Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Dartherer I really don't get the hype.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

jvance-566-20403 I'll never turn down the opportunity to watch an old sci-fi or horror B movie. They represent some of my favorite guilty pleasures. But this one didn't work for me at all.I have a feeling that the dubbed script didn't translate properly. I'm also sure the available version has been cut to shreds - at least I hope it was because I could make little sense from of any of it.The plot may potentially have been interesting but I was lost from the opening moments over the frenetic analyzing of the "spool" (or whatever it was). The casting went way overboard in trying to make the crew into a miniature League of Nations. I'm sure it was intended as a fine gesture but it was so contrived as to be irritating. The various creatures and situations encountered on the planet were all over the map (Venusian map that is). At some points I wondered if a different movie had been inadvertently spliced in during the editing process.I really don't like giving low scores to movies like this because I believe they need to be rated in an alternative manner but I'm stretching just to give it a 3.

Bezenby Folks on the IMDb love this one. It's Kubrick-esque, they say. For it's time, the special effects are amazing, they say. I say I watched it over the course over two nights and even though I was sure it was nearly finished at the end of night one, I was dismayed to find out tonight that I had almost the entire film to sit through! For those asking, I have to split up films due to my demanding job of murdering blue bottles trapped in people's sheds in my local allotment. They pay me in runner beans.Folks on a multi-cultural, united Earth discover an object that seems to have some sort of recording from the planet Venus that ends up in the Gobi Desert via the Tunguska Explosion. Curious, they gather together a crew of many nations (something they got right, says I, from the racially tolerant world of 2017) and head off for Venus. This takes an awfully long time, even with all the exciting bits where a human plays a robot at chess, but eventually they do make it to Venus.Not much there makes sense, but at least our actors stand around for ages talking about every strange occurrence that happens, like when this guy's buggy explodes and he falls into a hall full of bouncing metal insects, or when someone else kicks a rock into some black mud which not only causes the black mud to chase them, but also happens to turn a huge golf ball shaped object red. You heard me.Yeah, the effects are good and the sets are good and the robot looks like something that would probably last about ten seconds on Robot Wars, but there's a huge amount of nothing happening in this film. I know it kind of ends up being the point of the film, but I was seriously on the verge of nap time during most of this film's duration. Next!

calvinnme ... and since it was made in the 1960's, what else would you expect? This film is based on a 1951 novel called The Astronauts by Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, and it is much better than the current rating. That low rating may be because of some things I mention in the next paragraph. I am reviewing the dubbed version.First some of the not so good stuff. This is unmistakably an early '60s era work and clumsily dubbed into English. By that I mean you can't escape the crudeness of some of the special effects and some of the dialogue can be a bit clunky. And besides some of the dated aspects of effects and dialogue, you have to try to forget what you already know about what Venus is really like.Now for the good stuff. In its own right this was an ambitious movie. It's a story of pure space exploration or more particularly exploration of a strange new world. And the depiction of that world might be a touch crude but it is nonetheless imaginative and fascinating. An alien artifact is found on Earth and its origin is traced back to Venus. In the peaceful Earth of 1985(!!!) an international group of scientists and specialists man the advanced spaceship Cosmostrator to travel to Venus to investigate and possibly make contact with any alien intelligence to be found.Some of the imaginative set designs and models could have been lifted right off the covers of some of the most romanticized scifi novels. I love the design of the Cosmostrator and the ship's control deck bears a striking conceptual similarity to the bridge of Star Trek's starship Enterprise yet the film came out six years before Star Trek aired on American television! The film also features an intelligent yet non humanoid robot called Omega. And the crew is genuinely interracial. The ship's commander is German or perhaps Polish. The communications specialist is African. The pilot is American. The ship's physician is a Japanese woman. And the two chief scientists are Indian and Chinese. Plus they all have authentic ethnic names. This is also an ensemble cast with no true prominent character. While Forbidden Planet is recognized for likely greatly influencing Gene Roddenberry in developing Star Trek, this film introduces ideas that Roddenberry couldn't have gotten from Forbidden Planet such as the interracial crew. And could Matt Jefferies have been influenced by this film when designing the Enterprise bridge? It makes you wonder.I'm normally not keen on films that are dubbed into English, but I have to say that this film caught my attention right off and held me to the end. Because in the final assessment the good outweighs the bad.On further thought, considering Hollywood's current obsession with remakes, here's a film with some good ideas that could could use a good polishing. The basic story is genuine deep space, far future space adventure. Oh, and change the locale and give it a better title.

bkoganbing Back when Germany was divided politically and ideologically the Communist East German half gave us First Spaceship On Venus which is a rather self explanatory title. It hasn't worn well with time, but it's still open to speculation what's on Venus.A magnetic spool containing Venusian recordings is found in the wreckage of what was thought to be a meteor hitting the Siberian tundra in 1908. Just enough to arouse scientific curiosity is translated and an international expedition is formed.Back in 1908 things were happening on Venus and it was a more advanced civilization on that planet and more warlike. But a big old disaster happened and the Venusians were all killed. What happened to the Venusians is why you watch the film.The film is a plea for universal disarmament and it was made sincerely with the best of intentions. The message is laid on with a sledgehammer and the acting not great and the dubbing even worse.Still Walter Ulbricht who led East Germany back then had no real reason to be ashamed of the film, but it is sadly and badly dated.