Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet is a 1965 American science fiction film, one of two versions adapted for Roger Corman from the Soviet science fiction movie Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms), scripted by Aleksandr Kazantsev from his novel and directed by Pavel Klushantsev. Curtis Harrington oversaw the editing and dubbing of principal portions of the source film, and directed new principal scenes featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue. The resulting new film was then syndicated to television by American-International Television Inc.

Not to be confused with Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women or Women of the Prehistoric Planet.
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet
European DVD cover
Directed byPavel Klushantsev
Curtis Harrington
Produced byGeorge Edwards
Roger Corman
Stephanie Rothman
Written byAleksandr Kazantsev
Curtis Harrington
StarringBasil Rathbone
Faith Domergue
Vladimir Yemelyanov
Georgiy Zhzhonov
Gennadi Vernov
Georgiy Teich
Yuri Sarantsev
Music byRonald Stein
CinematographyArkadi Klimov
Vilis Lapenieks
Edited byLeo H. Shreve
Production
company
Distributed byAmerican International Television
Release date
1 August 1965
Running time
78 minutes
CountryUSSR / USA
LanguageEnglish

Plot

The film essentially follows the story of the Soviet original, with Rathbone and Domergue replacing two Soviet actors in roles as space-station monitors of the primary action. The rest of the film stars the remaining Soviet players, dubbed.

In the revised telling, it is 2020 and the Moon has been colonized. After traveling 200,000,000 miles, the first group of men land on Venus, where they find a prehistoric world in which the crew are attacked by various monsters, plants, etc.

Cast

Production

Roger Corman purchased the rights to Planet of Storms (a Soviet film Planeta Bur) and used footage from that movie to make this movie and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.

The American-made scenes were shot at the same time as Queen of Blood, another film directed by Harrington that was developed around the story of, and footage from, Soviet science fiction films. Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue shot their scenes in half a day using the same costumes and on the same set as Queen of Blood.[1]

Harrington later recalled, "It had to do with a couple of people orbiting the planet Venus. So, I had, instead of the Soviet actors. Faith Domergue orbiting the planet Venus. Then all the scenes with the Russians were dubbed in English. She was in touch with Basil Rathbone who was supposedly on a moon station. That’s all I shot. I shot about a day or two with her as she was in that ship orbiting around planet Venus. All the rest of it was just dubbed stuff."[2]

While Harrington considered Queen of Blood good enough to keep his name on, he is credited in this film as "John Sebastian", derived from Johann Sebastian Bach.

Reception

In a retrospective on Soviet science fiction film, British director Alex Cox called Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet "an act of cinematic cannibalism."[3] Creature Feature gave the movie two out of 5 stars, saying that it looked like it was spliced together with Elmer's Glue.[4]

See also

Notes
  1. 1964 USSR free wrestling champion.

References
  1. Ray, Fred Olen (1991). The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors. McFarland. pp. 53–55.
  2. Madenwald, Marc (Fall 1993). "Who Slew Curtis Harrington?". Psychotronic Video. No. 16. p. 42.
  3. Cox, Alex (June 30, 2011). "Rockets from Russia: great Eastern Bloc science-fiction films". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved August 22, 2016.
  4. Stanley, J. (20000 Creature Feature 3rd Edition


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