Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet

European DVD box-cover art
Directed by Pavel Klushantsev
Curtis Harrington
Produced by George Edwards
Roger Corman
Stephanie Rothman
Written by Curtis Harrington
Starring Basil Rathbone
Faith Domergue
Marc Shannon
Gennadi Vernov (uncredited)
Georgiy Zhzhonov (uncredited)
Music by Ronald Stein
Cinematography Vilis Lapenieks
Arkadi Klimov
Edited by Leo H. Shreve
Distributed by AIP-TV
Release dates
 1 August 1965
Running time
 78 min
Country US / USSR
Language English

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet is a 1965 American science fiction film, one of two versions adapted for Roger Corman from the Soviet science fiction movie Planeta Bur (Planet of the Storms), scripted by Aleksandr Kazantsev from his novel and directed by Pavel Klushantsev. Curtis Harrington oversaw the editing and dubbing of principal portions of the source film, and directed new principal scenes featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue. The resulting new film was then syndicated to television by American-International Television Inc.

Plot

The film essentially follows the story of the Soviet original, with Rathbone and Domergue replacing two Soviet actors in roles as space-station monitors of the primary action. The rest of the film stars the remaining Soviet players, dubbed.

In the revised telling, it is 2020 and the Moon has been colonized. After traveling 200,000,000 miles, the first group of men land on Venus, where they find a prehistoric world in which the crew are attacked by various monsters, plants, etc.

Personnel

Cast

Production

The American-made scenes were shot at the same time as Queen of Blood, another film directed by Harrington that was developed around the story of, and footage from, a Soviet film (and which also used incidental effects shots from Planeta Bur). Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue shot their scenes in half a day using the same costumes and on the same set as Queen of Blood.[1] While Harrington considered Queen of Blood good enough to keep his name on, in this film he is credited as "John Sebastian", derived from Johann Sebastian Bach.

Reception

In a retrospective on Soviet science fiction film, British director Alex Cox called Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet "an act of cinematic cannibalism."[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ray, Fred Olen (1991). The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors. McFarland. pp. 53–55.
  2. ↑ Cox, Alex (June 30, 2011). "Rockets from Russia: great Eastern Bloc science-fiction films". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved August 22, 2016.
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