“Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women”

In 1962 Roger Corman purchased the rights to several Soviet made science fiction movies. In 1965 he repackaged one of them “Planeta Bur” or “Planet of Storms” into the American “Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet”. In 1968 he again took to cannibalizing not only “Planeta Bur” but also the aforementioned “Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet” and tossed in some “Battle Beyond the Sun” which itself was culled from “Nebo Zovyot” or “The Sky Calls” whichever title you prefer. It was a verifiable nesting doll of Frankenstein proportions. These movies were generally called “cut and pasties”.

In the end the final movie that Roger managed to squeeze out of these snippets of every science fiction movie ever made was “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women” which in itself is a cut and paste of the name of the “Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet”. Confused yet? Just keep in mind that if you are watching any of these movies and something looks familiar. It is. The only difference is “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women” has Mamie Van Doren in it and this one was directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Only in the credits he is known as Derek Thomas.

In “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women” astronauts land on Venus. It supposedly takes place 2 years after an earlier flight that blew up. Two astronauts plus the robot John on one ship lands on Venus and then communication is lost. Then the three astronauts on the other ship are sent to Venus to rescue the first ship. The ships computer is named Marsha.

When the first ship landed they were attacked by human sizes T-Rexes. Then they fire up John the robot and head out. Why? I don’t know. The rescue ship lands in another section of the planet. They get out their hovercar and start looking the two missing astronauts.

A bunch of hot sexy women are laying on rocks near the shore of a Venusian sea. They wake up and go into the water looking for gifts to give their god. They worship a pterosaur. The astronauts run across the pterosaur. It attacks them and they kill it. With their god dead the Venusian women get pissed and try to kill the invaders with their superhuman mind powers.

This one is more confusing than any of the other Corman cut and pasties. Due to the plethora of little cuts and edits none of the movie is smooth because none of it belongs together. To get some semblance of balance a voice over is used to relay the story. Bogdanovich did the voiceover. Any part of the move with hot chicks in hip huggers and seashell bras is new stuff cobbled in. I don’t know of any Russian movie that had that.

So now we’ve gone from classic Russian interplanetary voyage to blonde hotties in skin tight bell bottoms. Yep. That’d be Roger for you. If you want to see a more original Russian movie than you’ll want to watch “Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet”. Better yet watch “Planet of Storms”, but if you want to see hot chicks in Shell bras watch this one.

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