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Three Soviet spaceships are on their way to Venus to explore the planet
- but when one is destroyed by a meteor, that puts the whole project into
jeopardy - but as the cosmonauts on the other two ships are more than
determined to explore the planet anyways, the mission goes ahead anyways.
Each of the other ships sends down a landing glider, but one of the glider
gets off course and crashes onto the planet, and it's only thanks to robot
John that the two cosmonauts (Georgi Tejkh, Yuri Sarantsev) don't
get hurt. They are now trying to get to the rendez vous points with the
others, but have to fight dinosaurs and the like, then John goes
temporarily bonkers when too much water has been pouring onto him, and
finally he has to carry the two cosmonauts over a lake of hot molten lava
and suddenly wants to drop them to save himself. He can be turned off for
good only just. Meanwhile the other three cosmonauts (Gennadi Vernov,
Vladimir Yemelyanov, Georgi Zhzhyonov) comb the planet on their hovering
vehicle in search of their comrades and have to fight dangers of their own
(including a pterodactyl). They meet up with the others just in time to
save them from the now immobile robot in the middle of the lava lake. Reunited,
they finish the exploration of the planet, then they return to their
return ship, where Masha (Kyunna Ignatova) has in the meantime grown more
than a little worried about them and almost abandoned ship to save them -
which would have derived them of their only way to get back home. All's
well, only the expectations of one crewmember (Gennadi Vernov) are not
fulfilled: To find a Venusian civilisation, which he had expected to find
based on a bronze statue he has found. It's only in one of the final
shots, when the cosmonauts are long gone, that it is suggested there
really is civilized life on Venus. Not a masterpiece, but a
nice piece of science fiction adventure from the Soviet Union that's by
far less childish and simplistic than its US-American counterparts - and
on that note, it's ironic that the film was eventually doomed to become
portion of two Roger Corman-produced American films, Voyage
to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage
to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, which not only snatched the
special effects from this one but also large parts of the narrative
scenes, pretty much retelling this movie with a different (and
unnecessary) framing story. As for the special effects of Planet of
Storms: They're pretty good for their time but of course a bit naive
from today's point of view. Anyways, if you like cosmonauts fighting
man-sized dinosaurs, robots and weird hovering vehicles, then this film
won't disappoint you.
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