''Planeta Bur'' () is a 1962 Sovcolor

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

science fiction

adventure film The adventure film is a broad genre of film. Some early genre studies found it no different than the Western film or argued that adventure could encompass all Hollywood genres. Commonality was found among historians Brian Taves and Ian Cameron in ...

scripted by Alexander Kazantsev from his novel, and co-scripted and directed by

Pavel Klushantsev Pavel Vladimirovich Klushantsev (; 25 February 1910 – 27 April 1999) was a Russian cameraman of higher category (1939), film director, producer, screenwriter and author who worked during the Soviet Era. He was a Meritorious Artist of Russia ( ...

. In English, the film is often informally referred to as ''Planet of the Storms'', ''Planet of Storms'', ''Planet of Tempests'', ''Planeta Burg'', and ''Storm Planet''. It was never theatrically released in the U.S. in its original form before appearing on home video in the 1990s. The film is better known to American audiences via the two similar American direct-to-television features ''

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet ''Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet'' is a 1965 science fiction film, one of two versions adapted for Roger Corman from the Cinema of the USSR, Soviet science fiction film ''Planeta Bur'' (''Planet of Storms''), scripted by Aleksandr Kazantsev ( ...

'' and '' Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women''. Both U.S. video features reused the film's special effects and most of its primary footage.

Plot

Three

spaceships, ''Sirius'', ''Vega'', and ''Capella'', are on their way from Lunar Station 7 for the first human landing on

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

and the first exploration of the planet. ''Capella'' is suddenly struck by a large

meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

and is completely destroyed, killing all aboard. After mourning the loss of their friends, the remaining two ships, ''Sirius'' and ''Vega'', soon continue on, even though the planned mission required three spaceships. A replacement, ''Arcturus'', will be sent from Earth, but will not arrive for two months. The

cosmonauts An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spacecraft. Although generally reserve ...

aboard ''Sirius'' (Ilya, Roman, and Alyosha) and aboard ''Vega'' (Ivan and Allan, and the woman, Masha) all agree that proceeding with the landing and exploration is better than waiting two months. So Ivan and Allan, with their large robot assistant "John" (now partly disassembled for flight), descend toward Venus in ''Vega''s glider spacecraft, leaving Masha in orbit to monitor communications between the ships and ground crews. All contact is lost with her after they land in a misty swamp. The gigantic ''Sirius'' gently lands vertically on its four shock-absorbing wing struts, but at a different, volcanic-terrain location. Because the atmosphere is poisonous, the men exit ''Sirius'' in their spacesuits and helmets. While wandering around some boulders, Aloysha is suddenly attacked and dragged off toward the mouth of a large

carnivorous plant Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans, typically insects and other arthropods, and occasionally small mammals and birds. They have adapted to grow in waterlo ...

, but he is quickly rescued by Ilya and Roman. After photographing the lifeform and sharing jokes about the incident, they proceed to search for Ivan and Allan in their hovercar. During their journey, they hear what sounds like a distant eerie voice of a woman, and then soon encounter a gigantic, sedate

brontosaur ''Brontosaurus'' (; meaning "thunder lizard" from the Greek words , "thunder" and , "lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during the Late Jurassic period. It was described by American p ...

-like creature, from which one of the men quickly takes a blood sample from its tail. Meanwhile, after completely assembling robot John, Ivan and Allan are suddenly attacked in the swamp by several human-size tyrannosaur-like beasts, some of which they kill with handguns. They later come across a large, deep ravine and attach strong cords to one of the gigantic trees near the edge of the ravine and to an anchoring boulder. John is able to fell the tree over the ravine, and they walk across it, while listening to recorded music. Allan is later weakened by a wound from the attack at the swamp, so robot John finds a cave for their protection from the wet environment. Both men, however, develop a fever and are soon too weak to stand. While over an ocean near a beach, the three cosmonauts submerge their hovercar to escape an attack from a large flying

pterosaur Pterosaurs are an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...

-like creature. While Underwater, they discover a sculpture of the head of one of the flying creatures, with

rubies Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapphi ...

for eyes and apparently made by an intelligent species. After emerging onto the beach, Alyosha discovers a strange triangular rock, which he keeps. After they radio-contact robot John and learn of the two fevers, they instruct John to immediately administer life-saving medicine. Ivan and Allan soon recover, just as a boiling hot

mudflow A mudflow, also known as mudslide or mud flow, is a form of mass wasting involving fast-moving flow of debris and dirt that has become liquified by the addition of water. Such flows can move at speeds ranging from 3 meters/minute to 5 meters/se ...

surrounds them. Desperately, Ivan has robot John carry them safely across the steaming mud, but the robot over-heats and slows down from their added weight. Robot John attempts to forcibly remove them with its claw and injures Allan in the process. The hovercar suddenly arrives just in time to rescue the two men and quickly leave the area. Robot John, now non-functional from the intense heat, slowly descends into the now deep molten flow. During their trip back to ''Sirius'', they again see another gigantic brontosaur-like creature, and new fin-backed dinosaur-like animals. After safely returning to ''Sirius'', they discover a recorded, desperate message from Masha saying that she is going to defy her orders from Lunar Station 7 and land on Venus to search for them. This causes much anguish over her not surviving on this hostile world. Unstable ground and a rainstorm are now threatening ''Sirius'', so they must take off immediately. During this, Alyosha discovers that his strange rock has crumbled apart to reveal a small sculpture of a beautiful woman's face, proving there is human life on Venus. He starts shouting to the others about what he has found, as they hurriedly pull him inside ''Sirius''. They quickly launch just before the ground begins to break apart. Rising into space, they suddenly regain radio-contact from Masha, who tells them she finally decided to remain in orbit for them, as she had been ordered. ''Sirius'' then proceeds to safely return to Lunar Station 7.

