First Spaceship on Venus
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Movie Reviews of First Spaceship on Venus
Movie Review: As far as Venus films go, this one ain't so bad if you can stay awake
Summary: 3 Stars
These European space flicks have a sinister tendency to try one's attention span. "First Spaceship on Venus", an apparently hacked up version of an East German picture that was double billed in the States with "Assignment: Outer Space", certainly challenged your humble corrospondant to ward off the sandman's call on occasion. The story revolves around a group of scientists who travel to Venus in search of answers. Answers to what, Tom? Glad you asked. Seems that what was previously thought to be a meteorite crash in Siberia was actually a spaceship from Venus. Seeing as this was, oh, almost eighty years before "FSOV" takes place, the silence from the morining star picques the curiousity of the whole planet. En route, the scientists decipher a scroll recovered from the crash site and find that those Venusians were up to their old invade/conquer Earth tricks again. Seriously. do Venusians ever come in peace? These guys are bad news, I tell ya. And oh do our cosmonauts ever find those answers they were looking for...and they portend a dark future for Earth under the shadow of nuclear weapons. Of course the filmmakers had to kill off the token Black cosmonaut. Figures. Anyway, FSOV is available, along with AOS and tons of other goodies like Teenagers From Outer Space and Eegah! on the Mills Creek Sci-Fi Classics package. If these kind of movies are your thing, well, Sci-Fi Classics is straight up your alley.Movie Review: Socialogical progress before "Star Trek"
Summary: 3 Stars
I was surprised at how good this movie really was. The writing, acting and directing was above average for this type of movie. The special effects were also quite good on Venus, although the "wire work" on the ship was clearly visible. The voice over dubbing was also done very well. What surprised me was the ethnic balance of the crew. Besides the four white Russian men, there was a black man serving as communications officer, an asian man as an astrobiologist, and an asian woman as the ships' Doctor! This was 1962, when most women on spaceships worked in the galley to serve the men sandwiches and coffee. There was also an American Astronaut aboard, working alongside the Russians!
SPOILERS AHEAD:
The bad part, however, was I just new the black man wasn't going to make it back alive, and I was right. For some reason they also had to kill off the Asian man and the American, though they allowed the Asian woman to survive. I guess the Russians weren't all bad. I'm not black, but I can understand how they can be frustrated that they are always killed off in the movies, or at least they used to be.
Movie Review: Angry Dead Planet...
Summary: 3 Stars
It is 1985. The world is a place of global harmony. All cultures, races, etc. live together in perfect bliss. Into this utopia comes a strange cylinder with an alien message, unearthed in the Gobi desert. Upon investigation, it is discovered that the cylinder has come from Venus. A crew of intrepid scientists is enlisted to board the Cosmostrater spacecraft and head for our sister planet. On the way, they decode the rest of the message, only to find out that the venusians had planned on using nuclear weaponry to destroy the earth! This adds an element of dread and danger to the mission, especially when our heroes land on Venus and encounter a dark, haunted landscape. I really like the living black ooze that chases three of the daring cosmonauts toward certain doom! FSOV is a cheesy delight with enough goofy charm to outweigh it's bouts of awkwardness. I enjoy watching it every few years...Movie Review: Like, Wow. Really.
Summary: 2 Stars
You never know when you watch a movie like this exactly what you are going to get. With another Venusian film, "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet," I was pleasantly surprised. With this movie, my pleasure was measurably less.
In the future from 1959, when this movie was made, a spool is found in Tunguska, Siberia. In the summer of 1908, something caused a huge explosion in Siberia that has been credited to a number of sources. Though the current scientific explanation is that a meteor caused the explosion, this movie credits the explosion to a Venusian spaceship. Scientists decipher a portion of the spool and learn that the spool provides data about the earth, and the source of the spool is Venus. Off we go to Venus!
The earth spaceship is one of the best parts of this movie. There are flying ribs that connect the spaceship's engines to the main portion of the ship. The ship's takeoff impressed me. Once the ship took off, things were not so impressive. There was a cheesy meteor shower that other movies filmed pre-1959 handled better. Once we got to Venus there were annoying cloud effects. However, once on Venus the special effects picked up again. The surface of Venus and some portions of the remains of the Venusian civilization were handled very nicely. However, the central control was animated, and not well.
