Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women - 1968
By The Bottom Reel Editorial Team ·
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) – Roger Corman, Peter Bogdanovich and the Blonde Venusians in Seashell Bras
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Tagline
No official theatrical tagline was registered, but AIP-TV sold it as:
“Astronauts landing on Venus encounter dangerous creatures and almost meet some sexy Venusian women who like to sun-bathe in hip-hugging skin-tight pants and seashell brassieres.”
Video packaging later used: “Stranded in a forbidden world of lust and terror!”
Plot
It’s the distant future – 1998. The conditions on Earth have deteriorated, the air is polluted, and a team of astronauts led by Captain Alfred Kern is sent to Venus.
On Venus they kill a flying pterosaur-like creature, not knowing it is worshipped as a god by a small tribe of blonde Venusian women in rubber bottoms and seashell bras. The women – led by Moana – never actually meet the men. They pray, perform telepathic revenge rituals, summon a volcano, and try to kill the astronauts with their minds.
The astronauts survive a carnivorous plant, underground lakes, volcanic mud, and their own damaged robot – Robot John – who gets stuck in lava and is shut down by the humans. The astronauts make an emergency blast-off. The abandoned Robot John is adopted by the Venus women as their new god.
That’s it. The two groups are never in the same frame, because they come from two completely different movies shot 6 years apart.
Cast & Crew
Venus Women – new footage shot by Peter Bogdanovich in 1968 at Leo Carrillo Beach, California:
Moana – Mamie Van Doren
Verba – Mary Marr
Twyla – Paige Lee
Mayaway – Margot Hartman
Meriama – Irene Orton
Wearie – Pam Helton
Plus Judy Cowart, Frankie Smith, Robin Smith, Adele Valentine
Earth Men – original 1962 Soviet footage from Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms) directed by Pavel Klushantsev:
Capt. William Lockhart – Roberto Martelli (Vladimir Yemelyanov)
Capt. Alfred Kern – James David
Astronaut Andre Freneau – Aldo Romani
Astronaut Howard Sherman – Ralph Phillips (Yuri Sarantsev)
Astronaut Hans Walters – Murray Gerard (Georgiy Zhzhonov)
Robot John
Narrator – Peter Bogdanovich
Directed by: Pavel Klushantsev (original Planeta Bur footage) / Peter Bogdanovich as “Derek Thomas” (new footage) – Bogdanovich chose not to be credited as director
Written by: Henry Ney from Alexander Kazantsev’s novel
Produced by: Norman D. Wells, Roger Corman for The Filmgroup
Distributed by: AIP-TV
Music by: Keith Benjamin
Cinematography: Flemming Olsen
Edited by: Bob Collins
Runtime: 78 minutes
Working title: Gill Women of Venus
Social Impact & Reception – The Ultimate Patchwork Movie
How it was made: In 1962 the USSR made Planeta Bur, a serious, visually stunning sci-fi film with great creature designs. Roger Corman bought it cheap. In 1965 he had Curtis Harrington dub it and add Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue footage to create Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet.
Then AIP said: “We won’t buy it unless you put some girls in it.” Corman went to 28-year-old Peter Bogdanovich – future director of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon – and said “Would you shoot some footage with some girls?”
Bogdanovich later said: “I figured out a way to work some girls in it and shot for five days, and we cut it in. I narrated it, because nobody could make heads or tails of it. Roger wouldn't let me add any sound. It was just a little cheap thing we did.”
He had to paint out the red star on the spaceship in every frame and replace it with a fake NASA symbol. He dressed Mamie Van Doren and blonde extras in rubber pants and seashells because “I thought everyone should be blonde on Venus. I gave them South Sea movie names because it seemed right.” One actress was afraid of sharks – they threw her a rubber fish, she bit its head off.
It was the last film made by Filmgroup and apparently had at least a limited U.S. release via American International Pictures in 1968, but became famous on cable TV and home video. It’s now public domain and free on Internet Archive.
Reception:
Alex Cox in The Guardian retrospective on Soviet sci-fi called this version “equally classic” to the earlier one.
FilmFanatic.org: “a jarring mish-mosh of scenes” and “frightfully sub-par” but “moves along at a quick enough pace that you’ll likely never be bored.”
HorrorNews.Net: The Mamie Van Doren scenes were “Peter Bogdanovich’s stag film” and Corman had “made the Russian footage crappier, fulfilling his patriotic duty as an American.”
Filmink: “This and Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet... use much of the same footage but Bogdanovich’s film is far superior: it’s simply better made.”
Audience reviews: “Weirdo re-edit... for Roger Corman by a young Peter Bogdanovich... added new footage of Mamie Van Doren. The story takes place in the distant future of 1998.” and “I watched it knowing absolutely nothing about its origins, and was more than a little surprised at just how disjointed and clumsy it all was, even for a low-budget 60s B-movie.”
Socially, it’s a case study in Cold War film recycling, sexploitation marketing, and how Corman launched careers – Bogdanovich’s wife Polly Platt was production designer.
Budget vs. Profit at Box Office
Budget: Not listed. The Soviet original was expensive by Soviet standards; Corman’s two re-edits were done for under $33,000 total – Bogdanovich’s new footage was shot in 5 days on a beach. AIP-TV bought it for TV syndication.
Box Office: No theatrical grosses reported. Box Office Mojo lists Domestic –, International –, Worldwide –. It was made for TV, not theaters.
Profit: Profitable for Corman by design – buy cheap Soviet footage, add 10 minutes of blondes, sell to TV. Long-tail profit from VHS, DVD, and streaming.
Ratings
IMDb: 2.9 / 10 from ∼1,200 votes some listings 2.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes: No Tomatometer (too few critic reviews), Popcornmeter 20% Audience Score from 500+ ratings, 5/5 stars from cult fans ironically.
Letterboxd: ∼2.1 / 5
Bottom line: Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women is not a good movie, but it’s a fascinating Frankenstein of Soviet ambition and American cheese. You get excellent 1962 Russian miniatures and then Mamie Van Doren telepathically yelling at a robot from a beach in Malibu. As Bogdanovich himself said, people think he directed it when he really only directed 10 minutes of it.