What do you get when you take 2 Russian sci-fi films and edit in scenes of beautiful blond hotties with clam shells on their breasts? You get this confusing effort that is really just a fledgling director's opportunity to get his foot into the door as a filmmaker from the always generous Roger Corman. Story involves an Earth spaceship that heads to Venus on a mission but when they arrive things go wrong and they are forced to crash land. Astronauts Alfred Kerns (Georgi Tejkh) and Howard Sherman (Yuri Sarantsev) along with their reliable robot John1 start to check out and explore this strange planet and discover that it's inhabited by hopping lizard creatures, brontosauruses, man-eating plants, and flying reptiles.
*****SPOILER ALERT***** Earth sends another ship to Venus to find the two astronauts after radio contact is broken and when they arrive they find what may be proof of some sort of a civilization. This mission is headed by Andre Freneau (Gennadi Vernov), William Lockhart (Vladimir Yemelyanov), and Hans Walters (Georgi Zhzhyonov) and while they search for their comrade's they anger 7 telepathic blond sirens! The sirens are headed by Moana (Mamie Van Doren) and she informs her group (telepathically) that they must seek revenge on those responsible for killing their god Ptera which is a pterodactyl shot down by the astronauts.
The director of this film is credited as Derek Thomas but that's just an alias for Peter Bogdanovich who was given the chance to do something with two Russian science fiction films by filming some added footage. It appears that the only thing he managed to shoot were the scenes with Van Doren and the other lovelies as they either stared at each other on the rocks by the ocean (probably the southern California coast) or took a quick dip into the water. This is actually some sort of sequel to "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" from 1965 which had Basil Rathbone in it but most of the footage is taken from "Planeta Bur" and "Nebo zovyot" and has some shoddy dubbing put in for the story in this current effort. Two things come to mind as I watched this and the first has to do with the monsters they encounter on Venus and the lizard creatures are nothing more than human sized Godzilla's and the way they strangely hopped around made me think that the actors inside those awkward suits had a difficult time moving about. The rest of the monsters look like something they would eventually use in "Land of the Lost" on Saturday mornings. Secondly, the sirens! Aah..yes! Mamie Van Doren and her group of platinum blonde's! My first reaction when seeing them for the first time is that they look like The Golddiggers from "The Dean Martin Show" especially with their bell bottom slacks. They all wear securely tightened clam shells for bra's and I mention securely tightened because I craned my neck looking for as much as a quick nip slip but alas...no such luck. What distinguishes them from anything mermaid like is the fact that they all wear shoes even in the scenes where they're swimming and diving underwater. Bogdanovich has spliced together a sloppy looking film but I do have to admit that a weird atmosphere was created and the use of the fog machine is a nice touch because this oddity does have a unique quality to it. Most will say that this is merely another bad science fiction film but I tend to disagree and consider this more of a curio that gets a mild recommendation from me.
*****SPOILER ALERT***** Earth sends another ship to Venus to find the two astronauts after radio contact is broken and when they arrive they find what may be proof of some sort of a civilization. This mission is headed by Andre Freneau (Gennadi Vernov), William Lockhart (Vladimir Yemelyanov), and Hans Walters (Georgi Zhzhyonov) and while they search for their comrade's they anger 7 telepathic blond sirens! The sirens are headed by Moana (Mamie Van Doren) and she informs her group (telepathically) that they must seek revenge on those responsible for killing their god Ptera which is a pterodactyl shot down by the astronauts.
The director of this film is credited as Derek Thomas but that's just an alias for Peter Bogdanovich who was given the chance to do something with two Russian science fiction films by filming some added footage. It appears that the only thing he managed to shoot were the scenes with Van Doren and the other lovelies as they either stared at each other on the rocks by the ocean (probably the southern California coast) or took a quick dip into the water. This is actually some sort of sequel to "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" from 1965 which had Basil Rathbone in it but most of the footage is taken from "Planeta Bur" and "Nebo zovyot" and has some shoddy dubbing put in for the story in this current effort. Two things come to mind as I watched this and the first has to do with the monsters they encounter on Venus and the lizard creatures are nothing more than human sized Godzilla's and the way they strangely hopped around made me think that the actors inside those awkward suits had a difficult time moving about. The rest of the monsters look like something they would eventually use in "Land of the Lost" on Saturday mornings. Secondly, the sirens! Aah..yes! Mamie Van Doren and her group of platinum blonde's! My first reaction when seeing them for the first time is that they look like The Golddiggers from "The Dean Martin Show" especially with their bell bottom slacks. They all wear securely tightened clam shells for bra's and I mention securely tightened because I craned my neck looking for as much as a quick nip slip but alas...no such luck. What distinguishes them from anything mermaid like is the fact that they all wear shoes even in the scenes where they're swimming and diving underwater. Bogdanovich has spliced together a sloppy looking film but I do have to admit that a weird atmosphere was created and the use of the fog machine is a nice touch because this oddity does have a unique quality to it. Most will say that this is merely another bad science fiction film but I tend to disagree and consider this more of a curio that gets a mild recommendation from me.