One of the most interesting effects occurs when a chocolate-looking substance begins to attack explorers, following them up a tower. I wondered whether the syrupy concoction was some sort of "blob" equivalent that would digest the explorers when it reached them, but it did not. One of the intrepid explorers shoots the gooey mess and it immediately retreats. However, shooting into the gooey mess also begins a chain reaction.
The next thing you know, the spaceship is flung from the planet by the reversal of an energy field as the result of a heroic effort by two of the crew members, several people die, the spaceship returns to earth, the survivors say some high-minded stuff, and the movie is over. Next, you wonder what that was all about.
Most of this movie, which was produced by East Germany and Poland, is boring. There are brief moments that are fascinating, such as the introduction of a 1959 version of Roomba (seriously, there is a little robot that immediately reminded me of a Roomba, though it does not vacuum - it does talk and play chess well; top that Roomba!). There are cool little gyro-vehicles and cars for tooling around the surface. The space suits are right out of the Soviet space program. The rest of the time the movie is a concatenation of stuff that makes a poor stew. We learn that Dr. Sumiko Omigura's (Yoko Tani) husband was killed on the moon and that she had a fling with Robert Brinkman (Günther Simon), one of the other explorers. I suppose the intent was to give some depth to the characters, but instead I kept wondering why I should care about Omigura's husband and her fling. I realized I did not care, but it was distracting me from the boring parts of the movie.
There are some movies that are interesting only to people who really, REALLY like science fiction, or those who are interested in the history of science fiction. Also, if you want to see that movie that you vaguely remember having watched and you want to see how well it has held up compared to your memory, you might wish to watch it again. Everyone else should go watch "Forbidden Planet" or even "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet."
Movie Review: Slow-moving "Spaceship"
Summary: 2 Stars
An adaptation of one of Stanislaw Lem's novels... it's going to be good, right? Sadly, no.
Instead, "First Spaceship To Venus -- a poorly dubbed, severely-cut version of the German/Polish film "Der schweigende Stern" -- ends up being a very long, dull sci-fi movie that is difficult to pay attention to for any length of time. Wooden acting, a ponderous script and a general air of pretention... no wonder Lem disowned it.
The year is 1985 (as imagined in 1960), and a mysterious message is found in the Gobi Desert, which apparently came from the Tunguska explosion in Siberia. I may not be an expert in geography, but I'm pretty sure that's impossible. So scientists somehow figure out that the messages came from the planet Venus (I guess they didn't know about the acid rain and toxic atmosphere then) and that the Tunguska "meteor" was actually a spaceship that crashed.
So while an Indian scientist tries to decode the message, an international crew is assembled to go to Venus aboard the Cosmokrator. But of course, it's discovered that the Venusians want to kill all of humanity and steal our planet (presumably because it's so much nicer and less toxic than theirs) -- and the danger hasn't gone with them.
I tried. I really did. But I simply could not pay attention for very long while watching "First Spaceship to Venus" -- and unfortunately, I don't think that the cut footage would have improved matters. There are some promising moments in the story, mostly centering around the creepy Venusian landscape and the automated machines left behind.
But despite the promise, the movie just sort of oozes along, peppered with incredibly naive viewpoints on war (one guy pompously announces that nobody on Earth will panic if told "The Venusians want to kill us all!"?). The dialogue is leaden ("We are all fascinated by the petrified forest," said in a dead voice), and too much time is spent on a cutesy robot playing chess. And there are some gaping plot holes -- there's a guy with air leaking out of his spacesuit... and everybody tries to keep him TALKING which would waste even more oxygen.
And unfortunately none of the actors are very good -- there's a lame attempt at character depth by pairing Yoko Tani's melodramatic doctor with Günther Simon's woodenly heroic pilot, but we never know much about their past romance. Honestly, the only character who was in any way endearing is Tang Hua-Ta's Chinese linguist, mainly because he's played by one of the few competent actors. As for the dubbing... it's awful. Simply awful.
"First Spaceship on Venus" has impressive (for its time) special effects and some interesting action, but it also has a sluggish pace and wooden acting. Sometimes a curiosity, but it's pretty boring.