First Spaceship on Venus
Directed by Kurt Maetzig
Written by Kurt Maetzig; adapted by Jan Fethke et al from a novel by Stanislaus Lem
1960/East Germany/Poland
VEB DEFA-Studio für spielfilme/Film Polski/etc
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] You can’t plan for the future, because some guy’s going to land in a spaceship with three heads and a big beak and take over everything. Paul Kantner [/box]
From behind the Iron Curtain comes an innocuous B sci-fi flick.
It is 1985 and the era of peace and World Government has arrived. America is part of one big happy family. Scientists are investigating a location in Siberia where a meteorite had been thought to strike. A rock contains a strange “spool”. After months of work it is determined that the landing was by Venutians and laborous translation efforts reveal secret plans to conquer the Earth. A spaceship to Mars is easily diverted for a mission to Venus.
An international team mans the spaceship and has various adventures on the strangely lifeless planet.
This is one of those flicks where the actors keep saying “Incredible!” and I am hard-pressed to find anything incredible going on. The lack of an alien or monster keeps things mighty tame. I don’t think the dubbed American version I watched hurt the film any.
