Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968)
Recut from Pavel Klushantsev's Soviet film Planeta Bur, in which cosmonauts explore a storm-wracked Venus, and spliced with new beach-shot footage of American actresses playing a tribe of telepathic, fur-clad women who worship — and avenge — a winged Venusian creature the astronauts kill.
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women was one of Peter Bogdanovich’s earliest jobs for Roger Corman, taken on under the pseudonym “Derek Thomas” and limited to cutting new footage around Klushantsev’s existing Soviet special-effects sequences, ahead of his credited directing debut with Targets the same year; it belongs to the same Corman-era practice of dubbing and recutting Soviet science-fiction films — also used on Battle Beyond the Sun — for cheap American drive-in release.
Background
This film was one of several English-language recuts of Soviet science fiction films that Roger Corman commissioned in the 1960s, a cheap way to get finished special-effects footage onto American screens. It reuses effects sequences from Pavel Klushantsev’s Soviet film Planeta Bur and adds new scenes shot with American actresses playing a tribe of prehistoric women. Peter Bogdanovich directed the new material under the pseudonym Derek Thomas, shortly before his credited debut as a director with Targets the same year.
What to watch for
Watch for the visible seam between the two sources: the cosmonaut and spaceship footage has a more polished, effects-driven look typical of Soviet science fiction of the period, while the added beach scenes with Mamie Van Doren and the other women look distinctly like a cheap American production. This kind of recut was common practice for Corman at the time, and the film is most interesting as an example of how international footage was repurposed for the American drive-in market rather than as a coherent science-fiction story in its own right.
