Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet

Intro:

This is a series on old dinosaur movies. Specifically, I am looking at anything released before 1990; before Jurassic Park revolutionized cinema with its CGI animation. I will not be covering anything "dinosaur-adjacent", such as kaiju monsters like Godzilla or the creature from The Giant Behemoth, which are perhaps inspired by dinosaurs, but clearly not meant to represent any real world genus. I will also be skipping over films that are heavily dependent on "borrowed" footage from other films, such as the Valley of the Dragons / Prehistoric Valley.

Also known as:

Planeta Bur
Planet of Storms
Storm Planet

Runtime: 1 hr 18 min

Background:

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet is a 1965 Russian film produced by The Filmgroup. This movie is basically the film Planeta Bur dubbed into English with a few new additional scenes added in. Footage from the films A Dream Come True (Mechte Navstrechu) and Battle Beyond the Sun (Nebo Zovyot) were also reused. Music and sound was 'borrowed' from Star Trek, The Outer Limits, and Dinosaurus. To further hide the fact that the film was Russian made, the U.S. version uses fake credits.

Plot Summary:

Humans are attempting the first landing and exploration of Venus when the Soviet spaceship Capella and all aboard are struck and killed by a meteor. The spaceship Astra is prepped to provide a replacement ship but it could take weeks, so the team decides to alter their plans. Dr. Marsha Evans offers to keep Vega - one of the two remaining ships, in orbit so that she may assist the remaining ship, Sirius and its crew. Sherman, Allen Kern, and a robot named John are the first to land on Venus in a small auxiliary spacecraft, losing communication with Sirius upon landing. The remaining Sirius crew consisting of Hans, Lockhart, and Andre, land next. Upon exiting the spacecraft Andre is snatched by a carnivorous alien plant and survives. The crew then take off in a hover-craft, stopping to collect a blood sample from an apatosaurus along the way.

Meanwhile, Kern and Sherman are reassembling John who had been taken apart for easier transport when ceratosaurus-esque lizard-men attack. Afterward, John helps the men traverse a ravine, but tears in their suits from the attack earlier makes both of them ill. John takes both men to a cave and administers aid. With their strength regain, both men continue their trek across the Venusian landscape. A volcanic eruption catches everyone off guard. The two men climb atop John for safety, but the added weight slows John down to where he tries to forcibly remove Kern, injuring him.

I love the robot, hover-craft, and space suit designs.

The hover-craft squad makes contact with John while traversing the Venusian Sea, but an attack from a rhamphorhynchus forces the group to submerge the vehicle. They discover a sculpture of the winged reptile with ruby eyes, indicating there are intelligent species on the planet. Back on land they rescue the two men trapped on John, leaving the now busted robot behind. With the ground becoming unstable, everyone rushes back to the Sirius spacecraft, passing by dimetrodon along the way. They quickly launch and safely return to Lunar Station 7.

Thoughts:

The patchwork nature of this movie makes the sequence of events hard to follow because scenes transition abruptly and characters say things that contradict what is being shown. It doesn't help that the audio is awfully muffled, to where even the subtitles say [inaudible] (this could perhaps be attributed to the lack of a high quality version) . There is something interesting here though. I kinda want to watch the original unedited version now to get the full story as it was intended by its original creators.

Related Articles:

• Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955)
• One Million B.C. (1940)  / One Million Years B.C. (1966)
• Dinosaurus! (1960)
• Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)
  
• The Last Dinosaur (1977)
• Legend of Dinosaurs & Monster Birds (1977)
• Planet of Dinosaurs (1977)
• Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985)