Планета Бурь (Planeta bur, Planet of Storms)
[ IMDB | Stream (Archive.org I – 1:18:34) | Stream (Archive.org II – 1:18:32) | Stream (YouTube I – 1:22:07) | Stream (YouTube II – 1:21:50) | Stream (YouTube III – 1:18:34) | Wikipedia ]
Runtime: 1:18:00, aspect ratio: 1.37 : 1
Edited into Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965).
YouTube I and II are in Russian with English subtitles, but YouTube II has the better quality. YouTube III is in Italian with no subtitles and the same as Archive.com I. Archive.com II is in Russian with no subtitles.
Introductory text telling us that Venus is unknown but we can imagine what might await us. This immediately put to mind the Venera probes that the USSR sent to Venus in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Venera 9 and Venera 13, launched in the latter two decades, returned images of the surface of the planet. Because of the atmosphere and pressure on the surface, the probes only lasted anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. Though grainy and spare, I have always been in awe of those images. And I’m sad that further probes have not been sent back.
The movie proper begin with three ships–Sirius, Vega, and Capella–arriving at Venus. Almost immediately, Capella is destroyed by meteor and their mission must be adjusted. For safety, two ships were to remain in orbit as one landed and not with the loss they must wait for the relief ship, Arktur (sp?) to launch and join them. It will take four months.
The crews decide to ignore mission control and send a manned lander to the surface before the Arktur arrives. After quick calculations, the ridiculously robot, in name and appearance, “John” suggests 3 should go (including him) and 6 should stay.
The pressing question: is there life? One bleak opinion: “It’s a dead planet. Intelligence has already destroyed itself.” Still, they see a red glow on the surface and suspect it might be a lighted city.
The lander carrying two of the cosmonauts and “John” attempts to land in a rocky swamp, after which communication is lost. The crew of three on the Sirius decides to land and search for them. Masha in the Vega remains behind.
Alternating scenes between the rescue party–travelling in a Star Wars-type landspeeder–and the lost cosmonauts, we see tentacled plant-like thing attacking the team, human-sized lizards attacking the lander crew, and a harmless Brontosaurus thing. I suspect that footages was either swiped from another film, or eventually used in one.
Through all of this, Masha has lost contact with the rescue team and considers landing to save them.
The rescuers eventually make radio contact with John, but he has been damaged is talking nonsense. It is still proof that the lost cosmonauts may be alive.
The landspeeder becomes a waterspeeder and cuts across the bottom of a bay to get to the source of the robot’s transmissions. En route, they find the submerged statue of a dragon and potentially the remains of an ancient city. The question then become: was it from beings that evolved on Venus or who came from another planet and populated it? To add to the mystery, ever since the team landed, they’ve heard an ominous voice singing.
The “lighted city” ends up being a volcano and the stranded team gets trapped by flowing lava. While carrying the two across the lava, John’s circuits are further damaged and he attempts to “drop the cargo” in order to save himself. The rescue team arrives just in time to save them, and the robot collapses and is carried away with the lava flow.
The planet further conspires against them and a flash flood forces their quick departure. As they rush to take off, one cosmonaut breaks open one of the rock samples and finds a sculpture of a native Venusian. Definitive proof, but they must flee. The final scene shows, reflected in a pool of water with nuanced effect, one of those natives.
(I think I remember watching the edited version and it had a subsequent scene with the ossified robot on a shore at the end of the lava flow, being worshipped by a group of alien women. I have to admit, even though the original ending has reserved quality to it, I like the Twilight-Zone-ish re-edit.)
Updated May 7 2022
Every few months or so I go through my art and posters to see what’s happening with the artist and whether other copies of the posters are available, respectively. With the posters, I have some pride to say that it’s somewhat rare to actually find others. I don’t collect for profit, but the rarity makes me feel lucky that I’ve been able to purchase what I have.
The poster for Planet of Storms that had sold at eMoviePosters.com (for more money than I’d pay for a poster without great guilt) was nowhere else to be found on the poster or auction sites that I frequent. It wasn’t meant to be.
Then a week ago during my quarterly vanity project of checking the market I found it on eBay for around the same price as the other copy, but already sold just days prior. Then (youknowwherethisisgoing) on the same page under “similar items” there was another copy selling for a descent amount less. I’m still on sabbatical (still waiting for repairs to finish on our once-flooded condo) so there was 30 minutes of anguish and getting the OK from Lisa (“very cool, I like the dinosaurs”) before Purchase-Now-ing. Ever since I’d seen this poster I’ve been obsessed: the two-color print with green highlights against the light ochre paper (maybe yellowed and originally white?) is just outstanding. It will be a beautiful addition to my other two Eastern European sci-fi posters of the same era (Мечте навстречу (1963) from East Germany and Небо зовёт (1959) from Yugoslavia).
(It’s been linen backed for preservation which helps with support the thin paper it’s printed on. Linen backing is used for older damaged posters to hold them together, but here it’s helpful since the paper is both old and thinner. Some older posters were intended to be pasted to windows, and so strong paper was not needed.)
