Teens In The Universe

Teens in the Universe (Otroki Vo Vselennoy) (1975)

Runtime: 80 minutes

Directed by: Richard Viktorov

Starring: Misha Yershov, Aleksandr Grigoryev, Vladimir Savin, Vladimir Basov Ml., Olga Bityukova

From: Gorky Film

Here's the sequel to the film I watched last night, the one I heard was like if Stanley Kubrick was Russian and made this while he was on a drug trip. I was intrigued so I watched both in the past two nights. What a way to start off the week!

To do the plot description myself: To summarize the ending of the first movie, the teenage cosmonauts by accident get to the planet Cassiopeia almost instantaneously; it doesn't take 27 years, although 27 years passes by on Earth. Believe it or not,  the twin paradox is brought up and actually explained accurately. They arrive at the planet and find out it's populated by robots that almost look like humans, and are either all white or all black. Turns out, the robot aliens killed all but a few silver-skinned humanoid aliens, who had to escape to a spaceship; the original robots there, you see, purged them of all emotions and turned them into those robot-humans. The kids and the silver-skinned aliens team up to get rid of those damned robots.

What an surreal acidtrip this turned out to be. It was filmed rather well and there are some wacky tracking shots and whatnot. The music sounds like if 1975 Miles Davis ingested a lot of peyote. It's bizarre spacey jazz... or something like that. Then again, at other times it sounds like Sun Ra from the 60's or 70's; that's definitely spacey eccentric jazz if you've never heard it. The alien planet did look sparse, with some weird things hopping around you only see from far away and aren't explained. The indoor building on the planet is austere and ornate, with a lot of white all over the place. It's also an interesting story, as shown already when I stated its plot. It's interesting and mature, especially for an old kids movie. I am glad things weren't dumbed down, an unfortunate modern trend.

Overall, the film is certainly different and yet it works both as phantasmagorical journey and as an entertaining story.

To best show how strange this movie is, someone made a 6 minute video containing scenes from the film set to Kraftwerk's Robots, which is awesome as hey, it's Kraftwerk.

Also, as it may be hard to find, a copy of this movie is on YouTube with subtitles. At least it is at this moment. The subtitles aren't always in sync but alas... or so I've heard... Here's a link to it.

I'll return tomorrow night.