''Planeta Bur'' (russian: Планета бурь) is a 1962

Sovcolor An Agfacolor slide dated 1937 from café in Oslo, Norway. An Agfacolor slide dated 1937 from Paris, France. An Agfacolor slide dated 1938 from Hungary. An Agfacolor slide dated 1938 from Zakopane in Poland. An Agfacolor slide dated 1938 fr ...

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

science fiction film scripted by Alexander Kazantsev from his novel, and co-scripted and directed by Pavel Klushantsev.Евгений Харитонов. Космическая одиссея Павла Клушанцева
/ref> In English, the film is often informally referred to as ''Planet of the Storms'', ''Planet of Storms'', ''Planet of Tempests'', ''Planeta Burg'', and ''Storm Planet''. It was never theatrically released in the U.S. in its original form before appearing on home video in the 1990s. The film is better known to American audiences via the two similar American direct-to-television features '' Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet'' and ''

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women ''Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women'' is a 1968 American science fiction film, one of two films whose footage was taken from the 1962 Soviet SF film ''Planeta Bur'' (''Planet of Storms'') for producer Roger Corman. The original film was ...

''. Both U.S. video features reused the film's special effects and most of its primary footage.

Plot

Three

spaceships, ''Sirius'', ''Vega'', and ''Capella'', are on their way from Lunar Station 7 for the first human landing on

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

and the first exploration of the planet. ''Capella'' is suddenly struck by a large meteor and is completely destroyed, killing all aboard. After mourning the loss of their friends, the remaining two ships, ''Sirius'' and ''Vega'', soon continue on, even though the planned mission required three spaceships. A replacement, ''Arcturus'', will be sent from Earth, but will not arrive for two months. The

cosmonauts An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

aboard ''Sirius'' (Ilya, Roman, and Alyosha) and aboard ''Vega'' (Ivan and Allan, and the woman, Masha) all agree that proceeding with the landing and exploration is better than waiting two months. So Ivan and Allan, with their large robot assistant "John" (now partly disassembled for flight), descend toward Venus in ''Vega''s glider spacecraft, leaving Masha in orbit to monitor communications between the ships and ground crews. All contact is lost with her after they land in a misty swamp. The gigantic ''Sirius'' gently lands vertically on its four shock-absorbing wing struts, but at a different, volcanic-terrain location. Because the atmosphere is poisonous, the men exit ''Sirius'' in their spacesuits and helmets. While wandering around some boulders, Aloysha is suddenly attacked and dragged off toward the mouth of a large carnivorous plant, but he is quickly rescued by Ilya and Roman. After photographing the lifeform and sharing jokes about the incident, they proceed to search for Ivan and Allan in their hovercar. During their journey, they hear what sounds like a distant eerie voice of a woman, and then soon encounter a gigantic, sedate brontosaur-like creature, from which one of the men quickly takes a blood sample from its tail. Meanwhile, after completely assembling robot John, Ivan and Allan are suddenly attacked in the swamp by several human-size tyrannosaur-like beasts, some of which they kill with handguns. They later come across a large, deep ravine and attach strong cords to one of the gigantic trees near the edge of the ravine and to an anchoring boulder. John is able to fell the tree over the ravine, and they walk across it, while listening to recorded music. Allan is later weakened by a wound from the attack at the swamp, so robot John finds a cave for their protection from the wet environment. Both men, however, develop a fever and are soon too weak to stand. While over an ocean near a beach, the three cosmonauts submerge their hovercar to escape an attack from a large flying pterosaur-like creature. While Underwater, they discover a head sculpture, with ruby gemstone eyes, of one of the flying creatures, apparently made by an intelligent species. After emerging onto the beach, Alyosha discovers a strange triangular rock, which he keeps. After they radio-contact robot John and learn of the two fevers, they instruct John to immediately administer life-saving medicine. Ivan and Allan soon recover, just as flows of molten hot mud surround them. Desperately, Ivan has robot John carry them safely across the steaming mud, but the robot over-heats and slows down from their added weight. Robot John attempts to forcibly remove them with its claw and injures Allan in the process. The hovercar suddenly arrives just in time to rescue the two men and quickly leave the area. Robot John, now non-functional from the intense heat, slowly descends into the now deep molten flow. During their trip back to ''Sirius'', they again see another gigantic brontosaur-like creature, and new fin-backed dinosaur-like animals. After safely returning to ''Sirius'', they discover a recorded, desperate message from Masha saying that she is going to defy her orders from Lunar Station 7 and land on Venus to search for them. This causes much anguish over her not surviving on this hostile world. Unstable ground and a rain flood are now threatening ''Sirius'', so they must take off immediately. During this, Alyosha discovers that his strange rock has crumbled apart to reveal a small sculpture of a beautiful woman's face, proving there is human life on Venus. He starts shouting to the others about what he has found, as they hurriedly pull him inside ''Sirius''. They quickly launch just before the ground begins to break apart. Rising into space, they suddenly regain radio-contact from Masha, who tells them she finally decided to remain in orbit for them, as she had been ordered. ''Sirius'' then proceeds to safely return to Lunar Station 7.

