Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Don't Believe the Hype

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Not copyrighted by Roger Corman Productions. U.S. release through American-International Pictures: 1 August 1965. 85 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Landing on Venus, astronauts encounter numerous adventures amongst pre-historic animals.NOTES: Assembled from the Russian film, Planeta Bur ("Planet of Storms" or "Storm Planet"), made by the Leningrad Studios of Popular Science Films in 1962. Kyunna Ignatova played the Marcia character but her footage has been completely replaced by Miss Domergue. In 1968, Peter Bogdanovich re-cut the movie yet again, this time removing all the Hollywood footage of Rathbone and Domergue and replacing it with new material featuring Mamie Van Doren. This cut was released as Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.COMMENT: Now that the full-length American version is finally available on DVD, we can appreciate the original's imaginative expertise and rather intriguing special effects, despite the loss of some color definition from the Sovcolor sequences. I must admit I'm a sucker for robots. And this movie contributes a particularly fascinating creation. One really outstanding scene with the robot ferrying the cosmonauts across a lava flow is worth the cover price alone. Despite his prominent billing, Rathbone has only three or four brief scenes and looks both tired and dispirited, though his voice is as powerful as ever. On the other hand, Miss Domergue (wearing a very peculiar bee-hive hair style-surely totally unsuitable for space travel!) has quite a lengthy role by comparison but appears to have lost all her heyday appeal. Although the script fails to build up as much tension as it should (we really don't know the characters well enough to be completely absorbed in their fate), Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet offers more than just a simple curiosity interest.AVAILABLE on DVD through Alpha. Quality rating: seven out of ten.

Pretty good science fiction film takes a trip to Venus where rubber dinosaur like creatures just a little taller than men roam free, and a blood sucking plant with strong stems that grab the astronauts and attempt to suck them in. A giant pre- historic like bird turns out to be the deity for pre-historic women who are unable to speak but can read each other's minds. When it is killed, the mute women (lead by Mamie Van Doren) bow revenge. Told in narration through flashback by one of the astronauts, it has a very eerie soundtrack and at times is extremely quiet. It is only moderately silly, most obvious when the women pick up the rubber head of the bird. The planet highly resembles the earth, with only a few signs that this is a different world. Scenes in outer space almost seem animated. This ranks as a cult film that manages not to be campy, and that makes it several notches above those films that seemed to go out of their way to appear unintentionally funny.

Yes, it is interesting to read the story of how surplus footage of a Russian sci-fi movie got inter-cut with newly shot footage and capped with a voice-over from Peter Bogdanovich (also directing, and then starting to make his way in this world which we call the biz of show).Yes, it is enterprising, and shows the ingenuity with which someone can take some source material which is perhaps unusable on its own but which has some potential and, thereby, moves towards making a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts.Yes, it explains why what is obvious some fairly well financed production values sit in a movie which is equally obviously dead cheap. It explains why there are some well matched sound effects but no synchronised dialogue: the story is told in voice-over. It may even (though not necessarily explain why the print which appears on TV contains just enough colour value to leave you with the thought that perhaps this was once a colour original.But make no mistake: no matter how ingenious, how fascinating the story behind this film, the movie itself is perfectly, absolutely, irredeemably dreadful to the point of unwatchability (unless you like watching interminable hours of indentikit blonde women in slacks swanning about on rocks as waves break behind them. And believe me, the appeal palls quickly).

Although primitive and low-budget by modern standards, VTTPOPW is worth a watch, especially for fans of this sort of cinema.This film was originally a 1962 Soviet release that was bought by a U.S. producer and then given to apprentice auteur Peter Bogdonavich to pad and repackage for U.S. consumption. As such, it is much less awkward a film than one would expect. There is continuity in the overall sound quality, in certain sonic elements, and in the element of water that smooths over the schisms, and for some inexplicable reason there is a certain otherworldly mood that prevails.The cool science fiction elements such as the robot and the hovercar come exclusively from the Soviet film, and are generally more impressive than the kind of stuff you would have seen in a 1962 U.S. scifi film. The original film also establishes Venus as a moody, damp, cloudy place, and provides the original 'singing' background track.The blond bombshells were added by the U.S. director, and although they should be silly, nonetheless seem to be plausible, mysterious and telepathic, just beyond the detection of the cosmonauts, with their hotpants and bare midriffs.This is a tale of hapless group of men, lonely, struggling for survival, absolutely clueless as to the sense-shattering beauties just beyond, and the impossibly stunning maidens, led by goddess Mamie Van Doren, oblivious to their world's invasion. There is obviously a commentary on the male and female conditions within this scenario.