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First Spaceship on VenusRating:
Release Date: 19 September, 2000 Retail Price: $9.99 OUR Price: $9.99 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: |
First Spaceship on Venus Reviews
Cheesy fun-not quite
This movie is below par 60's sci-fi . Though Stanislaw Lem stories have been brought to the big screen successfully, ie Solaris, this movie falls short of mark. Poor dubbing and bad special effects are hindered by even worse story development. However, if you are looking to relive the days of quarter matinees, make up some popcorn and grab your JuJuBees.
A true classic
This movie dates from the height of the Sputnik era. Despite that, or maybe because it wasn't made by one of the then-superpowers, it avoids the panicky, militant tone of so many movies back then. It starts with an artifact found in Tunga (would that be Tunguska, in English?), determined to be of alien origin. An international research team forms to analyze the recording in the object, then to visit its source on Venus. In flight, it is decoded as an invasion plan - but saying much more than that would lead to spoilers. The plot as a whole tends toward the predictable, but has enough novelty in it, even now, to hold the viewer's attention.
The international crew looks strikingly like that on Roddenberry's initial "Star Trek" series a few years later: no two from any one country, one black, one woman (two different people this time), etc. The woman, Sumiko, is the medical officer - nurse - and is somewhat stuck in the female stereotype. Her makeup is always impeccable, if heavy, and she's the one allowed to have visible emotions. One of the other characters gives her the "you should be having babies" talk at one point, with the clear implication that he's offering the biologically necessary help. And yes, she has to be saved at least once. Outside of that, she has a postive role, and represents an interesting mid-way point between Flash Gordon's ineffectual Dale Arden and the wholly capable Ripley character from the Alien movies.
The movie does have a few cheesy moments, like visible strings bouncing the alien bugs around, wobbly ground carts, obligatory meteor storms, and 50s/60s optical effects. For its day and budget, though it's surprisingly good. This, like the Solaris movies, is said to be a film version of one of Stanislaw Lem's books, but I don't recognize which one. I'll be interested to find out which book it's from and to see what the adaptation did to it. That's just an aside, though. The movie stands by itself, and well above many others of the time.
//wiredweird
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