Director:
Peter Bogdonovich Year:
1968 Rating: 1.0
Being a completist can take you to dark corners of the mind. Places you would
never go otherwise. Places that frighten you. It brought me here to this
film. For reasons unknown even to me I have been trawling through the films
of Mamie Van Doren like a man seeking salvation in a junk yard. The offerings
are meager and rusty with time and exposure battering them in an unkind way.
Yet I keep looking. Somewhere in here I will find the Rosetta Stone that
will explain it all. Why we are here. Why we seem to have stopped evolving
as a species thousands of years ago. Why did Mamie appear in this film. I
need answers.
It was about a third of the way through the film that I noted in my journal
that the earth men on the planet Venus and the nine blonde women from the
planet never seemed to share the same frame. I suspected that perhaps the
customs of Venus forbade the intermixing of the two genders. The women in
their white Levi slacks and oyster shells as bras spent their days sun bathing
on rocks by the shore and the crashing waves. I kept thinking those were
some large oysters. Especially on the blonde leader. They also worshipped
a giant monster that flew through the skies looking for prey. Why has he
not found you yet? Is white, blonde and built an evolutionary defense against
these monsters? I noted again into my journal. And the five men whose words
did not match their lip movement kept looking for them but could not find
the women. An existential mismatch. So close and yet so far. Other monsters
do find them though. Large rubber suited beasts and a loathsome monster that
opens itself to unsheathe its many tentacles to go looking for sustenance.
Venus is a cruel planet.
In fact, this was Roger Corman as I found out later at his worst. He bought
the rights to a Russian film titled Planeta Bur (1962) and used its footage
combined with some newly filmed scenes to make not one, but two dreadful
films. Well, perhaps Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet with Basil Rathbone
isn't as dreadful as this but I would not put money on it. But I will likely
find out because curiosity made the cat do some really stupid things. And
as the original film is up on YouTube (Planet of Storms) I will probably
visit that as well because there is no way a Russian sci-fi film could be
as bad as this. As to Mamie. The things I do. Why this. Ok money. Her career
was winding down and maybe she thought this new hotshot kid director would
give it a buzz. That would be Peter Bogdanovich who edited the Russian film
and what he shot together like Frankenstein's mangy monster. He also narrates
the film from the view of one of the astronauts. Corman said he wanted women
in it. Bogdanovich gave him women. Mamie should have waited for The Last
Picture Show.
