Customer Reviews

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This film is much better than it looks. Its a film about the exploration of Venus and its really good especially if you factor in when it was made. The scenes with Basil Rathbone at the lunar base are definitely a little hokey and I didnt recognize Faith Dominque (This Island Earth) at first, but the rest of the film is great! The plot is basicly explore Venus and rescue the first team that landed and got into trouble. The explorers have a really neat hover craft that they travel in to save their comrades. There is a tough metal robot that is realistic. Dinosaurs and other nasties try to make a meal of various crew members without success. Its just an all around fun film along the gendre of First Spaceship to Venus. The special effects are innovative and impressive especially considering the time when the film was made. I saw this film when I was a kid and was happy to make its reacquaintance. If you like classic science fiction, you will love this film.

PRE-HISTORIC PLANET is one of three AIP films that contain stolen fottage from Russian soviet epic, PLANET OF STORMS. I think that the footage was "discovered" by Roger Corman who was wroking for AIP around this time. The film is an incredibly slow made-for-TV movie but once it gets going it's a bent, giddy and unintentionally hilarious romp with lots of weird looking sets and hilarious looking dinosaurs. If you enjoyed this classic, take a look at the even-better PLANET OF BLOOD (AKA: QUEEN OF BLOOD).

VOYAGE TO A PREHISTORIC PLANET was made in 1965, stars Basil Rathbone, and the cover depicts one snarling and one glaring dinosaur towering over three space-suited astronauts. Does anything more really need be said?

Plot - The year is 2020 and American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts are traveling to Venus. I've read somewhere that this is a Russia film that had scenes inserted and some phony American credits plastered on it prior to release, but wasn't interested enough to see if my favorite internet search engine could cough up the answers to that mystery. Rathbone plays a scientist on the satellite Lunar 7 and the other `star' in this one, Faith Domergue, is an astronautlette on the Venus-orbiting Vega. A handful of `nauts and John the Robot are on the Venus surface, dodging the stray alamosaurus and/or 12-foot-tall man-eating venus flytrap while finding evidence of an ancient Venusian civilization.

There probably was an okay Russian movie here before Roger Corman Productions got their hands on this one. John the Robot is cool and some of the special effects are a cut above the standard glop they were putting out then. The story drags terribly, though, and Rathbone is apparently included for name recognition rather than to serve the plot or to move things along. Thankfully, they don't dress him up in a goofy costume or otherwise embarrass him. The pacing is terrible, the dubbing is atrocious and there's no drama to speak of. The print, although the color is somewhat washed out and there are some scratches, is in okay condition. Not recommended.

Okay, according to my research "Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet" is a Roger Corman production that uses footage from a 1962 Soviet science fiction film produced by the Leningrad Studio of Popular Science Fiction films and entitled "Planeta Bur" (variously translated as "Planet of Storms" and "Storm Planet," but more accurately titled at one point "Cosmonauts on Venus"). This Soviet film was apparently strong on production design, but weak on the plot: Cosmonauts and their robot, that plays dance music, land on Venus looking for intelligent life but only find dinosaurs, killer plants, and, of course, a volcanic eruption. As the crew departs an intelligent Venusian watches they leave. Anyhow, much of the footage from the Venus sequences was used in "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" in 1965, intercut with new material from writer/director John Sebastian (a pseudonym of Curtis Harrington), which does not really constitute a remake of the Soviet film, but which is certainly in the ballpark. Some of the "Planeta Bur" footage was used in another Corman production, "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" (1966, a.k.a. "Gill Woman), which was Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut courtsey of the Roger Corman apprenticeship program.

"Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet" stars Basil Rathbone as Professor Hartman, who is in charge of Earth's expedition of three ships to Venus, even though he is back on a Moon Base. One of the ships is taken out by a meteor while another crashes on Venus, leaving the third to rescue it (good thing they sent three ships, huh?). There is one beautiful women in the crew, played by Faith Domergue, but she does not get to go down on the planet. That is because the footage of the astronauts is really of the cosmonauts from the Soviet film, and they did not have a woman in their crew. Got it? Anyhow, two of men from the rocket in orbit, along with their robot, go down to the surface to rescue the crew from the rocket that crashed. There they encounter, well, dinosaurs, killer planets, and, of course, a volcanic eruption. Meanwhile, the big question down on Venus is whether the planet is inhabited by beautiful women. This question might be more than wishful thinking, because some of the boys think they hearing a woman's voice singing.

