When Roger met the Russians

"Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" is something as strange as an American remake of a Soviet science fiction film. A few scenes with English-speaking actors have been added to what is essentially a dubbed version of the Russian original.

The plot revolves around a group of astronauts and their robot, investigating the planet Venus. As usual in films of this kind, the alien world turns out to be pretty similar to Earth during the Age of the Dinosaurs. The explorers run into a Brontosaurus, a Stegosaurus, a pterosaur and even a somewhat anachronistic Dimetrodon. They are also attacked by a kind of lizard-men, but these too are really dumb animals. Only at the very end do the astronauts realize that Venus is inhabited by intelligent, human-like creatures.

"Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" is boring, dragging and not very interesting. The producer, Roger Corman, must have realized this. Three years later, he was involved in a second remake, "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women", in which we finally get to meet the mysterious Venusian aliens, who turn out to be telepathic females!

Despite being substandard, "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" must have been popular in its day. I remember several scenes from this film from my childhood, despite never seeing the film itself. Presumably, I saw them in books about *real* astronomy.

Unfortunately, however, this long-winding exploration of tropical dinosaur haunts only deserves one star. Still, it's good to know that B-movies were made on both sides of the Iron Curtain...