Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)

Memorable, crazy movie

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Well, having now explored a bit of background for this film, much has now been explained like the words not moving with the lips of the actors and the planet, costumes, and special effects of the astronauts on Venus being so much more superior than the scenes with Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone in white lab coats and little else of any cost. Quickie director/producer and later mogul Roger Corman lifted a Soviet science fiction film and then made a few adjustments and added some "American" scenes with Domergue and Rathbone under the direction of Curtis Harrington. I agree with many of the reviewers that the Soviet film is rather good. I would have enjoyed seeing it in its natural form. That film, based on what I saw here, had vision. But this film is not Corman's nor Harrington's but rather nothing more than stolen(whether it be legally or not) property. And let's face it - Harrington's additions are so poorly crafted and acted that they detract from the film rather then add to them. Basil, only a couple of years from death, looks soooo tired. Faith has all the vitality of cardboard in her scenes. She is the epitome of wooden acting -and it is easy to understand why as she has no one to really talk to or act off. The film in this form has only maybe six or seven brief scenes with Harrington's additions. The rest is a fairly innovative Soviet film definitely worth a peek. but let's not give undue credit to anyone who is not Soviet here just for taking another's product and repackaging it. You also must realize that the silly dialog and loose ends this picture have are due to the film being "squeezed" into something it was not meant to be.

A shocker like Killers from Space at least had a continuous sequence of action and a logical following of the scenes, an explicit continuity—notwithstanding the goofiness of the rest —while some of the surreal delight VPH gives us is due to a fanatical incoherence—though the viewer gets each time the chance of guessing what was left out and unexplained. On the other hand, the method herein is fair—it stimulates perspicacity and it creates strange effects of narrative perspective, putting things in weird perspectives (logical perspectives, I mean).That such a Z movie ever gets to be released, that someone like Rathbone accepts to associate his own name with such an infamy, these are of the grotesque's domain. In the cinema's history, these are disconcerting facts. (It is true that even the cop drama franchises of the '80s—those with Willis, Gibson, Murphy, Nolte—did get to be released .) To put it straight, VOYAGE is nor a respectable, straightforward, ambitious B movie, neither a funnily clumsy B movie (where the campy, goofy note adds some amusement ),but a grotesquely silly Z movie.The girl that acts as the dispatcher for the spaceships does the most annoying whimsical performance I ever saw. The astronauts act like imbeciles and brainless. Their mission on hellish Venus looks like a nerds' trip in the neighborhood. Nothing whatsoever of the many events that succeed is explained or put in context. The poor script is bad on all levels—continuity, logic, etc..Before the tiny budget, there are the script and the actors that damage and wreck the film. The amount of unashamed silliness is insulting. The cretin way of exploring Venus and of taking samples, the petty understanding of what such a mission should be .Extra—goofy Soviet Sci—Fi, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet has a mildly, slightly uncanny charm. The script and the performances are all wrong (among such crap actors, old Rathbone looks quite weird and out of place, with his Flynn/Niven nonchalance misused in this silly primitive film ); yet in the abrupt, random ,chaotic progression of the action there is a certain stellar emotion here .In this primitive, incoherent grammar I have found, nonetheless, a sense of mystery and of contacting the weirdness of a wild world—unfortunately, severely compromised by the chaotic cut, silly script and wrong actors .As it is, the film looked to me interesting and suspenseful, though dramatically primitive and unsubtle. The impression is one of compactness—the underwater sank city, the idol, the ruby, the city below the erupting volcano, the hostile bird, the robot, the rivers of magma ,the carnivorous giant plant, the hoard of reptiles, the carved face found in what seemed a rock, the silhouette reflected in the water .The fauna and flora of the prehistoric planet remain unexplored, _uninvestigated, _un-sampled. The silly, stupid, chaotic, random actions of the astronauts disgust. They have no method, no plan . Their only contact on Earth is an enthusiastic oldster (played by Pére Rathbone ).The hack Harrington made a career (yet,a rather humble and discreet one) out of assembling Russian footage.Maybe Kluşanţev's original film was not so dreary silly?

This movie plodded along more like a modern movie than one of the action packed old time sci fi movies of the fifties and sixties.It involves astronauts finding "prehistoric" life on Venus. So even at the time, it wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. It was an avenue for some excellent photography and camera work. We are treated to visual artistry, which is one of the main reason for producing an action oriented movie.It does do the Raymond Burr bit, though not as obvious as "Godzilla". Still, it becomes apparent about the American add ins. They don't detract from the movie, and work much better than Steve Martin in "Godzilla." It gives the movie the balance needed between scenery and science, giving what is known as "atmosphere." Though it starts very slow and plodding, the last half is full of some well written banter, which includes showing a sense of humor and humanity among the astronauts.Not as fast paced or exciting as most sci fi movies from that era, but that should go well with fans of the dull plodding science fiction of today.Between hard to swallow science and scientist, the dull start,and the postives-the banter, atmosphere, and scenery, I gave this a 4, but see this as a film people will usually rate anywhere from 2 through 7.

In 2020, after the colonization of the moon, the spaceships Vega, Sirius and Capella are launched from Lunar Station 7 to explore Venus under the command of Professor Hartman (Basil Rathbone), but an asteroid collides and explodes Capella. The leader ship Vega stays orbiting and sends the astronauts Kern (Georg Tejkh) and Sherman (Yuri Sarantsev) with the robot John (John Bix) to the surface of Venus, but they have problems with communication with Dr. Marsha Evans (Faith Domergue) in Vega. The Sirius lands in Venus and Commander Brendan Lockhart (Vladimir Yemelyanov), Andre Ferneau (Robert Chantal) and Hans Walter (Georgi Zhzhyonov) explore the planet and are attacked by prehistoric animals. They use a vehicle to seek Kern and Sherman while collecting samples from the planet. Meanwhile John helps the two cosmonauts to survive in the hostile land."Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" is so cheesy and silly that becomes funny. The effects are awful even for a 1965 movie, and the dialogs are very poor. Maybe the director and writer wrote this story and these lines in the elementary school so ridicule they are, specially the lines spoken by scientists. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "O Planeta Pré-Histórico" ("The Prehistoric Planet")