Planeta Bur

I have this sad, vivid childhood memory of a robot dying.

His name was “John,” and he was a big, hydraulic mechanical man. They took him to Venus with them. I didn’t understand the film then, despite it’s simplicity, simply due to my youth. Two astronauts went out exploring with him; he was a good anchor for their guide lines. But they got in trouble. Lava flows, wouldn’t you know. John hoisted the men onto his burly shoulders and stepped into the 5,000 degree river of molten rock, precariously treading a path to the other shore. The men were able to jump to safety, but John, crying out in his mechanical man’s voice, tumbled over and dissolved in the unholy mud.

I remember crying during the scene. But cut me some slack; I was probably six, maybe seven at most.

Since that day in the early seventies, I have seen the movie again, several times. Let me be honest and tell you, as you already may suspect, it’s not the same. For one, that scene doesn’t pack the same volume of pathos as it once did for my little mind. For another, the movie is really, really silly. In all it’s incarnations.

The original is a 1962 Russian flick called Planeta Bur. It means “Planet of Storms” or “Storm Planet.” Over the next couple of years it was re-edited and re-dubbed in English for two really bad re-visionings. I think that a more faithful remake or re-do of the film would have resulted in a more memorable and worthwhile production. As it stands, the movie is a minor footnote in the pantheon of SF cinema. You need to be a real true fan to have seen this film.

The two American versions have been called Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. Each gets more sillier than its predecessor. I have the first on a VHS cassette I ordered a decade ago. The second was at my library in DVD format; I rented it and watched it in all its glorious goofiness.

Both Americanized versions are strange, strange ducks. Now, I’d never recommend recreational drug use in any way shape form to anyone who may be reading this, BUT - I wish I was under the influence watching these two ... films, I suppose, though “film” does not really seem to accurately convey what it was exactly I saw.

Anyway, it’s an odd and not entirely unenjoyable experience to watch these films. Perhaps it’s due to Russian cinematography in the early 60s, but there’s an eerie atmospheric quality about them. Combine that with the gritty, grimy muscle-of-the-proletariat look of the astronauts and the steam-punk authenticity of John, and it's a movie that’s visually unlike any SF I recall seeing from that time period.

I'm not an expert on the history of these films, but still I'd like to offer my take. Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet seems to me, not having seen the original Russian source material, the most "faithful" attempt to bring Bur to our shores. However, “faithful” does not translate to “logical” or even “remotely plausible.” I doubt if the Russian script was even translated into English. Most likely some struggling Hollywood writer was given the film, turned down the sound, and wrote a script to whatever he thought was happening. Oh, and this is his first crack at writing an SF screenplay. And he is scientifically illiterate. And they never proof-read his script. And they used his first draft. And English is really his second language.

You get the idea. After a while I eventually turned down the volume (the dialogue was making my head ache) and just watched the special effects, awaiting that tender scene of self-sacrifice by John.

My latest viewing, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, is even more sillier as you can imagine. The director is a young Peter Bogdanovich (most modern readers will recall him as Dr. Melfi’s snobby psychiatrist colleague on The Sopranos), though he wisely does not attribute his name to the directorial credit. Most of the original Bur footage remains, but now we have a silly, exploitive subplot of semi-nude telepathic women harassing the astronauts and vice versa. The expression on my face throughout most of this was similar to Beavis watching a Winger video.

One final word on John’s death scene: it’s not like I remembered it as a child. The sacrifice was not so noble and touching as was imprinted in my cerebellum. Apparently, hauling the astronauts on his shoulders shin-high in molten magma was overloading the mechanoid, and in his neutral voice he declares he “must remove excess weight! must remove excess weight!” He attempts to toss the men off to their deaths, but they manage to re-rig his circuits to circumvent his plan. John does get them across, then takes his lava bath.

Originally I was going to watch this with the Little One, age six, but upon further reflection I decided against the possibility of implanting any crazy memories in her tender and trusting head.

But in a bizarre sort of way, I enjoyed it.