| Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet - 1965 | ||||
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Well, you've got to give credit to the folks at American International Pictures. They turned the Russian movie Nebo Sovyot into Battle Beyond the Sun. Then they turned that same country's Planeta Burg into Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet with a little creative dubbing and some filmed inserts with Faith (This Island Earth) Domergue and Basil "Sherlock Holmes" Rathbone. But while Battle Beyond the Sun keeps some integrity of the original material (despite adding some gratuitous monsters) and is successful because of it, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet cobbles things together so awkwardly that it all but destroys the solid production values of the original material. In Planeta Burg, an expedition to Venus is made by three spaceships. One's crew crashlands and contact is lost with them. The second ship's crew goes down to try to make contact and rescue their friends. In orbit remains space chick Marsha, apparently alone on ship three, monitoring the situation and providing communications. What follows is a lot of well-done adventures, monster attacks, 'underwater' and alien scenes that make a well-done and interesting film. Also of note is the truly remarkable robot 'John' (yes, even in Russian, it's 'John'), a huge suit that has the same heavy, clunky engineering that we associate with the Soviet design sense, but which really works marvellously. In the re-worked version, the basic structure remains, with Faith Domergue replacing the female cosmonaut and inserts of Basil Rathbone popping up. Why? Probably just to provide some names in the credits that might interest viewers, because, frankly, the end result is mismatched footage, glaringly obvious dubbing (intercut with the undubbed), the excellent hardware and strong production values of the original material mixed with the low-budget American scenes, and a general lack of a rewarding experience. Get the subtitled version of Planeta Burg and enjoy the thing as it was intended.Believe it or not, the same folks did the exact same thing again with the same movie (adding some different new footage) and put out Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women! If you can't see the Russian footage any other way, go ahead and watch it.
PLUSES: The Russian footage is really good. And John the Robot steals the show. MINUSES: It really diminishes the superior material it starts with. And Faith Domergue was really done an injustice in this film--her hair and make-up is completely unflattering. :-( |
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