I've mentioned my second book. I'm also staring on a third book which is a bit different from those two. Here is an excerpt from that work in progress. What do you think?

My Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women

My favorite movie of all time is Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. I may be the only person in the world who can say that. In fact, I am one of the few people in the world who even likes Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.

The movie is so obscure you hardly ever even see it listed in books about science fiction films. Until very recently the only book that even mentioned its existence was the infamous Son of Golden Turkey Awards by Harry and Michael Medved, a book about the very worst films in motion picture history. Here it is listed in the category of Most Primitive Male Chauvinist Fantasy in Movie History. Even then it loses the coveted award to Mesa of Lost Women!

The story of how the film came to be is as incredible as the movie itself. So let’s cover that first. In 1961, writer Alexander Kazantsev teamed up with writer/director Pavel Klushantev to make a film called Planet of Storms for Leningrad’s Popular Science Studios. As with all Soviet films of that era, their goal was to create a motion picture that was not merely entertaining but contained a positive socialist message while being educational as well. The film told the story of a group of intrepid cosmonauts who, along with their robot helper, make the fist manned landing on the planet Venus in the far off year 2000. In accordance with the scientific knowledge available at the time, the planet Venus is depicted as a swampy world covered in vast steaming oceans and populated by dinosaurs. In the days before the dense clouds covering the planet had been penetrated by high tech imaging devices, the notion that Venus might be a watery world teeming with life was considered highly plausible.

Though the film is slow moving by Western standards, it boasted first-rate special effects work for its time — many of which are still impressive today. Planet of Storms was quite a hit in the Soviet Union and throughout the Iron Curtain nations. According to an interview with Klushantev by Robert Skotak in Outre magazine, the film was seen by over 20 million people during its first year and was sold to some 28 countries, bringing in much needed cash to its motherland.

Enter famed schlock science fiction producer Roger Corman, the man who also speculated on the life forms of planet Venus when he depicted them as giant fanged cucumber monsters bent on conquering the world in It Conquered the World, and who also produced and directed such masterpieces as Beast with a Thousand Eyes and Attack of the Crab Monsters. Corman is also credited with discovering such talents as Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Copolla and Martin Scorsese, giving these men and many others their first show business breaks.

Corman was on a trip through the Soviet Union after having been invited to a film festival in Yugoslavia. Upon learning who he was, the Soviets invited the producer to stay on in their country and make a film. But Corman’s idea for a futuristic science fiction piece did not pass muster with the powers that be and he went back home to make X- The Man With the X-Ray Eyes. Before he left, though, he caught a screening of Planet of Storms.

Corman knew a good thing when he saw it. So he bought the US distribution rights to the movie. But he also knew that Planet of Storms, in its original form, was not going to be an easy sell to the teenage drive-in audience who usually flocked to his films. It needed something to make it sizzle. Yet he wasn’t quite sure what that something was.

He first commissioned director Curtis Harrington to Americanize the picture. Harrington hired Basil Rathbone, famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, and the lovely Faith Domergue, star of It Came from Beneath the Sea and This Island Earth, to film scenes that could be intercut with English dubbed Soviet footage to make the picture look as if it were made in the USA. Rathbone apparently did all of his scenes as the commander of an American moon base in a single day. This version was issued in 1965 as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet. The results of the recut were not terribly convincing — certainly less so than the way in which Raymond Burr had been masterfully cut into the original Japanese version of Godzilla — but it’s not likely anyone in Corman’s usual drive-in audiences noticed through their steamed up windshields.

Since Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet hadn’t been seen by too many people, Corman incorporated a few of its scenes into another similarly re-cut Soviet feature and issued that as Queen of Blood. But the producer still hadn’t got enough out of Planet of Storms. He figured he could get a couple more miles out of the movie if he could just add a little spice to it. So he called up 27 year old new-comer director Peter Bogdonavich. According to Bogdonavich’s recollections as published in Corman’s autobiography How I Directed 100 Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, Corman told him the problem with the film was that there were no women.  Corman told him, “I ran down to Leo Carillo Beach. It’ll match the Black Sea (where much of the Soviet footage had been shot), but it’s supposed to be Venus. Shoot women. We’ll cut it in.”

