Pavel Klushantsev, “Planeta Bur’ ” aka “The Planet of Storms” (1962)
In the early 1960’s Soviet space exploration was focussed on sending probes and eventually manned spacecraft to the planet Venus and this little B-grade number was commissioned by Soviet film authorities from Pavel Klushantsev who rose to fame with his 1958 science education film “Road to the Stars” which was a mix of fact and fictional speculation of future space travel and exploration. “Planeta Bur’ ” is the only full-length feature Klushantsev made. With his background in special effects engineering, it’s no surprise that the film has excellent production values with advanced special effects simulating a volcano explosion with lava flow and credible background sets of an alien world. The robot in the film has a very technical design though by Western standards of the time it must have looked quite clumsy and comic. Much more impressive is the flying passenger craft, complete with see-through glass shields that double for protection and as entry/exit hatches, which travels across land and sea. Not through sea as the cosmonauts later discover when their little flyer is forced into the water.
Shame then that the plot is very comic-cartoon stuff with characters that are essentially clones of one another in spirit if not in looks. Three spacecraft are on their way to Venus when a stray meteorite comes and blasts one of them into smithereens. The crews of the other ships are very depressed at the disaster but continue onto Venus nevertheless. The crew of one ship land on Venus and begin exploring with their robot John (not “Ivan” perhaps?) but lose contact with the crew of the other ship so they too must descend in a rocket and land to find the lost men while a lone crewmember – the lone woman on the mission – pilots the main craft. While she whiles away her time floating about (literally), the men contend with hydra-like vegetation, bipedal reptilian swamp monsters, an octopus, a pterodactyl and a dinosaur relic to find their companions and explore the planet for signs of life and maybe intelligent life.
Yep, it’s that sort of comic-book sci-fi movie! – except the fauna and flora don’t put up much of a fight and wisely flee when the cosmonauts use shotguns or knives on them. In those days, AK-47s were still limited to the Soviet Army. The men’s real enemy turns out to be John the robot which after being doused by an unexpected downpour of rain (presumably acid) goes demented: it proposes a plan to build a concrete highway across the planet and calculates the cost of construction in terms only Wall Street bankers might understand; it then expounds on creating a world government with itself as prime minister. Talk about having prescience! Later the tinpot tyrant baulks at carrying its human companions, ill though they are with fever, through a river of hot lava and prepares to let them deep-fry; in the nick of time, the crew from the other spacecraft arrive to rescue the men and leave the rebel robot to sizzle alone. Thus a sneaky attempt to impose capitalism on an ideologically and politically innocent planet is thwarted.
There is a hilarious subtext about gender relations: the cosmonauts criticise their lone female crew-member Masha (Khyunna Ignatova) among themselves for violating HQ instructions and leaving the main orbit around Venus to try to rescue them, saying that robots have greater powers of thinking than women do. At the same time the men search for signs of intelligent life and find none, though they find evidence enough that a civilisation once existed on Venus. On renewing radio contact with Masha, the men prepare to meet her ship: after they have blasted away from Venus, intelligent life emerges from its hiding place – in a skilfully prepared camera shot focussing on a pond – and though appearing upside-down in the pond reflection it clearly looks female! Brief moments where the cosmonauts ponder on the destiny of humans and intelligent life generally to travel into space and on how civilisation must have come to Venus appear here and there.
For a pulpy sci-fi flick of its type, “Planet …” clearly emphasises the co-operation and camaraderie among the cosmonauts and their determination to succeed and save their companions against what look like despairingly insurmountable odds. Thankfully the local wildlife accept the cosmonauts as part of their furniture – which animals in real life might well do once they’ve got over the initial shock of seeing, hearing and smelling human intruders – and the really aggressive types are the pot plants with their woody tentacles. The swamp lizard beings briefly defend their territory but once the action moves away from the mud pools, they appear no more. Perhaps the idea of active and voracious plants and rather passive animals appealed to the script writers – it certainly parallels the gender reversal subtext. The film is not stridently propagandistic and this reviewer’s impression is that Klushantsev fought to keep as much scientific veracity and a spirit of co-operation among the crew members (who are a mixed Soviet-American bunch) as he could in the plot and the characterisation. The actors do what they can with the script which requires them to be heroic and straight-faced and to spout lines they might have laughed at most of the time.
Overall this is an entertaining piece that shows the kind of technically sophisticated science fiction movie that film studios in the Soviet Union were capable of making in the early 1960’s. Still with regard to plot and message, “Planeta …” had to cater for most levels of taste and knowledge and pass muster with government authorities. The safe way out then was to produce something that was straightforward and heroic if somewhat lowbrow with just a hint of a politically innocuous subtext for some perceptive people to chew over.