Last week Mars, this week Venus…

YouTube, seeing my interest in all things relating to film on Mars offered me this. Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet from 1965.

It’s… well… it is what it is. There’s Basil Rathbone. There’s Faith Domergue. There’s a rocket. There’s Venus.

Except it’s not. You may find the dialogue is… dubbed. For yes, it is. And as the helpful accompanying piece notes:

Astronauts land on Venus and confront all kinds of prehistoric creatures and plants. Roger Corman acquired the Russian science fiction picture, Planeta Bur (Planet of the Storms), cut it, wrote new dialog, dubbed it, and cast Basil Rathbone in some new English language scenes. This version has since fallen into the public domain. The special effects and design are outstanding.

Here’s Planeta Bur.

And indeed the effects aren’t bad for 1962. There’s some bits, particularly the beginning, that makes one wonder if a certain S. Kubrick saw the film. But perhaps form followed function.

And here is another ‘reworking’ of it… Peter Bogdanovich’s Voyage To the Planet of the Prehistoric Women – a re edit and extension of the original and the second version.

2001 it ain’t.