Bogdanavich hired a bunch of hippie chicks, dressed them in bikins made of sea shells — designed by his then wife Poly Platt who would later serve as production designer on Paper Moon and Terms of Endearment — and had them cavort around on the beach for a few days. The girls were to be Venusian women who had evolved gills that allowed them to breathe the noxious Venusian atmosphere while the cosmonauts were forced to wear bulky space suits. Since the Russians could never interact directly with the gill women, Bogdonavich shot the footage silent and dubbed it such that the women seemed to be in telepathic communication with the space explorers.

To add a bit of name value, he cast Mamie Van Doren, who had won fame for her sex-pot roles in such fifties blockbusters as High School Confidential, in the role of the leader of the gill women. Platt now had the dilemma of finding sea shells big enough for Mamie. But she managed somehow. According to the Medveds, Mamie had a morbid fear of sharks and insisted that her husband ex- major league pitcher Bo Belinsky stand by with a rifle in case any of the sea monsters leapt out of the water to drag her from the beach. Bogdonavich cut the scenes of Mamie and the girls on the beach together with the Soviet footage and voila, Roger Corman now had something he could sell on the drive-in movie circuit.

The resulting film, now titled Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, tells the tale of three rocket ships that make their way to the planet Venus. The first ship, is destroyed by a meteor just five minutes into the picture. Bummer. But everybody’s so psyched about going to Venus they launch ship number two six months later. This second spaceship is manned by two astronauts, Kern, the slightly spooky scientist and Sherman, the pilot, along with their snazzy looking mechanical companion, Robot John, Kern’s own invention. It crashes on Venus and Earth loses contact. Major bummer. A third ship is quickly dispatched on a rescue mission, because, by the year 2000, the people of Earth will have spaceships to burn, doncha know.

Turns out the astronauts on the first ship have survived. But they have no way to contact Earth, nor any way to get back home. Yet, being stalwart and intrepid spacemen, they decide to explore the planet’s surface while awaiting rescue. Immediately they are attacked by lizard men. But Robot John comes to the rescue and the lizard-men are quickly dispatched.

The third ship, manned by commander William “Billy” Lockhart, Hans Walters and young Andre Ferneau who narrates the film — given voice by Bogdonavich himself, head off for the planet in short order. After stopping off for refueling at what the soundtrack calls the United States Space Station Texas — the Cyrillic lettering on the station’s hull having been cleverly masked by optical effects — they soon land on Venus. When they turn on their microphones to listen to what’s going on outside they hear what sounds like a woman’s voice singing. They exit their ship only for Andre to be attacked by a gigantic tentacled plant monster. They manage to get him disentangled and set off in their futuristic hover-car to find Kern and Sherman.

Kern and Sherman, meanwhile, are running out of oxygen. A storm hits and they take shelter in a cave. Sherman’s suit has been torn and he is in a bad way. He goes nutty and starts reciting nonsense about the laws of mathematics.

As the other three explorers continue to search, finally thirty minutes into the picture we get our first look at the Venusian gill women sunning themselves on some rocks near the shore of the ocean. Their Great God Ptera, a gigantic rubber pterodactyl bouncing up and down on a string warns them of danger to their land. At that very moment our exploratory team is crossing the ocean in their hover-car in search of the lost explorers. Soon, the Great God Ptera attacks the hover-car. Though they manage to kill the beast, the astronauts are forced to submerge and continue their way to the shore underwater. Here they find the ruins of an ancient city including a statue of Ptera with rubies for eyes.

The gill women find the body of their god washed up on the shore. And boy are they pissed. One of the gill women, in an underwater search for food, spots the space explorers. They vow revenge upon the unholy demons who have killed their great god. They command the god of the fire mountain to, “let your boiling red hot earth rain down upon the invading demons who dared bring death to Ptera.”

A volcano explodes and Kerns and Sherman are caught in the lava flow. Robot John carries them over the flow. But his circuits are soon fried and he can go no further. Just in the nick of time the hover-car arrives and carries Kerns and Sherman to safety.

The gill women are upset that their plans have been foiled and that the invaders yet live on. So they command their gods to send a storm of epic proportions to do them in. “Bring down the waters and the fiery heavens. Let not one invader remain to walk your land,” they pray. The storm comes and the astronauts are forced to hasten their plans to leave the planet. While attempting to loosen the bolts on some piece of prop equipment, Andre breaks open one of the odd shaped rocks he found under the sea and finds that it contains the image of a beautiful woman. But it is too late to go exploring any further. The storm is too fierce. Either they blast off now or they will die on planet Venus.