I have to admit that all things considered I would be more interested in seeing "Planeta Bur," even without subtitles, than "Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet" (I have a question about that title: do you have to have "humans" to have history? Because these "dinosaurs" are probably a lot smarter than these humans so maybe they have some sort of oral history going at this point). There are just too many unintentional laughs in this film to ever take it seriously and the cutting back and forth between the old and the new is no where as smooth as it is in, say, the original "Godzilla" with Raymond Burr. Of course, there is something to be said for a "remake" that includes so much footage from the original. But I will stop now. This is a party movie, not something for the serious connoisseur.

This is for those of you who have a taste for the strange, esoteric joys of B moviemaking. Notorious cheapie producer Roger Corman has evidently bought an interesting, serious sci-fi opus made in the '50s behind the Iron Curtain, dubbed it into English and added brief scenes of the great thespian Basil Rathbone and Faith (This Island Earth) Domergue and it comes off like something David Lynch would dream up! It makes no sense, but it's fascinating! Rathbone's diction is so veddy erudite (though noticeably slurred in one scene), and he seems bored and bummed out, but he's got the MAGIC- even though his scenes are shot entirely seperate from everyone else in the movie. Domergue, gorgeous just a few years before, is unrecognizable- something dreadful was happening to this actress to make her so haggard and listless. She "communicates" with cosmonauts on Venus through a microphone on a panel, and halfway through, removes her lab coat to reveal her once stunning figure in a sweater. After that, the two English-speaking actors are not seen again (they dub in some dialogue to "explain" what happened to Domergue). The cosmonauts are obviously from another movie. They all look so Slavic it's amazing (kind of resemble young Charles Bronson): short noses, long upper lips, wide, stern mouths, beetling brows, and craggy cheeks, but with teased Kremlin-style pompadores like TV evangelists (what is it with Communism and high hair, does it represent Progress?) The prop designs are pure Workers' Paradise Futurism: retro-cool (to us) spacesuits, and a robot that looks like it lumbered out of a Socialist Realist poster. Whatever language they're speaking, the consonants and vowels roughly match up with the English translation, but the dialogue is delivered so monotonously by the dubbers, and the "philosophical" discussions are so awkwardly pointless, that the odd phrasing and long, inappropriate pauses make for a very weird dialogue track. There's an impressive Brontosaurus (basically stationary), a nifty man-eating plant, some ridiculous men in rubber dinosaur suits and a "pteradactyl" that looks like a vulcanized rubber Muppet, but the coolest thing is the hovering, bubble-topped land-rover they ride around in. Get the Diamond Entertainment version that has "First Spaceship on Venus" on the same DVD- the transfer is basically in magenta and gray, panned and scanned by a guy who obviously wanted to get home early, and in one scene there's a green, horn-shaped piece of crud that gets stuck in the film gate for about 20 seconds, but I got it for under $7, and I was spellbound.

Watch about 15 minutes of this and you'll realize that something's terribly wrong. Yes, Basil Rathbone is in it, but he seems quite marginalized and does not really have a leading role as you'd expect. As far as I can tell he is only in it for the name recognition.

Soon you start to see the scenes of astronauts approaching venus and.... Whoa! Aren't these actors dubbed? Yes they are, and very badly at that! It turns out that the film was spliced together from mostly Soviet footage. Not only are they badly dubbed, but it seems like maybe the director just asked a bunch of his out-of-work friends to do the dubbing. It has all the dramatic effect of someone reading "Run Spot Run".

Surely things will pick up once they reach the planet? Well they do -sort of. No sooner are they out the door when one of the astro-- oops cosmonauts gets attacked by none other than a giant Venus fly trap. Yes, a Venus fly trap. Who would have guessed you'd actually find them on Venus!

The astro, I mean cosmonauts, seem generally unsurprised to find prehistoric life existing on the planet. When they see that there are dangers galore, do they alter their plans? Have a meeting to decide what to do? No, they just plough on ahead with a devil-may-care attitude. Hey if they are in trouble, maybe Robot John can save them. Maybe.

Another question, does this film even have an actual plot? Or is it simply: Astronauts land on Venus and have various difficulties when they get there?

I suppose it doesn't help that I couldn't finish this movie. I watched about 2/3 of it and decided it was a truly terrible way to spend a perfectly good hour.

