5/10
Penny-wise plundering of Russian film 'Planeta Bur'
4 May 2019
Explorers on Venus find dinosaurs as they struggle to stay alive and solve the beguiling mysteries of the Planet of Love. Roger Corman bought the rights to the Russian film 'Planeta Bur' (1962), shot some extra footage featuring Faith Domergue and Basil Rathbone (who at the same time, on the same set, in the same costume, shot his scenes for 'Queen of Blood' (1966) another Corman cut'n'paste (in that case of 'Nebo Zovyot' (1959) and 'Mechte Navstrechu' (1963))). Top-billed Rathbone doesn't have much to do beyond upscaling the production by injecting some vintage British style. Starlet Domergue (a former Howard Hughes squeeze) has more lines but a somewhat unflattering hair style, possibly to match unused footage of the female cosmonaut (Kyunna Ignatova) in the original. The dubbed dialogue is awkward but the story generally matches the Russian original (which didn't make a lot of sense either, at least in the subtitled version I saw). The production rationale is somewhat similar to 'Godzilla, King of the Monsters' (1954), which incorporated new American footage (starring Raymond Burr) in an attempt to make a 'foreign' film more palatable to US audiences. It should be remembered that in the 1950s and 60s, getting hold of a 'foreign' film (much less one sub-titled or dubbed) was much more difficult than it became with the advent of home-video and films like 'Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet', for all its weaknesses, may have been to only way for American audiences to see some of the work being done behind the Iron Curtain. All in all, the film is watchable for the visuals (if the Russian original is unavailable or you can't stand subtitles) but overall it is a better example of Corman's talent for turning a profit than of his cinematic skills or his eye for talent.
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