Stazione spaziale K-9

1997: after a catastrophic atomic war, the Earth has divided into two rival nations, the North Hemis and the South Hemis, both sides locked in a battle to be the first to land on Mars.

Battle Beyond the Sun started life as a state-sponsored Russian sci-fi movie called Nebo Zovyat— a breath-taking, prophetic vision of the Soviet Union's journey into space; in the disrespectful hands of opportunistic producer Roger Corman and a young and eager-to-please Francis Ford Coppola, what was once awe-inspiring becomes laughable, the pair badly dubbing and drastically re-editing the original two hour epic to a mere 64-minutes of clumsy space melodrama (albeit it with impressive effects), 'enhanced' by silly inserts of space monsters that look suspiciously like genitalia.

It's dull going as the two nations race to the 'Red Planet' only to fail with the finishing line in sight, and the feel-good moral of the tale—that rival nations must co-operate if they want to achieve truly great things—does little to compensate for the sheer shoddiness of the whole cut-and-paste approach and the frustrating fact that the wonders of Mars remain unseen.

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.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by M. Karzukov and Aleksandr Kozyr (reworked version by Francis Ford Coppola); Produced by Tatyana Kulchitskaya for Dovzhenko Film Studios (reworked version by Roger Corman, released in America by American-International Pictures. Photography by N. Kulchiskiy; Music by Yuli Meitus (reworked version by Carmine Coppola). Starring Ivan Pereverzev and Alla Popova; plus voices by Andy Stewart and Aria Powell.

Another waste of a foreign sci-fi film (from Russia), chopped up, dubbed and voice-over narrated to no avail. Beginning with a boring prologue expressing the authors' inflated view of the film's historical importance, this set in 1997 tale of the race of Earth's two powers (North and South hemis) to claim Mars is virtually devoid of continuity or interesting stuff. Nothing really happens, and just to punch up the action, a foolish fight between a giant insect creature and a headless hulk with eyestalks is inserted amidst otherwise straight science fiction.

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

{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.