First Spaceship on Venus
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Movie Reviews of First Spaceship on Venus
Movie Review: This is the Biggest Sc-Fi Film ever 5 Stars
When I first saw this film I thought it would not be good, but by I was wrong!!! This movie was genius from the story to the chacters to the special effects. Since I first bought it I have watched it time and time again and like the DVD cover said This is Mankind's biggest Review: Gorgeous Image DVD makes me lust for the original cutSummary: 4 Stars As evidenced by the extremely mixed reviews here, this East German/Polish co-production (filmed in 1959, released here in 1962) seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair. Personally, I'm in the lovers' camp, although if you've never seen First Spaceship on Venus you deserve some fair warning. According to IMDb, the East German version of this runs 130 minutes, the Polish (?) version 93. If either figure is reliable there's anywhere from 15 to 52 minutes missing from the 78-minute U.S. version, so there are definitely continuity problems. The English script is somewhat muddled and seems to repeat or contradict itself at times, several subplots have obviously been trimmed or junked entirely, and the English dubbing is particularly bad, with virtually no attempt to match dialogue with people's mouth movements. Also somewhat distracting is the heavy use of stock music cues (particularly the familiar Universal "Wolf Man" theme), although a few almost dissonant passages sound like they might be snippets of the original score. Between the heavy editing, rewriting, and dubbing it's really impossible to evaluate the original screenplay, but even with only the skeleton of SF legend Stanislaw Lem's original novel that's left, it's still more conceptually challenging than the average 1950s space opera (compare the roughly contemporary War of the Satellites, Missile to the Moon, or even a "classic" such as This Island Earth). In brief, a Venus mission is launched to determine the source of an ominous message encoded into a metallic spool unearthed by archaeologists. As noted by others, there are a number of ideas that presage later, more famous SF productions, including Star Trek (the racially and sexually diverse flight crew and Moon base personnel), 2001: A Space Odyssey (the robot chess game; the EVA repair mission; the buried artifact that's actually a communications device), and Star Wars (the `cute' R2D2-like robot), as well as a few bits more typical of cheap 50s sci-fi (the meteor shower, the shipboard romance). If you can bear with the roughness of the script and dialogue you will be rewarded with some very creative and generally superior (for the time) production design, optical and sound effects, and miniature/model work. The Earth laboratories, Moon base, and spaceship all look cool enough, and that artifact makes some crazy sounds, but when they get to Venus, things really kick into gear. There are strange sponge-like trees, lots of swirling smoke and fog, and wispy neon-colored gelatinous clouds flying around. The astronauts discover some high-tech Venusian "ruins," are attacked by black-and-red lava-like blob creatures, and ultimately discover the extinct Venusians' forbidding secret. The absence of big Hollywood bucks does show at times (the metal "bugs" are laughably cheesy, even for 1959), but First Spaceship on Venus makes up in imagination what it lacks in budget, much like Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires. If you dig the general atmosphere of that movie, this is probably up your alley as well. If you can't get past the problems with the script and dubbing, or are expecting slick modern special effects, this is probably not your cup of tea. If only someone could release the German version, competently dubbed or subtitled, FSOV would probably be ranked right up there with the Golden Age "classics"-Forbidden Planet, Destination Moon, Rocketship X-M, etc. As it is, "serious" SF fans will probably be intrigued, if not completely satisfied, while the casual viewer may find it rough sledding.
Fortunately for fans of FSOV, Wade Williams and Image have unearthed a virtually pristine print for this DVD transfer. It's letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the color saturation, color balance, black level, sharpness, and shadow/highlight detail are generally excellent. (There is a little blocking-up in the shadows at times.) Physical damage is limited to some very light speckling/blemishing, that does get a bit heavier around a couple of reel changes, and the occasional damaged frame. After years of watching cropped, faded, dupey TV prints it's a revelation to actually see the whole frame, and especially in such terrific shape. Until someone lays their hands on the original European cut this is probably as good as this film will ever look. (Be sure to avoid the awful full-frame Diamond DVD edition that's paired with Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet; and I haven't seen the Platinum DVD but it's a safe bet it's just as bad if not worse than Diamond's.) The trailer for FSOV is matted to about 1.85:1 and doesn't look nearly as nice as the feature, suffering from mediocre color, scratching, and a soft, dupey look. Five trailers for other Wade Williams/Image releases are also included. A can't-miss buy for admirers of this underappreciated Eastern European gem.