Personnel

Cast

Vladimir Yemelyanov Vladimir Nikolayevich Yemelyanov (; 20 June 1911 – 2 July 1975) was a Soviet actor and producer who appeared in 42 films between 1953 and 1975. He is most known for '' Road to Life'' (1955), '' The Immortal Garrison'' (1956) and '' Plane ...

as Ilya Vasilyevich Vershinin * Georgiy Zhzhonov as Roman Bobrov * Gennadi Vernov as Alyosha * Yuri Sarantsev as Ivan Shcherba * Georgi Teich as Allan Kern * Kyunna Ignatova as Masha Ivanova * Boris Prudkovsky1964 USSR freestyle wrestling champion. as Robot John

Production Team

* Z. Anderson as Production Director *

and L. Presnyakova as Producers * A.V. Markov, K.K. Flyorov, V.G. Denisov, and A.M. Kasatkin as Scientific Advisors

Crew

* M. Tsybasov and V. Alexandrov as

Production Designer In film and television, a production designer is the individual responsible for the overall aesthetic of the story. The production design gives the viewers a sense of the time period, the plot location, and character actions and feelings. Work ...

s * I. Yegorov, V. Makarov, V. Malakhieva and A. Nadezhdin as

Art Director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

s * V. Shchelkov as

Special Effects Special effects (often abbreviated as F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the fictional events in a story or virtual world. ...

Art Director * A. Klimov as

Director of Photography The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the recording of a film, television production, music video or other live-action piece. The cinematographer is the chief of the camera ...

* A. Lavrentyev as

Director of Photography * R. Levitina as Sound Recordist * A. Belyavskaya and I. Yasnopolskaya as

Assistant Director The role of an assistant director (AD) on a film includes tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, and maintaining order on the set. They also have ...

s * V. Suslov as

Film Editor Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film stock, film which increasingly involves the use Digital cinema, of digital ...

* Johann Admoni and Alexei Chernov as

Music Composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and defi ...

American adaptations

In 1965, American film producer

Roger Corman Roger William Corman (April 5, 1926 – May 9, 2024) was an American film director, producer, and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he w ...

gained access to the Soviet film footage and hired film student

Curtis Harrington Gene Curtis Harrington (September 17, 1926 – May 6, 2007) was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films and horror films. He is considered one of the forerunners of New Queer Cinema. Life and career ...

to prepare it for an American release. Harrington added several American-made scenes starring

Basil Rathbone Philip St. John Basil Rathbone MC (13 June 1892 – 21 July 1967) was an Anglo-South African actor. He rose to prominence in the United Kingdom as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in more than 70 films, primarily costume drama ...

and Faith Domergue, which replaced scenes of two of the Russian cast, and dubbed the dialogue to English. The resulting film, re-titled ''

'', went directly to television from

American International Pictures American International Pictures, LLC (AIP or American International Productions) is an American film production company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution c ...

. In the cast and credits, the Russian actors’ names were replaced with fake non-Russian names; for example, the Russian actor Georgiy Zhzhonov was credited as "Kurt Boden". In 1968, American film director

Peter Bogdanovich Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian. He started out his career as a young actor studying under Stella Adler before working as a film critic for ''Fi ...

(under the name Derek Thomas) was hired by Corman to create a second, different American film version, re-titled '' Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women'', to which was added new scenes with American actress

Mamie Van Doren Mamie Van Doren (; born Joan Lucille Olander; February 6, 1931) is an American actress, singer, and model. A Bombshell (slang), blonde bombshell, she is one of the "Three M's" along with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, who were friends and ...

and several other attractive women playing Venusians (wearing sea shell brassieres). Also included were some minor scenes from another Russian SF film,

Mikhail Karyukov Mikhail Fyodorovich Karyukov () Михаил Федорович ...

's ''

Nebo Zovyot Nebo Zovyot (, Transliteration, translit. Nebo zovyot, lit. ''The Sky Beckons'' or ''The Heavens Beckon'') is a 1959 Soviet science fiction adventure film directed by Aleksandr Kozyr and Mikhail Karyukov. It was filmed at Dovzhenko Film Stud ...

''. This second Americanized version is essentially the same as Corman's first, but retold with a parallel viewpoint of the telepathic Venusian women, whose god (a large pterosaur-like flying creature) is killed by the Earth men, and includes an ending with an ironic twist: The Venusian women find a new god to worship, the now eroded and non-functional robot John. Corman's 2nd version may have had some limited theatrical releases in the American South on the

drive-in A drive-in is a facility (such as a restaurant or Drive-in theater, movie theater) where one can driving, drive in with an automobile for service. At a drive-in restaurant, for example, customers park their vehicles and are usually served by ...

circuit, but primarily became a "TV movie" released through American International Television.

Reception

In a retrospective on Soviet science fiction film, British director

Alex Cox Alexander B. H. Cox (born 15 December 1954) is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with ''Repo Man (film), Repo Man'' (1984) and ''Sid and Nancy'' (1986 ...

remarked that "in its final minutes, ''Planet of Storms'' takes an extraordinary turn. ... I shall not spoil the secret, but it's worth the wait". The character of the female cosmonaut Masha, portrayed as emotional and arguably mentally unstable, was criticized by Soviet government and press as misogynist, and damaged Klushantsev's career.

Notes

References

External links

* * 1962 films Soviet science fiction adventure films 1960s Soviet films 1960s Russian-language films 1960s science fiction adventure films Films about astronauts Films about extraterrestrial life Films about robots Fiction about pterosaurs Venus in film Space adventure films Films directed by Pavel Klushantsev {{1960s-sf-film-stub