This film is about the first manned landing on Venus. The fact that Venus has a metal-crunching dense atmosphere and very toxic gases doesn't seem to matter, as once there the place isn't all that horrible. At one point, an astronaut even opens his helmet briefly with no ill effects! Their version of Venus is sort of like walking near and around the island of Hawaii with it's exotic plants and volcanoes. The physics and science behind the film are astoundingly bad, but the film is also rather kitschy and charming in a silly and old fashioned way, so it might be worth a quick look.
The pedigree surrounding this film is quite amazing and is probably more interesting than anything you'll see in this rather dull film. Originally, this was a Russian film but some "clever" American (and by 'clever', I mean 'sleazy and greedy') thought they could hack the original film apart, add some new somewhat pointless content at minimal cost and in doing so have a brand new film they could thrust on unsuspecting audiences (and that is this film). However, not wanting to give up before squeezing every last drop of blood from this mess, three years later, the original content was chopped apart again and re-edited VERY clumsily by Peter Bogdonovich (using an alias--if I were him I would have also refused to put my name on the final product). The biggest change from VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET was that all the scenes with Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone created for the first American version were removed and lots of pointless clips of semi-naked Amazon cave-girls were very randomly inserted in VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN--resulting in a film that is dramatically worse than PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE! If you have to watch either of these ripoff films based on the Russian original, see VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET as it actually makes some sense and at least isn't a complete waste of your time. The only downside for this earlier version is that it's no longer so unremittingly bad that you can't sit around with your friends and laugh at it! It might put you to sleep, but I doubt if you'll laugh!!
FYI--At 41 years of age, Ms. Domergue looked at least 10 years older. At first, I had trouble recognizing her.
The pedigree surrounding this film is quite amazing and is probably more interesting than anything you'll see in this rather dull film. Originally, this was a Russian film but some "clever" American (and by 'clever', I mean 'sleazy and greedy') thought they could hack the original film apart, add some new somewhat pointless content at minimal cost and in doing so have a brand new film they could thrust on unsuspecting audiences (and that is this film). However, not wanting to give up before squeezing every last drop of blood from this mess, three years later, the original content was chopped apart again and re-edited VERY clumsily by Peter Bogdonovich (using an alias--if I were him I would have also refused to put my name on the final product). The biggest change from VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET was that all the scenes with Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone created for the first American version were removed and lots of pointless clips of semi-naked Amazon cave-girls were very randomly inserted in VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN--resulting in a film that is dramatically worse than PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE! If you have to watch either of these ripoff films based on the Russian original, see VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET as it actually makes some sense and at least isn't a complete waste of your time. The only downside for this earlier version is that it's no longer so unremittingly bad that you can't sit around with your friends and laugh at it! It might put you to sleep, but I doubt if you'll laugh!!
FYI--At 41 years of age, Ms. Domergue looked at least 10 years older. At first, I had trouble recognizing her.