When the gill women discover the astronauts have escaped, they lose all faith in their Great God Ptera. They destroy the statue of the god and erect the remains of Robot John, which have conveniently washed up on the shore upon which they like to cavort, in its place.

“I can’t forget her. I’m going back. Maybe someday I’ll see her. Maybe I’ll die trying,” Andre intones as we see the space ship heading back for planet Earth.

According to director Bogdonavich’s recollections of the shoot, “This was Hell.” But to me the film was like a vision of Heaven.

My relationship with Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women began late one Saturday night when I was seven or eight years old. I was a dinosaur fanatic at that age — still am, in fact — and my dad used to scan the TV guide for me for cool dinosaur movies. I vividly remember watching Irwin Allen’s 1960 version of The Lost World with him. And even though I knew full well the “dinosaurs” were just lizards with fins glued on them, I thought it was totally cool.

One week, dad noticed that a movie called Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet was playing at eleven o’clock on Saturday night. Although this was way past my bedtime, dad knew I couldn’t miss a movie with a title like that. So he and I stayed up to watch it.

This was not the Bogdonavich cut with the girls on the beach, but the version with Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue. Still it made an impression, as did The Ghoul, Cleveland’s manic horror movie host in fake goatee and fright wig, who hosted the film and livened it up with cheesy cut-in sound effects.

A few weeks later dad spotted another film on The Ghoul’s show with a very similar title, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. So he and I stayed up to watch that one too. I remember being really confused by the fact that even though it was a different film, it contained a lot of the same scenes as the film we’d watched a few weeks earlier. My dad said that maybe this one was a sequel to the first one. He had to explain to me what the word “sequel” meant. I don’t think he was entirely convinced of his own explanation though. So we remained ignorant of the true origins of the film.

The first version of the movie had been interesting, with all the rocket ships and dinosaurs and space suits and the big robot. But this version had me mesmerized. Peter Bogdonavich’s moody voice-over was probably what did it for me. Before we even see the gill women the narrator vows that he knows she’s out there and he’s going back to find her, thus establishing mystery and suspense right from the beginning. Bogdonavich also added an eerie soundtrack in which the Venusian gill women sing to the cosmonauts in voices that sound almost like a Theremin, a spooky sounding electronic instrument often used in low budget sci-fi flicks.

Although the same package of a couple dozen bad science fiction features played over and over and over on Cleveland’s UHF stations, neither of the Prehistoric Planet films were ever shown again after those heady Saturday nights. All through my childhood and teenage years I scoured the TV Guide hoping to see the movie once more. One Saturday I got excited because Superhost, a lame rival to The Ghoul, was showing a film called Women of the Prehistoric Planet. I assumed I must have mis-remembered the title and that this had to be it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an entirely different movie.

In those days before the Medved brothers book had been published, I pored over every issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine every book about science fiction films I could find and hoping to spot a reference to Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. But I turned up nothing. I began to wonder if the film had ever really existed at all. Maybe I’d just dreamed it or something.

Eventually I got hold of the Medved brothers book and found a couple of other passing references to the film. So I knew it actually existed. But it had vanished from television and never made an appearance on home video. Then one day when I was in my late twenties I was scanning through a mail order catalogue of bootleg VHS copies of out-of-circulation and foreign films and lo and behold there it was! For only $9.95! So I ordered it and waited in eager anticipation.

I had no idea if the film, which I had not seen by then for at least two decades, was going to be a lost gem or if it would turn out to be just as awful as the Medveds said it was in their book. But when it finally came and I popped it into my video machine I was amazed. If anything it was better than I remembered it — perhaps because this time The Ghoul’s comedic sound effects were missing and I wasn’t quite as groggy as I must have been when I watched it the before. Once again I sat mesmerized by the movie.

I’ve shown the video to the few people I know who are willing to tolerate such things. In Japan I showed it to my friend Shogase who was the long-time and long-suffering assistant to a highly regarded arty Japanese film director named Akio Jissoji. To my surprise, Shogase really got into the movie. He commented that there was an obvious difference in what he called the “use of time” between the Soviet and the American footage. It’s true. In the Soviet portions, time seems fluid and infinite. While in the American portions there is a sense of urgency, a hurried quality. Probably because producer Roger Corman was watching the budget and rushing the through production.