Movie Review: Make Mine Venus!
Summary: 4 Stars
Polish science fiction novelist Stanislaw Lem (born 1922) must take pride in the fact that his "Solaris" (1962) has now been twice filmed, first by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) and more recently - also less effectively - by an American director whose name escapes me (2003); yet as early as 1960 Lem's first science fiction novel, "The Astronauts" (1952), had already appeared in an adaptation for the silver screen, directed by an East German, Kurt Maetzig. "First Spaceship on Venus" issued, in fact, from a Polish and East German collaboration, with contributions, in the ensemble of players, from three or four "third world" nations. Viewers will recognize Japanese actress Yoko Tani as the sole female crewmember of the space research vessel "Cosmostrator," the titular "First Spaceship" on earth's putative "twin," Venus. This is a mostly superb film, quite magical in its expressionistic special effects. Enticingly for audiences, almost half of the action takes place on Venus amidst sets that do justice to Lem's insistence that alien life will be incomprehensible to humanity. The story, briefly, is this: in 1985 excavations "to irrigate the Gobi Desert" discover extraterrestrial artifacts, one of which, a glassy "spool," contains the last message sent home from a spaceship engaged in reconnoitering the earth. The narration links this fictional incident to the actual 1908 Tunguska meteor impact. The "spool" has sustained damage and yields only a fraction of its contents, but from this bit scientists determine that the visitors originated on Venus, whereupon the "World Space Agency" determines to mount an expedition there. An international crew take command of the "Cosmostrator." The "Cosmostrator" itself demands some attention as one of the most unusual of silver-screen spaceships of the 1950s and 60s: its central silvery cylinder, housing the crew, is surrounded by four similarly hued cylinders of nearly equal dimension housing the engines; the sum of it is a kind of powerful elegance. But the real interest lies in the Venusian scenario itself. Maetzig gives us a shadowy, smoke-and-gas- shrouded landscape full of weird, half-obliterated shapes. One sequence shows the astronauts moving in their "ground cars" through what appears to be a street of melted skyscrapers; there are also huge underground spaces and indecipherable geodesic spheres and cones. The explorers gradually deduce that, on the verge of dousing the earth with radiation preparatory to invading and occupying it, the Venusians destroyed themselves in a fratricidal atomic war. We see the permanently etched shadows of the victims on a blasted wall. In an extremely alien episode, a lake of organic muck chases the terrestrials up the spiral ramp of a half-fused tower, only to retreat mysteriously before catching them fatally at the summit. The visuals elude adequate verbal description. If anyone knew the work of the 1950s and 60s science fiction illustrator Richard Powers, who did paperback covers in a semi-abstract style full of glassy-metallic quasi-biological and quasi-mechanical shapes, that might serve as a good reference. (Samples of Powers' work can be found on-line, should anyone care to go looking.) At the film's finale, in the prototypical Lem-gambit, the Venusians' automated defenses reverse the planet's gravity-field, hurling the "Cosmostrator" back into space, minus two or three unlucky casualties. Despite the Soviet-era utopian bravura, the mission has accomplished but little - the explorers are, in effect, defeated. Between the human and the non-human no genuine communication seems possible, especially where one party has insulated itself behind layers of electronics and automation and is long since a collective suicide. (This story of non-communication comes quite close to the plot of "Solaris," superficial differences notwithstanding - Tarkovsky must surely have known Maetzig's film; he would of course have been familiar with Lem's work beyond "Solaris.") One senses that this English version, with a dubbed soundtrack for American distribution, probably leaves a good many scenes on the cutting-room floor; neither can one tell much about the acting, which, in any case, is of less interest than the strangely realized other world. There is an amusing tracked robot named Omega. The source-print seems well preserved and the format is wide-screen. (A video-tape from a different producer derived from a faded print and cut the image down to television-screen dimensions.) On the strength of the scenic design, this movie should recommend itself to genre aficionados. Anyone who has never seen it is in for a treat.Movie Review: two versions of this film available
Summary: 4 Stars
There are two different versions of this film available from Amazon: FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS from Image Entertainment/The Wade Williams Collection (letterboxed 2.35:1, 78 minutes) and SILENT STAR from First Run Features (non-letterboxed full-screen 1.33:1, 95 minutes.) Too bad there isn't a 95-minute letterboxed version!