Personnel

Cast

Vladimir Yemelyanov Vladimir Nikolayevich Yemelyanov (russian: Владимир Николаевич Емелья́нов; 20 June 1911 – 2 July 1975) was a Soviet actor and producer who appeared in 42 films between 1953 and 1975. He is most known for '' Ro ...

as Ilya Vasilyevich Vershinin *

Georgiy Zhzhonov Georgiy Stepanovich Zhzhonov (russian: Гео́ргий Степа́нович Жжёнов, ; 22 March 1915 – 8 December 2005), was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor and writer. He is known for playing the spy Mikhail Tulyev in the "R ...

as Roman Bobrov * Gennadi Vernov as Alyosha * Yuri Sarantsev as Ivan Shcherba * Georgi Teich as Allan Kern * Kyunna Ignatova as Masha Ivanova * Boris Prudkovsky1964 USSR freestyle wrestling champion. as Robot John

Production Team

* Z. Anderson as Production Director *

and L. Presnyakova as

Producers Producer or producers may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *A stakeholder of economic production *Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...

* A.V. Markov, K.K. Flyorov, V.G. Denisov, and A.M. Kasatkin as Scientific Advisors

Crew

* M. Tsybasov and V. Alexandrov as

Production Designer In film and television, the production designer is the individual responsible for the overall aesthetic of the story. The production design gives the viewers a sense of the time period, the plot location, and character actions and feelings. Wo ...

s * I. Yegorov, V. Makarov, V. Malakhieva and A. Nadezhdin as Art Directors * V. Shchelkov as

Special Effects Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual wo ...

Art Director * A. Klimov as

Director of Photography The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the ch ...

* A. Lavrentyev as

Director of Photography * R. Levitina as

Sound Recordist Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...

* A. Belyavskaya and I. Yasnopolskaya as Assistant Directors * V. Suslov as

Film Editor Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology. The film ed ...

* Johann Admoni and Alexei Chernov as

Music Composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Def ...

American adaptations

In 1965, American film producer

Roger Corman Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926) is an American film director, producer, and actor. He has been called "The Pope of Pop Cinema" and is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Many of Corman's films are based on works t ...

gained access to the Soviet film footage and hired film student

Curtis Harrington Gene Curtis Harrington (September 17, 1926 – May 6, 2007) was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films and episodic television. He is considered one of the forerunners of New Queer Cinema ...

to prepare it for an American release. Harrington added several American-made scenes starring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue, which replaced scenes of two of the Russian cast, and dubbed the dialogue to English. The resulting film, re-titled '' Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet'', went directly to television from

American International Pictures American International Pictures (AIP) is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing fi ...

. In the cast and credits, the Russian actors’ names were replaced with fake non-Russian names; for example, the Russian actor

was credited as "Kurt Boden".Евгений Харитонов. Космическая одиссея Павла Клушанцева
/ref> In 1968, American film director

Peter Bogdanovich Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian. One of the " New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he was hired to work on ...

(under the name Derek Thomas) was hired by Corman to create a second, different American film version, re-titled ''

'', to which was added new scenes with American actress

Mamie Van Doren Mamie Van Doren (born Joan Lucille Olander; February 6, 1931) is an American actress, singer, and sex symbol. She is perhaps best known for the rock 'n' roll, juvenile delinquency exploitation film ''Untamed Youth'' (1957). Early life Van D ...

and several other attractive women playing Venusians (wearing sea shell brassieres). Also included were some minor scenes from another Russian SF film, Mikhail Karyukov's '' Nebo Zovyot''. This second Americanized version is essentially the same as Corman's first, but retold with a parallel viewpoint of the telepathic Venusian women, whose god (a large pterosaur-like flying creature) is killed by the Earth men, and includes an ending with an ironic twist: The Venusian women find a new god to worship, the now eroded and non-functional robot John. Corman's 2nd version may have had some limited theatrical releases in the American South on the

drive-in A drive-in is a facility (such as a restaurant or movie theater) where one can drive in with an automobile for service. At a drive-in restaurant, for example, customers park their vehicles and are usually served by staff who walk or rollerskat ...

circuit, but primarily became a "TV movie" released through American International Television.

Reception

In a retrospective on Soviet science fiction film, British director

Alex Cox Alexander B. H. Cox (born 15 December 1954) is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with '' Repo Man'' and ''Sid and Nancy'', but since the release and co ...

remarked that "in its final minutes, ''Planet of Storms'' takes an extraordinary turn. ... I shall not spoil the secret, but it's worth the wait". The character of the female cosmonaut Masha, portrayed as emotional and arguably mentally unstable, was criticized by Soviet government and press as

misogynist Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced f ...

, and damaged Klushantsev's career.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{Pavel klushantsev , state=autocollapse 1962 films Soviet science fiction films 1960s Russian-language films 1960s science fiction films Films about astronauts Films about extraterrestrial life Robot films Pterosaurs in fiction Venus in film Space adventure films Films directed by Pavel Klushantsev