A couple of weeks ago as I was looking one of the Robert Skotak articles about the movie it occurred to me that, now that I lived in Los Angeles, the location where Bogdonavich had shot the gill women couldn’t be too far away. So one day I decided to drive out to Leo Carillio State Beach just north of Malibu to see if I could find the spot where the Venusian Gill Women had demolished the Great God Ptera and erected their new god Robot John. The beach is about an hour’s drive up the Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica where my wife works. So I made the trip one morning after dropping her off. After passing by dozens of stately Malibu homes I finally came across a sign for the park just past the famed Mulholland Drive which ends on the Pacific Coast Highway.

I found a parking spot on the highway behind about half a dozen other cheapskates who’d chosen to leave their cars there instead of paying ten bucks to park them on the state park’s official grounds. The beach itself is just down a set of wooden stairs near the edge of the road. I climbed down the stairs and there I was, just an hour away from home and setting foot on the steaming surface of planet Venus.

Two large rock outcroppings divide the beach into three distinct sections. Each of those outcroppings had made an appearance in the film. But the third outcropping to the North was the site where the Gill Women had sunbathed on the Venusian rocks and where their altar to the Great God Ptera had stood.

There were no pterodactyls, no tentacled man-eating plants, no cosmonauts patrolling the shore in their futuristic hover-car. Instead there were a few teenage surfers and a couple of families picnicking by the waves. Some kids had built sand castles right there on the shores of the Venusian ocean. The only thing close to my vision of Venus were a trio of girls sunning themselves on the very rocks the Gill Women had laid upon — unfortunately in normal bathing suits rather than bikinis made of seashells. Seeing them there was oddly disconcerting.

When I first laid eyes upon the site, I was immediately filled with a strange feeling of awe and reverence. An immense quiet fell upon me as I gazed at a spot formerly seen only in dreams and fleeting electronic images. Yet this was no dream or image. This was a real honest to Great God Ptera place, manifest before me in three dimensions. I could touch the rocks, smell the ocean spray, feel the heat of the California sun on my face. I knew that all that had really transpired here was that forty years ago a few stoned hippie chicks, an out-of-work ex-Hollywood sexpot and a starving young director willing to make any movie they’d let him just for the experience, had shot a few reels of film that none of them had given a whole lot of thought to. Yet to me it was something more. To me, this had been the mythical planet Venus, home of dinosaurs, robots, space explorers and ethereally beautiful women who sang achingly gorgeous siren songs of yearning.

I knew the feeling pilgrims must experience when they travel great distances to visit some holy shrine whose glories they have read of and whose images they have marveled upon. For me, this was nothing less. This beach was hallowed ground, a sacred place, blessed, consecrated and sanctified by the immortals who made celluloid myths for impressionable young boys up far past their bedtimes.

I wondered, then, about the true nature of holy lands. Is it the land itself that is holy? Or does holiness reside only in our thoughts? If the tawdry trappings of a grade Z sci-fi flick reviled even by fans of trashy movies could become a hallowed place to me, what of all the supposedly “real” holy places throughout the world? From where did they derive their holiness? Could it be, in fact, that those places were, just like this one — only ordinary spots made extraordinary by the minds of men? And not even all men. One tribe’s holy land is to another tribe little more than a good place to build a shopping mall. What if a tribe of idiots like me who loved that awful old movie were to gather here? Would we be moved by the spirit to defend it against vile unbelievers who might swim in its sacred waters or surf on its blessed waves, or — gasp! — wicked children who might build infidel castles from its holy sand? Oh, the blasphemy!

With the right PR, any place can become a holy place. But turn that around and every place is a holy place and every person a sacred being. More than that, every activity you engage in is a religious act. What if everything you did was holy work and every place you did it a consecrated space and everyone you did it with — or to — a sacred being? What kind of world would we have if we could learn to behave towards everyone and everything in the ways that we reserve only for those things we consider holy or sacred?

After paying my respects to that sacred land, I climbed back in my car, blasted off the surface of Venus and headed back for Earth. I couldn’t locate the Unites States Space Station Texas. But I did get a nice veggie burger at the Good Stuff hamburger stand on Olympic.



SPECIAL THANKS TO: Robert Skotak, the Oscar winning special effects director of Aliens and Terminator 2, who wrote an amazing series of articles about Soviet science fiction films for Outre magazine in the late 90’s.

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