FANTASIA OBSCURA: Why Would You Not Recycle the Weirdest Move Ever… Three Times?
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you find out that no, you did not have the worst first job when you started out…
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968)
(Dist.: The Filmgroup; Dir.: Peter Bogdanovich [as Derek Thomas])
There are some production histories for films, stories as to how a film is made or comes about, that after you finish reading, you stare agape as you let the tale sink in.
This one’s a real doozy; you may need a seat first.
In 1962, inspired in large part by enthusiasm for the Venera program, Leningrad Popular Science Film Studio released the movie Planeta Bur in the Soviet Union. A modest hit for its director, Pavel Klushantsev, who received acknowledgements during his lifetime from Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas for his inspiration, the film follows six cosmonauts on a mission to explore Venus.
The cosmonauts are survivors, having lost one of the three ships sent there to a meteor strike. They decide to disobey orders, and rather than wait for a relief vessel that would take four months to reach them, decide to press on with the mission.
Two of the cosmonauts take a robot with them and make a landing that doesn’t go well. Three others land nearby to carry out a rescue, while the lone female cosmonaut, Marsha, valiantly waits in orbit as her comrades encounter dinosaurs, extreme weather and geology, and miss out on a face-to-face with the local sapiens, who, in a shot reflecting up from a puddle, look very much like us.
Soon after release, Roger Corman on behalf of the Filmgroup (the other operation he ran when he wasn’t working like crazy for American-International Pictures) purchased American rights to the film during a time when tensions had softened enough between the main Cold War adversaries to allow cultural exchanges of this nature to take place.
In Corman’s hands, the film is redubbed, has a few new sequences reshot and some new stuff added, including scenes with mission control on the moon where Professor Hartman (Basil Rathbone, who made his career as the definitive actor to portray Sherlock Holmes in films) provides guidance to the lone female astronaut, Marsha (Faith Domergue), who ditzily waits around while the rest of her crew does everything they did the first time (but dubbed in English!). The film would have single-handedly set back the cause of women going into space had Valentina Tereshkova not gone into orbit two years earlier.
The film, entitled Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, was enough of a success that a few years later, Corman felt he could squeeze this one more time, maybe get another film out of the same footage. Reuse the re-dubs, maybe add some footage from the infinitely better Nebo zovyot that Corman bought rights to as well, add a new set of sequences to spice things up a bit, maybe cut the female astronaut altogether, and, well…
How the film got its director is almost as credulity-straining. Bogdanovich spent most of the 1960s curating for the film department at the Museum of Modern Art while writing about film for Esquire magazine. In 1968, Bogdanovich, laying down the blueprint that Quentin Tarantino would follow decades later, decided that he knew enough about film that he could go to Hollywood and do well at it himself. Soon after landing in LA, he met Corman at an industry screening; recognizing talent in the ex-New Yorker and familiar with his articles, Corman hired him to do Targets and to oversee the third iteration of our voyage to Venus.
By the third iteration, we still have two ships out of three making their way to Venus during the heyday of our interplanetary explorations when we sent humans to other worlds, back in 1998. Unlike the first two times, this version has a narrator, voiced by Bogdanovich himself (under his own name, the only credit on the film he felt he deserved); otherwise, we have the same cosmo astronauts with their robot plodding around on Venus. For the most part, anyways…
What differentiates this version are the sequences of the Venusians, blonde women (with a redhead here and there for diversity) led by Moana (Mamie Van Doren, whose career was defined by her star turn in High School Confidential!) who, as their priestess and war leader, encouraged them to follow her example, to wear bras made of scallop shells and very low-cut slacks as they swam through Venus’ oceans, dining on sashimi at hand the way land dwellers pick apples off trees.
She leads them in foraging parties and in worship of their god Ptera, the pterodactyl that threatens the Earthmen, at least until their god is literally shot out of the sky. (About the only thing she didn’t lead them in was making connections in Hollywood, as most of the actresses playing Venusians have only this film as their sole credit in their CVs.)
In terms of the new stuff and how well it integrates with the twice-already-used footage, Bogdanovich does a sufficient workmanlike job of getting the new materials to not look that jarringly out of place compared to the original. Giving the entire production a hazy, gauzy look allows for better integration between the two sets of stock, which fits in well with Venus’ reputation for being under a continual layer of deep clouds, though at the expense of the bright sharp colors in which Planeta Bur was shot.
Directing the alien beauties to channel their inner child from Village of the Damned while relaying their lines in voiceover, suggesting telepathic communication, aids in stressing the fact that as much as they look like starlets, these were, in fact, aliens.
Speaking of looks, the original footage Klushantsey shot is still able to impress a viewer that might not have seen either version before this one. (If you get the chance to do so for yourself, go watch Planeta Bur.) If you can disregard Henry Ney’s inanely written dialog for the film (which is so bad that this explains why this is his sole credit in his CV), the inventive visuals on display with the space gear and the robot John keeps your interest.
The images of the explorers working their way through Venus’ harsh conditions testifies to the original halfway decent movie that had been there before, the decent little film that existed before two re-workings of the material after it came to this side of the Iron Curtain.
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women would be the last time this film would be recycled in the West. It would also be the last production released by the Filmgroup; Corman folded his side distribution operation into American-International Pictures’ organization after its release, consolidating his business.
As for endings, Corman is quoted as having said to more than one member of “The Corman Film School” the line, “If you do a good job on this picture, you’ll never have to work for me again.” Considering Bogdonavich’s next film, The Last Picture Show, was shot for Columbia and won two of eight Oscars it was up for, we can probably conclude that, by that standard, his first film was perhaps a lot better than we give it credit for.
Not a bad beginning, then, when you look at it that way.
NEXT TIME: What’s the best thing about magical one-man circuses? Other than the low overhead, of course.