The politics of saving at all costs coupled with a good ability to use scissors and assembly, rather than to kick up a fuss, in the '60s still ensures a good response from the audience and this film is one of the best known examples American science fiction films made by using long lengths of Russian films. (The seven sailors of the space) aka Planeta Burg (which is considered appropriate to mention the cast titles) comes from Harrington cut, reassembled and sewn around some specially filmed sequences in the studio (and think for themselves be reused later) with an anonymous Basil Rathbone in the scientist. The plot itself is the carbon paper copy of the story told by the director Pavlev Klushantsev
This imaginative and highly visual film is actually a Soviet-made production titled Planeta Bur, which was purchased by Roger Corman and American International Pictures and refashioned into a more simplistic science fiction-adventure for American audiences. Former experimental filmmaker and Kenneth Anger associate Curtis Harrington (using the nom du cinema John Harrington) was pressed into directing new footage featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue, which was incorporated into the film for Hollywood name value (such as it was at the time). The end result gives enticing glimpses of Russian director Pavel Klushantsev's original vision and some impressive special effects (most notably, the air car and the crew's mechanical helpmate Robot John), which are unfortunately dampened by the newer, more awkward-looking scenes. Ever the penny-pincher, Corman recycled the Russian footage for a second, less coherent feature, 1966's Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, which featured scenes with Mamie Van Doren shot by then-novice director Peter Bogdanovich.

old movie with alot to offer, old style models(hover crafts,rockets, Space men, Dinosaurs, a Robot, giant flying vulture thing with bad hair that moved like it had a hangover, and rubber suit lizard men ( I bet I could have fought them off without a pistol) acting is above average all in all some time was spent in the visual art department, so yeah,. I liked it.. I have a soft spot for these types of movies(always better than watching reality shows)So for a price less than a small bag of popcorn, you too can experience, a cool oldy..Show your kids this stuff because it won't be around in the future,..goofy effects will always bring smiles.. Gets on the B table but no plus + takes a Hit for the effects,. cheesy but alot of fun to watch..
(B+ movie "Mosquito") expensive and worth it for the collection..

IN A NUTSHELL: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING IN SPACE + BASIL RATHBONE & FAITH DOMERGUE

'Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet', starring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue is essentially a Russian film originally titled, 'Planeta Bur' [Planet of Storms]. With Roger Corman as Executive Producer, the original film was rather abruptly and crudely edited, and then the two aforementioned American actors' roles were basically pasted on to the film for audience appeal as nothing more than a trite afterthought.

----> MAJOR CAST MEMBERS <----

Basil Rathbone - Prof. Hoffman

Faith Domergue - Marsha

Marc Shannon

Christopher Brand

John Bix

Lewis Keane

----> CREW MEMBERS <----

Curtis Harrington - Director / Screenwriter

George Edwards - Producer

Vilis Lapenieks - Cinematographer

Ronald Stein - Composer (Music Score)

WHAT 'Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet' IS ALL ABOUT:

Well, this film is a rather shabbily constructed much-ado-about-nothing space-opera. There are a few notable special effects, such as, the hovercar, the robot [John], and the jumping men in the rubber dinosaur suits. There is also something resembling a brontosaurus but it does not look or act very convincing.

This film is really hurt by the fact that it is obvious that niether Rathbone or Domergue are ever really in scenes with the rest of the original cast, and are in fact in a seperate production spliced into the original feature to gain the attention of American audiences. This promotional effort is done to the detriment of the finished film.

BOTTOM LINE: A POOR PRINT OF A DISAPPOINTING FILM ABOUT A MOST INTERESTING TOPIC - SPACE EXPLORATION

I would suggest trying to find a copy of 'Planeta Bur', the original Russian film or simply look for something else within the genre to watch.

Yes, this is indeed the eastern european sci fi classic in it's Cormanized form, before being totally destroyed in it's final VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN incarnation. Here we get added scenes of Basil Rathbone as the head of an extremely boring moonbase, and Faith Domergue as Marcia, the communications relay person between the moon and Venus. On Venus itself, we have two sets of astronauts (cosmonauts) looking for each other. One group encounters a man-eating plant (much like the one in Angry Red Planet), a bunch of stuffed dinosaur puppets, and a mysterious singing lady. The others must deal with a horde of lizard-men, the lava from an erupting volcano, and a robot that wants to dump them into the molten flow! Speaking of the robot, it's actually pretty cool looking. It's up there with Robby (Forbidden Planet) and the B9 (TV's Lost In Space)! All in all, VTTPP is a good waste of time on a rainy afternoon...