage of exploration, observed from afar by Professor Hartman (Basil Rathbone). First they are attacked by prehistoric creatures, and then lose their robot in a massive volcanic eruption that consumes the planet," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.This is the first bastardization of the Russian science-fiction film "Planeta Bur" (1962). There are some good visual effects, carried over from the original movie, especially the cosmonauts' airborne planet surface vehicle. But, as astronomers knew, by the 1960s, this film doesn't really depict how a landing on earth's neighboring Venus could possibly look - if they'd have picked another Solar System, they might have had a classic.The use of "Robot John" is one of several similarities to the TV show "Lost in Space" (also appearing in 1965), especially the fourth and fifth episodes of that series. The Robinson family's "Robot" was intended to serve the same function; and, both teams of space travelers encountered "prehistoric" monsters, misguided robot helpers, spaceship weight problems, lost civilizations, and wildly unstable planetary climate changes.The U.S. poorly dubbed this "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet", and inserted footage featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue cheaply into the events. The idea, and actual editing, aren't totally awful, but the low budget production and lackluster performances are a real drag. In 1968, filmmakers proved they could do worse, by editing-in scantily clad young women, and re-releasing the film as "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women".*** Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (8/1/65) Curtis Harrington, Pavel Klushantsev ~ Basil Rathbone, Faith Domergue, Vladimir Yemelyanov, Georgi Zhzhyonov