It's a sad fact of Cold War movie history that Pavel Klushantsev's first-rate 1962 sci-fi thriller, "Planet of Storms" (a.k.a. "Planeta Bur"), is chiefly known for the way it was plundered and mistreated by other filmmakers. But even if all most '60s-era Americans ever saw of "Planet of Storms" was a couple of Roger Corman-produced rip-offs (see Curtis Harrington's "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" and Peter Bogdanovich's "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women"), you still have a chance to right the universe with a viewing of Klushantsev's original on the big screen.
'Planet of Storms' in from the cold
"Planet of Storms" is worth seeing because it's good ; not just "get a load of those aliens" good, but also intelligent, involving, and, yes, ahead of its time. OK, so it's full of communist propaganda. There's more than one way to run a galaxy, and this film is actually less strident than most sci-fi adventures about waving its colors.
Based on a novel by Aleksandr Kazantsev, the film's story line has three Soviet "starships" heading for Venus, where they're expected to collect data that promises to shed light on the existence of life. Before they can land, one ship is destroyed by a meteor, leaving the other two three-man crews to debate whether to continue on or wait, as ordered, for reinforcements coming along in four months.
They decide to send down two cosmonauts and a talking robot, which predictably results in a crash landing and subsequent rescue mission by three of the remaining cosmonauts (the lone female stays behind to keep one ship in orbit, and to weep for her countrymen). On Venus, the men encounter "savage" alien life forms, ranging from garden-variety dinosaurs to something that looks like a cross between a sickly octopus and the
Special effects-wise, the film is more inventive and less embarrassing than you might expect. Klushantsev ("Road to the Stars") was a special-effects pioneer whose Russian Fantastik Cinema contributions inspired scads of future classics. His low-budget creations are a primer in how to achieve memorable otherworldliness without digital effects.
As important, beneath Klushantsev's visionary techniques there is heart. "Planet of Storms" connects with rare depth and wit, and its stock characters question at least as many things as they shoot at. Now that's fantastic.
At the MFA, "Planet of Storms" is preceded by "The Cameraman's Revenge," Wladyslaw Starewicz's 1912 animated short.
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