Hitchcoc The premise is OK. The Earth has managed to stay afloat despite terrible trials. Two adversarial forces have designs on Mars. The movie is talky and dull. The movie has no pacing and is dull. The science is unclear and dull. There is pointless stuff going on and it is dull. The butchering of the original led to incredible dullness. The special effects were quite dull. The scene at the end with all the "heroes" coming in on speedboats was almost embarrassing. You'd swear it was a half hour before the Academy Awards. Don't bother with this blather. Apparently, some of Hollywood's great minds got together to produce this sludge. If I didn't mention it, it was dull.

Red-Barracuda Battle Beyond the Sun was a sci-fi adventure that was created by Roger Corman's American International Pictures when they edited a Soviet sci-fi film into something friendly to the American drive-in. Seemingly, the Russian original was quite sober and serious-minded, while it referenced the cold war and portrayed the Soviets as fair-minded and reasonable and the Americans as underhand idiots. AIP figured that this very un-American message wouldn't translate into dollars, so they re-wrote it changing the super-powers into fictional states known as the North Hemis and the South Hemis. They also removed much of the more serious material and added some alien monsters to liven things up. What remains is that the two competing states are in a space race to be the first to land on Mars. I can't comment on the original version as I have never seen it but this version isn't too good. The story seems – perhaps unsurprisingly given its genesis – a bit muddled. It's not really helped by the fact that given this is a story about a journey to Mars; they don't actually ever get there!But perhaps the thing that stands out the most about this one is the fact that this cut was helmed by Francis Ford Coppola (under the pseudonym Thomas Colchart). In fairness, there are no signs of Coppola's massive talent here. This was clearly very much a work experience gig for him. The best aspects of the whole thing come from things from the production values of the original movie. There is decent model and set design here. But on the whole, it's a pretty lacking film.

Glen_Chapman I have just posted a synopsis for this film and noted the major differences between the original Soviet production and the American release.Although reported to be over 2 hours long my fully subtitled version is only 67 minutes.I suspect that the a lot of the Soviet propaganda supposed to be in the film was removed before the subtitled version came out.If anyone wants more details of the differences between the two films don't hesitate to contact me. Also if anyone has a longer subtitled version of the original film I would also love to know how to source it

MartinHafer My giving this a score of 3 is NOT what I would give the original Soviet version of this film. It seems that American-International (a studio that specialized in ultra-low-budget fare in the 60s) bought this film and utterly destroyed it--slicing a two hour plus film into a 64 minute film! Plus, much of this 64 minutes was new material (such as the "monsters")--so you know that this film bears almost no similarity to the original. The original film appears to be a rather straight drama about the Soviet conquest of space--though I really am not sure what it was originally! For insight into the original film, read Steven Nyland's review--it was very helpful.By the way, this was the third Soviet sci-film I've seen that American-International bought and then hacked apart to make a "new" film--standard practice to a company that was willing to put just about anything on the screen to make a buck--provided, of course, it didn't cost them much more than a buck in the first place!! This Americanized film was about two rival world powers (NOT the US and Soviets) trying to be the first to Mars. The tricky "bad guys" try but fail and the "good guys" rescue one of the idiot astronauts and then head to Mars. Unfortunately, they are temporarily stranded on a moon of Mars where they see some monsters (added by American-International) that are REAAAALLY cheesy and one does bear similarity to a certain part of a female's anatomy. Then, they are rescued--returning to Earth heroes.The bottom line is that the film was butchered--turning an incredibly beautiful piece of art (for the time) being turned into a grade-C movie. Because of this, the Soviets really had a reason to hate America! I'm just shocked that the horrible job A-I did with this film didn't convince them to refuse to sell more films to these jerks! It's worth a look for a laugh, but the really bad moments that make you laugh are few and far between. So, the film is a dud--not bad enough to make it a must-see for bad movie buffs and too dopey to be taken seriously. I would really love to see this movie in its original form--it must have been some picture.UPDATE--nietogimenez sent me an email indicating the original IS available and said you can just Google for it.