Planet of Storms (1962)

Roger Corman was infamous for a number of things, but one that gets overlooked is his tendency to take foreign films that did not have a copyright, dub them and recut them, and make a completely new movie from them.  Such is the case of his 1965 television movie Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, which features brief roles by Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue interspersed with a story about a journey to Venus that has special effects that look a lot better than a 1960s television budget.  

This wasn't Corman's first go-round, as he had Francis Ford Coppola re-edit the 1959 Soviet film The Heavens Beckon into the 1962 release Battle Beyond the Sun.  Curtis Harrington would be the American director credited for Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and the later Queen of Blood, which also used footage from The Heavens Beckon, Planet of Storms and another film, A Dream Come True.  These were meant to either be cheap drive-in or movie-of-the-week fare the American versions and were a far cry from what the original directors intended.  Since it was during the Cold War many pro-communist references were removed, but also a good part of the plot was as well.  That is why it is refreshing to now be able to see these films as originally intended.

Three ships - Sirius, Vega and Kapella - have been launched on a manned mission to explore Venus.  When Kapella is destroyed by a meteor the other two ships continue on, with the promise that another ship called Arktura will arrive to help complete the mission.  Frustrated and sad at the loss of their colleagues the crew of the other two ships contemplate landing despite the danger.  The male members of Vega - Kern (Gyorgiy Teykh) and Cherba (Yuriy Sarantsev) - decide to try to land in the ship's glider along with Kern's automaton John, Masha (Kyunna Ignatova) is left behind to tend the ship.  However, something goes wrong, the glider crash lands and communication is lost.

Sirius, instead of waiting for the relief ship, decides to land and rescue them.  While Ilya (Vladimir Emelyanov), Bobrov (Gyorgiy Zhyonov) and Alyosha (Gennadi Vernov) search for the survivors, the latter are struck by a fever when their suits are compromised.  The Sirius crew are able to communicate with John to help the men as they make their way over sea and under the ocean, discovering along the way that they may not have been the first explorers to set foot on the planet. 

Planet of Storms itself has some cheesy parts, particularly the song at the end and when they are gathering samples.  It also suffers from the fact that it would work better as a book than a movie.  Hard science fiction is often about ideas and concepts rather than action.  Although there is some of the latter, involving attacking reptiles and carnivorous plants, the attempt to rescue the crew of Vega is an excuse to set up ideas about the origin of the human race, the wonder of space exploration and the resilience of the Soviet spirit.  This is far from a propaganda film, but socialist ideals of self-sacrifice permeate, although a strong theme of personal freedom does as well. 

This movie was made in 1962 and many of the effects seem better than what Hollywood was doing on larger budgets.  The hovering buggy that Sirius uses to explore Venus, as well as some of the shots of the planet itself from space and the ships orbiting it, look much more realistic than the plastic or papier mache models seen in most American films.  In fact, it is rumored that Stanley Kubrick appropriated some of the techniques used by director Pavel Klushantsev in this film for 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Other times, though, the effects are at about the level of 1960s Doctor Who.  

The best thing is the set design.  Klushantsev has succeeded in making Venus look like a truly alien world.  From the strange plants scattered around to the lighting everything looks alien.  It doesn't look like Venus, of course, and it even says at the beginning that this is a work of speculation and fantasy and that Venus will probably be much different.  By this time most scientists knew our sister planet was not going to be a tropical jungle world but a hellscape, something the Soviets themselves would prove themselves at the end of the decade by sending a series of Venera probes that sent back actual photos of the planet's surface. 

While Planet of Storms is much better than what Corman and Harrington did to it the movie is still high on concept and low on engagement.  It is more interesting to watch than entertaining.  It is a good example of more mainstream Russian cinema from the time, as much of what did make it over here was a bit more on the art side.  This movie is a relic of a bygone time but still has much more to it than one would expect. 

Planet of Storms (1962)

Starring: Vladimir Emelyanov, Gyorgiy Zhyonov, Gennadi Vernov, Yuriy Sarantsev, Georgiy Teykh, Kyunna Ignatova

Director: Pavel Klushantsev