Monster Island Theater presents
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)

Director - Curtis Harrington
 

The Monster Island Theater Russian Recipes and The Monster Island Theater Prehistoric Recipes

The Plot
Film Notes
Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

Three space ships voyage to the planet Venus. The first - the Catella - is destroyed by an asteroid. The second ship - the Vega - continues on and lands on Venus, while the third - the Sirius - orbits the planet. The crew of the Vega explore a strangely beautiful and surreal world, which causes them to ponder their own existence and the meaning of the universe itself. Monsters, shadowy aliens, volcanoes and a robot drift in and out of the story as Faith Domergue circles the planet endlessly, and Basil Rathbone issues orders from an unknown command center. The plot and the characters all drift off in a somewhat philosophical gravityless poetic finale.

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Film Notes

Space Workers of the World Unite!

Once again, Roger Corman simultaneously exhibits his talent for both innovative movie making and crass salesmanship. For this cinematic effort, Corman purchased the rights to a serious Soviet science fiction film titled Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms). With the aid of director Curtis Harrington, he edited and dubbed the film into English and shot new scenes with English speaking actors. The result became Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, a space disaster of epic proportions that against all odds still has much to offer.

It's Elementary Oh Ye of Little Faith

Inserted into the plot as a professor in charge of space exploration, Basil Rathbone could very well be reading ads out of the Yellow Pages for all he adds to action. Faith Domergue (a very ex-girl-friend of Howard Hughes) is another Corman insertion. She has a bizarre (even for the 1960s) hair-style and has virtually nothing to do throughout the film.

But Soviet surRealism Saves the Day

Somehow the real (or surreal) film manages to burn through the Hollywood hack job overlaying the original. Like Space Odyssey, which it predates, the visual pacing is very slow, the plot floating and drifting in a red and yellow atmospheric haze as the cosmonauts quietly contemplate their roles as collective individuals in mankind's historical march to the future.

Tolstoy in Space

The demise of a robot brings real sadness. "He was just a metal monster, yet when his destruction was imminent, he called my name."

Other deep thoughts populate the film. How about, "Suppose they do look like lizards, wouldn't they still be people?"

And it's in a reflecting pool that evidence of some Venusian human life is revealed.

The Finer Points of Space

As if this film's transmogrified journey were not strange enough, much of the same footage was once again repurposed for Roger Corman's Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. This time Peter Bogdonovich got the assignment. If monsters and cosmonauts didn't make for a hit, how about adding girls in skimpy costumes?

Curtis Harrington began his career in the post-war Los Angeles experimental film scene working with Kenneth Anger (director of Scorpio Rising, author of Hollywood Babylon). He showed great promise with the little known independent Night Tide starring a very young Dennis Hopper as a sailor drifting lonely along in a dangerously dream-like, seedy Santa Monica/Venice. (It's now available on DVD and well worth a look.) Harrington went on to direct mainly low budget film and TV horror and science fiction, efforts that usually offered up more than their share of "moments" of poetic intelligence within the cinematic schlock.

- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

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Cast

Production Credits

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Curtis Harrington
Kenneth Anger
Cosmonauts

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