Planeta Bur

Planeta Bur (1962)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056352/

Runtime: 82 minutes

Directed by: Pavel Klushantsev

Starring: Vladimir Yemelyanov, Georgi Zhzhyonov, Gennadi Vernov, Yuriy Sarantsev, Georgiy Teykh, Kyunna Ignatova

From: Leningrad Popular Science Film Studio

This is a random Soviet sci-fi movie I watched on Friday night. It is a fine watch, thankfully. I talk about it below:  

I've known of this Soviet science fiction movie for a long while now, but I finally sat down and watched it last night. It can now be found on Amazon, where it can be rented for only a few bucks. There are also other places online where you can see it... whether you call it Planeta Bur, Planet of Storms, Planet of the Storms, Планета бурь or Planeta Burg (as it's called on Amazon), this movie is most noteworthy to the West as Roger Corman did one of his many tricks to stretch a dollar as far as it can go, and he used footage from this movie to make THREE films... Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, and Queen of Blood.

This movie, the plot is that three spaceships heading to Venus suddenly becomes two after an incident involving an asteroid. This causes conflict. Those that have seen Prehistoric Planet, you know what sights are seen, as PP is an English dubbed version of this, except that they added some scenes of Basil Rathbone and the Russian woman in this was replaced with an American one. Various odd creatures are seen on a world that does look like some odd barren piece of Soviet land (as that's of course where it was filmed) but at least it does look somewhat otherworldly.

I will presume PP has greatly dumbed down dialogue and doesn't have such things as speculation of space travel by ancient civilizations, talk of aliens visiting centuries ago, life on other planets and evolution. Not only are there various adventures on Venus, but the one female character has to stay on the ship and there's a threat of jeopardy because she becomes overemotional about the rest of the crew on Venus because OF COURSE... that was only slightly more surprising than this having Communist propaganda. Somewhat surprisingly, the big wacky robot was actually named John in the original version, too.

The director (Pavel Klushantsev) is little known in the West but aside from the Alien franchise obviously being inspired by certain elements from this movie, people such as Spielberg and Lucas have noted the influence of his work on them. After all, Star Wars was not the first fictional property to have a land speeder. Sure, this movie is kitschy in that 60's sci-fi retro futurism way, but the effects do look good for the time and even with the sexism, it's still a charming flick.