Batalla más allá del sol

BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN opens with a seemingly endless narrated segment, featuring an array of spaceship models. The basic plot involves a race to put together a mission to Mars.

Originally a Russian sci-fi epic, it was bought, Americanized, and sensationalized by none other than Roger Corman. In typical fashion, the story was condensed and new scenes were added in order to heighten the drama and thrills. Corman knew his audience, and that the unaltered film would never make any money at the drive-ins.

Admittedly, American audiences at the time of its release would probably have slept through much of it. Even in its truncated form it's pretty dull., in spite of the dramatic music. That is, until the forced satellite docking. Cue the rubber monsters!

So, another Soviet era space adventure is Corman-ated...

I have just posted a synopsis for this film and noted the major differences between the original Soviet production and the American release.

Although reported to be over 2 hours long my fully subtitled version is only 67 minutes.

I suspect that the a lot of the Soviet propaganda supposed to be in the film was removed before the subtitled version came out.

If anyone wants more details of the differences between the two films don't hesitate to contact me.

Also if anyone has a longer subtitled version of the original film I would also love to know how to source it

Like most soviet films of the period (and I watched the original version), in has no action whatsoever. The plot is stilted as statues at the People's Economy Achievements Exhibition in Moscow, and the story drags its feet to no end. It is a typical tableau vivant aimed at kicking imperialist America one more time, and at showing Russians (but mostly Ukrainians, as the film was done at the infamous Dovzhenko Studios, legendary for its spectacularly bad productions) at their best and foremost.

However, this propaganda poster about how Soviets and Americans tried to prove to each other whose penis extender—pardon me, phallic symbol—is better, racing each other to Mars, of all places, is nicely illustrated with analog FX. The music is abominable, and is in place only in the scene of "space madness" of the one "bad American" they let out into space. The dialogue is absurdist and as ridiculous as the gadgetry shown. More than anything else, it reminds me of the old Chapayev joke: —Pet'ka, the apparatus. —Six, Vasily Ivanovich. —Six what? —Apparatus what? In some sense, it's just as silly as Gravity. Look how much time passed, and what has changed?

Nevertheless, content-wise, the film's narrow-minded positivism and typical soviet jingoism is set off by one truly Pynchonian twist, and you can appreciate it if you read Gravity's Rainbow. The film has its own Gottfried, and there is the Gottfried glorious moment there. A-and Gottfried's name in the film is Grigory.

{Note: these comments and score refer to the AIP film 'Battle Beyond the Sun', NOT the Russian film 'Nebo Zovyot}'. American International Pictures bought the rights to 'Nebo Zovyot' ('The Sky Beckons') (1959), a Russian 'hard' science fiction film about a cold-war race to land the first manned spaceship Mars. Although a bit plodding, 'Nebo Zovyot' is an interesting film with excellent special effects (the scenes of the cosmonauts standing on the asteroid Icarus with Mars looming above them is especially memorable). Despite the project being handed off to a young Francis Ford Coppola (a film student at the time), the Americanised version is just a bargain-basement mix of time-filling introductory voiceover, bad dubbing, and sloppy editing (note the crude mask covering the "CCCP" on one of the spaceships, note also that they missed the Red Star on the tailfin). Oddly, all of the names in the credits have been changed to fictional 'western' names and only the "Mosfilm" credit suggests the movie's actual origins. The film, which originally depicted Americans vs Soviets, has been depoliticised (the spaceships now represent fictional Northern hemisphere and Southern hemisphere political rivals) and the only new footage is a laughable monster fight on one of the Martian moons (referred to as a moon of Mars in the dubbing but called "Ikar", because in the Russian original, they landed on the asteroid Ikar (Icarus)). Apparently Coppola's boss, the legendary Roger Corman, decided that the original scene, in which a cosmonaut stranded on the tiny moon looks up a hill and sees his rescuers, would be better if instead he saw monsters, so we're treated to a headless creature with protruding eye-stalks eyes battling a menacing-looking 'vag-dentata' beast. Such juvenile additions seem ridiculous in retrospect but no one can question as to whether Corman knew his audiences and if it wasn't for his unerring eye for talent (and profits), few people in the cold-war era 'west' (especially in the USA) would have had any opportunity to see some of the great work being done by filmmakers behind the Iron Curtain. As a stand-alone film, 'Battle Beyond the Sun' is hard to rate: the Russian special effects are great (I would give 'Nebo Zovyot' an 8/10) and, while the AIP version is awful (independent of its Russian visuals), it remains an interesting example of Corman's chutzpah, and, if you didn't know the provenance of the special effects, you'd likely think that 'Battle Beyond the Sun' was a well-made and pretty cool '60s science fiction movie. *there is only a single IMDB entry for the film and I don't seem to be able to rate the Russian (8/10) and the American (4/10) versions separately.

Although bearing the AIP logo and giving the characters all-American names like Craig Matthews and Paul Clinton the credits give the game away by revealing that it's actually a Mosfilm production in characteristically hot colours bought by Roger Corman's Filmgroup who engaged the services of his illustrious protege Francis Ford Coppola (credited as Associate Producer) depicting an international endeavour to colonise Mars; which seemed a far more imminent prospect sixty years ago that it does today, with a couple of monsters thrown in that manage to be both absurd and Freudian in equal measure.