Very disappointing...

Don't Believe the Hype

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

There is way to much of the original film in this movie for Prehistoric Women to be a sequel, in fact it is the original film told in flashback form with added footage and most of that are the scenes of the prehistoric women. If it's not a remake of sorts of the first film with a narrator and added footage, and it's not a sequel because it is the original film retold with added footage plus a narrator then maybe we could call this one simply another version of the story? If anyone wants to see the pretty cave-women type of film - Prehistoric Women is a film you might want to watch. You will have to fast-forward awhile because they are just past the middle of the film. They might be in the last 1/3 of the movie.2/10

Director Peter Bogdanovich had to start somewhere; following second unit work on Roger Corman's "The Wild Angels," Corman allowed the hardworking novice an opportunity to do a feature film utilizing the exact same Russian stock footage used by Curtis Harrington for his 1965 "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet," a 1962 entry titled "Planeta bur" (Planet of Storms). It's no stretch to assume that the first-time director just didn't have his heart in his work, as all of his newly shot footage features a dozen bikini-clad models not required to speak, everything narrated by Bogdanovich himself. There is no integration between the alien mermaids and the Russian characters, so the whole thing just sits there, aimlessly meandering from one crisis to another. Granted, I had just viewed Curtis Harrington's work on his "Voyage," so all the Soviet footage was already familiar to me, but at least Harrington had Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue actually communicating with the Russian astronauts, their scenes already dubbed into English. The blame here simply lies with Roger Corman, who felt the need for another retread rather than something truly original. "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" carries a 1967 copyright, and at least Corman was satisfied enough to grant Bogdanovich the freedom to do a feature starring Boris Karloff, who supposedly owed Roger two days work on a previous contract; we can all be grateful that the result was the superlative "Targets," shot in Dec 1967, an achievement that even "The Last Picture Show" couldn't top (some may feel free to disagree). Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater aired "Prehistoric Planet" only 3 times, "Prehistoric Women" 4 times (maybe it was the bikinis), all from July 1969 to July 1972.

Roger Corman's skills at quick-buck film-making are legendary and need no introduction to B-movie fans, but still, you have to particularly admire the tricks that ole Roger pulled off to make this one come together. Back in the '60s he bought the rights to a Russian made sci-fi film that nobody saw called "Planet of Storms", cut it into bits, added some new shots and dialogue, and re-edited the whole mess into two separate movies!! 1968's "Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women" (phew, that's a mouthful isn't it?) is the second of two films using "Planet of Storms" footage (the other being "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet," without the "Women") and it tells the story (told via flashback) of an ill-fated space voyage to Venus, where one set of astronauts crash lands on the planet; they (and the second team sent to rescue them) are then beset by volcanic eruptions, floods, man-eating plants and giant lizard attacks. These pheonomena are apparently controlled by the "Prehistoric Women," a group of pterodactyl-worshipping, scantily-clad blondes who sit atop a mountain causing all of the "invaders'" woes via telepathy. Since the astronauts' footage all comes from the Russian film (hence the film being told in voice-over/narration style, which covers up the fact that all of the actors were speaking Russian), they are never seen on screen at the same time as the Prehistoric Women, whose scenes were shot and inserted into the existing film by then-newbie director Peter Bogdanovich under a pseudonym (Bogdanovich, of course, would go on to direct such acclaimed, high brow classics as "Paper Moon," "The Last Picture Show" and "Mask" during the '70s and '80s - but hell, I guess everybody has got to start somewhere!). The end result may not make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but it's actually quite clever how Corman was able to tinker a whole new story out of two separate sets of film. The "Prehistoric Women" (a group of seven or eight Space Babes led by then-fading '60s blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren, who still looks quite fetching here in a seashell bra and tight white slacks) only appear in about a quarter of the film's run time, yet they got top billing because Roger knew that teenagers were going to be sucked in by the promise of T&A in the title...the clever bastard!!! Whatever it cost to make this movie, I'm sure Roger made it back in one weekend on the drive-in circuit. I wonder what the makers of the original Russian film thought of the "re-editing" of their work, but then if the film hadn't passed through Corman's and Bogdanovich's hands we probably wouldn't be talking about it today. Slow moving and awkward as it may be, "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" is still an enjoyably terrible slice of Z-Grade cinema at its best (or worst, depending on how you look at it). The film is available on DVD at a dollar store near you in a scratchy, washed out public domain print (the color on my copy is so bleached that the movie nearly looks black and white), which only serves to increase the surrealism factor of this odd little movie. God bless Roger Corman, and God Bless America.

"A group of astronauts attempt to rescue a party stranded on the surface of Venus. In the process, they encounter numerous perils, including distinctly unfriendly prehistoric monsters. Their misadventures are watched from afar by a group of telepathic alien women who worship a pterosaur named Tera," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis. Director/narrator Peter Bogdanovich uses Andre Freneau (Gennadi Vernov) as story protagonist.This is the second bastardization of the Russian science-fiction film "Planeta Bur" (1962). There are some good visual effects, carried over from the original movie, especially the cosmonauts' airborne planet surface vehicle. But, as astronomers knew, by the 1960s, this film doesn't really depict how a landing on earth's neighboring Venus could possibly look - if they'd have picked another Solar System, they might have had a classic.The use of "Robot John" is one of several similarities to the TV show "Lost in Space" (appearing in 1965), especially the fourth and fifth episodes of that series. The Robinson family's "Robot" was intended to serve the same function; and, both teams of space travelers encountered "prehistoric" monsters, misguided robot helpers, spaceship weight problems, lost civilizations, and wildly unstable planetary climate changes.The U.S. poorly dubbed this "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women", and cheaply inserted footage featuring busty Mamie Van Doren and several other tightly-clad blondes. How these women came to be living on Venus is wisely left to the imagination. The idea is loosely based on the original film's appearance of a mysterious female figure. "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" (1965) was the first, and better, American version.** Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) Peter Bogdanovich, Pavel Klushantsev ~ Mamie Van Doren, Gennadi Vernov, Vladimir Yemelyanov, Georgi Zhzhyonov