To The Stars By Hard Ways (1981)

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Whenever there's a Sci-Fi/Fantasy film festival doing a special around virtually untraceable movies, in my case the Offscreen Festival in Belgium, you simply must attend it as much as possible, because where else will you ever be offered the chance to see titles like "To the Stars by Hard Ways". The festival scheduled a theme around Sci-Fi movies from behind the Iron Curtain and, amongst more commonly known classics like the original "Solaris" and "In the Dust of Stars", they showed this peculiar but strangely poetic and compelling space allegory that consists of three main chapters. The film is set in futuristic Russia, where stereotypical house robots stroll around bleeping and people go to their jobs on distant planets. An outer space mission brings back an intergalactic female immigrant who has curly white hair behaves very nervously. The lead astronaut decides to take her into his house for research and to introduce her to earthly hospitality. The first chapter of "To the Stars by Hard Ways" revolves on the girl, Niya, integrating with her new family. She becomes friends with the astronaut's mother and adolescent son and learns about jealousy when she meets his girlfriend. In spite of her relatively happy new life, Niya has unclear but nightmarish flashbacks about what overcame her on her own planet. The tone of this first chapter is moody but tolerably sentimental. It's like a futuristic soap opera, but from the Soviet Union. The second chapter depicts the space trip to Niya's home planet Dessa. The nightmares and flashbacks stimulated her to slip aboard as a stowaway during Stepan's first official mission as an astronaut. The second chapter really is nothing more than a transition between the sequences on earth and on a distant planet. The middle section is rather dull and contain quite a few irrelevant and unnecessary comical interludes, like dropping off a passenger on his home planet called Ocean. He's a watery blubber thing who lives in a washing machine and is petrified of cats. The third and final chapter is the most interesting for the fans, as it concerns pure and genuine Sci-Fi full of desolate apocalyptic landscapes, malignant looking alien races and uncanny atmosphere. Niya's planet Dessa has become uninhabitable due to a massive industrial catastrophe while the tyrannical rules, called the Turanchoks, are selling clean oxygen at high prices. The final chapter of "To the Stars by Hard Ways" is exciting, often unsettling and very absorbing. It's a bit of a shame that most comments around here (expect for those written by Russian users) are so harshly negative and mainly talking about the notorious MST3K treatment that the movie received in the late 80's. Now, I'm as much a fan of MST3K as anyone else, but there's a lot more underneath this film's campy surface and deserves some deeper analysis. People are complaining about the horrible dubbing, the terrible music, the cheap and campy special effects and the bad acting performances. I beg to differ on practically all points. Another major advantage about seeing this type of movies at a festival is that they respect cinema enough to seek for a 35mm version in the original language. Personally I liked the psychedelic music tunes and the special effects, well, … Naturally they're not very groundbreaking or on par with the contemporary super popular "Star Wars" franchise, but what do you expect from a film from a politically and hermetically sealed off country without much of a cinema culture. "To the Stars by Hard Ways" is primarily a very ambitious story-driven movie, from the hand of the acclaimed Russian novelist Kir Bulychyov and directed by Richard Victorov with great devotion and passion for Sci-Fi. The acting is terrific, especially from the central figure Yelena Metyolkina who made her first ever screen appearance in this film. "The the Stars by Hard Ways" definitely isn't without flaws, but it's a captivating experience that forces you to switch on your brain functions as well as all your senses. Recommended, but please watch the original version or the respectfully restored 2001 version.

"Per Aspera Ad Astra" is really excellent film. It contains a lot of poetry elements. It is very sorry that American lookers cannot view this movie with the correct translation. The author of screenplay Kir Bulychov is a famous Soviet sci-fi writer. He is author of such books as "Girl From The Earth", "The Last War", "Wonders in Guslyar", "Witches' Cave", "The Settlement" etc. And fine music of composer Alexey Rybnikov. In 1970's in USSR Rybnikov was known as author of music for some children's movies. Some musical fragments from "Per Aspera Ad Astra" were used in famous Rybnikov's opera "Juno and Avos". The work of creators of this film was awarded in 1982 with State Prize of Soviet Union.

Cherez ternii... was released when I was a boy of 14 living in the Soviet Union and hungry for anything sci-fi. Well, this one fit the bill perfectly. With a typical 1980s story (ecological catastrophe, hints on the "soullessness of the capitalist society") and special effects somewhat more advanced than those of the British Dr. Who series, it still was two heads above anything else released in the USSR until then.The film became an instant hit.Now, keep in mind that we could not see the Star Wars or any other of the many Western sci-fi flicks of the time, with rare exceptions. And the sci-fi culture of the "socialist camp" was, no pun, campy. Special effects were typically like those of the early Dr. Who series (not that we had heard anything of Dr. Who either), and the plot simple as a nursery rhyme. In this context, Cherez ternii was a star indeed.Plus, the nude scene, albeit short, was unusual for the Soviet cinematography of the time and rather attractive to the boys who had just advanced to the adolescent state.All this made the fan base of the movie as wide as the Soviet Union itself, which is about as wide as Russia is now. Speaking of which, those boys of 1981 are today grownups, and so they decided to re-release Cherez ternii, with an improved picture and sound quality and somewhat rehashed frame sequence. If you understand Russian and decide to watch it, you can order it online.As an adult, I would rate Chere Ternii k Zvezdam about the same as an average Star Trek episode, no better, no worse. Wish I could see Star Trek when I was a child.The director of Cherez Ternii, R. Viktorov, made two more cult sci-fi films: Moskva-Kassiopeya (Moscow to Cassiopeia) and Otroki vo Vselennoj (Youths in the Universe). Check them out if you feel like it.Oh, and btw, this Sandy Frank's version, Humanoid Woman, is total crap. But you knew that already, didn't you?

Cherez ternii k zvyozdam (aka. To Stars by the Hard Ways) is one strange, yet also rather campy, entertaining B-movie from Eastern Europe.NOTE: This review is *not* on the "Americanized" version called "Humanoid Woman" which was rather hillarious on MST3K (screw you Sandy Frank!), this on the original Russo-Ukrainian version.This doozy starts off with a group of Soviet Astronauts going to an abandoned Alien labratory on some planet is space, I guess. In a crazy weightless sequence, which is from what I've heard, filmed underwater, they run into a lone surviving alien woman who looks like Final Fantasy 7's Jenova after having chaemotherapy. Luckily, she does not touch anything, well, except for a picture of ol Gorbychov ^_~When she gets to Earth, she learns Russian, uses telekinetics, floats off of the vegitation, does actrobatic stunts, getting used to Earth's climates and stranger yet, she hangs with "Rosie the Robot" with a vacuum-cleaning rear end!However, everything on Earth is not peaches or creame, since there are some treasure hunters who want to use her at the archaeological dig, so they can become rich and famous. Then, the alien girl sees some people from her planet getting interviewed on TV. She regains her memory and sets back to her home world.This is where it gets even funner! There are old wisemen midgets, clowns and harlequins wanting world domination and better yet, a raw seawge plie monster, possibly a distant relative of Hedorah from "Godzilla vs. Hedorah". Wouldn't surprise me, since they seem to be such similar beings, plus, they are very ummmmmm......different!Anyways, this movie is on Eastern European cult movie that you have to see to believe!