Uriah43 Three rocket ships have been sent to the planet Venus to explore it. As they orbit the planet one is hit by a meteor and destroyed. So with one spaceship in reserve the other descends. It quickly loses contact with the other rocket ship and so all but one of the astronauts are sent from the spaceship in orbit down to the planet to attempt a rescue. What follows is about as dull and sterile of a movie as anything I have ever seen. The dialogue was awful as each of the crew members seemed to be reading their scripts instead of simply talking to one another. Likewise the acting was stiff and awkward with the robot displaying more personality than anybody else in the cast. The creatures they encountered were also quite bad. About the only good things about this film was the aforementioned robot, the air car and the carnivorous plant. In short, while I like movies from this particular time period, I have to say that this was a dull film and not really worth the time spent to watch it.

silphiumb Derived from a magnificent, early 60's Soviet sci-fi about a manned trip to Venus. The models, sets, vehicles, weapons, robots, costumes, and other tech items are equal to or better than the best of its Western contemporaries in terms of imagination and realism. Co-starring Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone - yes, Sherlock Holmes - in overdubbed scenes designed, I guess, to make you not notice that in the rest of the movie, the dubbed English audio track doesn't follow the Russian lip movements. The original Russian story does come through, of a fantastically complex world explored by men from Earth employing high tech contrivances. In fact, the quality of the engineering is so good, they must have had input from Soviet industry and/or academia. All in all, a fascinating peak into Soviet sci-fi and how Hollywood had to mask its Soviet pedigree to have it accepted by Americans.

wes-connors "A spaceship orbits the planet Venus, piloted by astronaut Marcia (Faith Domergue). On the surface, two fellow astronauts and a robot companion set out on a voyage of exploration, observed from afar by Professor Hartman (Basil Rathbone). First they are attacked by prehistoric creatures, and then lose their robot in a massive volcanic eruption that consumes the planet," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.This is the first bastardization of the Russian science-fiction film "Planeta Bur" (1962). There are some good visual effects, carried over from the original movie, especially the cosmonauts' airborne planet surface vehicle. But, as astronomers knew, by the 1960s, this film doesn't really depict how a landing on earth's neighboring Venus could possibly look - if they'd have picked another Solar System, they might have had a classic.The use of "Robot John" is one of several similarities to the TV show "Lost in Space" (also appearing in 1965), especially the fourth and fifth episodes of that series. The Robinson family's "Robot" was intended to serve the same function; and, both teams of space travelers encountered "prehistoric" monsters, misguided robot helpers, spaceship weight problems, lost civilizations, and wildly unstable planetary climate changes.The U.S. poorly dubbed this "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet", and inserted footage featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue cheaply into the events. The idea, and actual editing, aren't totally awful, but the low budget production and lackluster performances are a real drag. In 1968, filmmakers proved they could do worse, by editing-in scantily clad young women, and re-releasing the film as "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women".*** Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (8/1/65) Curtis Harrington, Pavel Klushantsev ~ Basil Rathbone, Faith Domergue, Vladimir Yemelyanov, Georgi Zhzhyonov

Cristi_Ciopron 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?