I own only the Image Entertainment disc. The image transfer is pretty good, though it's not a restored print. The package mentions that it was shot in Technicolor, which I imagine was the old, beautiful 3-strip process, as European filmmakers continued to use the format after Hollywood switched to single-negative film. The color on the DVD is faithful and well-saturated for the most part.
The production values are first-rate; this was no low-budget quickie. The very realistic scenes of the actors with the futuristic rocket on the launch pad are some of the best examples of large-scale miniatures and forced-perspective sets that I've ever seen in a film. A great deal of attention was paid to scientific detail as well. There's even a Rover-like robotic explorer that aids the astronauts--quite prescient for 1962. It even plays chess (an interesting prelude to HAL-9000 in Kubrick's 2001.)
Once the heroes land on Venus, we're treated to a totally surrealistic, downright bizarre world, with images that almost defy an ability to even understand what they represent. What makes it all the more creepy is that the film doesn't try to explain this odd world; the imagery just sort of washes over you--and the characters in the film!--like a bad dream. Very reminiscent of abstract sci-fi book cover illustrations of the time. That's one of the definite high-notes of this film...an alien planet that actually LOOKS and FEELS alien.
As mentioned by others, the acting is rather wooden, not helped by the very matter-of-fact script; the film almost comes across as a sort of propaganda-like documentary. But strangely, that doesn't detract from the film as a whole. Yes, the pace is rather plodding; but there's no "filler" here, no unnecessary scenes. The slow pace actually helps make the film the "serious" piece it was meant to be.
Buy it not for the acting, or even the script, but for the amazing imagery. This is one of those films that I saw as a youngster that burned some indelible images into my brain. Glad to have a letterboxed version, even if it IS trimmed down in length.
Movie Review: really good hard scifi
Summary: 4 Stars
I saw this as a very young boy with my dad, right when it came out. All I remembered are a few images: the sharpened nacelles of the ship, the lone black man running towards the departing ship, the fall of the hero into a room full of bouncing metallic bugs. As I put this on to watch with my son, I expected it to be pure, cheesy camp to be shared and laughed at.
However, what I discovered is that the film has not only a sophisticated plot, but great themes in it as well. As with all great scifi, there is a potentially deadly mystery to be solved: the meaning of the message discovered and the nature (and intent) of the civilization from which it came. To answer these questions, a team of the top scientific minds take off for Venus, the apparent place of origin. Dodging metorites and bravely plugging ahead even after they translate the terrifying message, they find a planet that is as alien as the civilization that marked it. It is a truly weird landscape, including apparently intelligent mud, memory devices that look like ants, and an incomprehensible power system for the mysteriously missing venutians. SLowly, they decifer only part of the mystery, leaving the rest to the imagination of the audience - another mark of all great scifi.
An additional treat is that this is an East German production, made at the height of the Cold War, with a vision of peace, international cooperation, and the beginning of a new era of exploration of space. It was quite inspiring.
Needless to say, this was a bit over the head of my son (8) as it was for me in 1962. But he enjoyed the images, the joking intelligent tank-shaped computer, and wondered about the nationalities of the team members. We had fun watching and then discussing it. This is far better as scifi than the kill-'em monster films of the era.
Recommended. The effects now appear clunky, but the mood is consistent and the story moves briskly, with that indefinable sense of mystery.