User Reviews

Saw this long ago late one night on an old UHF (read second-rate) TV channel. Its was another attempt by a cheapo studio to make a quick buck by grafting cheap American footage onto a cheaply purchased Russian sci-fi film , and foisting it onto an unsuspecting American public, probably as the second of a double feature. The plot , which was probably drastically altered from the original Russian film, concerns a space race between two antagonistic regions on Earth, which I believe they referred to as North Hemis and South Hemis. I think the goal was mars , but (SPOILER ALERT) I don't think they make it. One side, probably the Americans in the original, attempt to make it there first in a risky effort and crash on one of Mars' moons (dont ask me which one). The other side rescues them and they all become friends, the message being one of peaceful coexistence in exploration of the stars....Most of the film is a reediting of the original Russian film, and much of that footage is interesting. The lift off and mission control scenes are well handled , and some of the space flight scenes have a 2001-like quality. There definitely was some money spent. The big American contribution is a laughable fight between monsters on the martian moon. One monster looked like a banana, and the other like a tomato. Who knows what they were thinking. Maybe it was to liven up the original film, which apparently was a straight-forward, realistic depiction of a trip to Mars, minus boogy men. All I can think is that Coppola, under the name Thomas Colchart, accepted this assignment to get his foot in the door......

A lot of the other reviews here express a lot of hope for the Russian- language version of this film, an English-dubbed version re-edited by Roger Corman not having apparently been very good. Roger Corman did ruin some good things in his time, but in this case I think having watched the Russian-language version that what he had to work with wasn't much good in the first place.

First off, this film definitely has a state-sponsored message to get across. There were many Soviet films that were just there for art and entertainment, and there were message-delivering films that still managed to do it in some style. This is neither. We have here an imagined version of how the space race will go, with friendly, reasonable cooperative Soviets getting spurned by opportunistic, business-minded Americans more concerned with winning than with safety. Eventually the Americans are won over to the Soviet way, and we end with an exhortation to the younger generation to continue the conquest of space.

This is interesting as a historical curio, though, and that's it. The acting is wooden. Some impressive space visuals don't make up for the fact that there is almost no plot to keep events moving across the short running time, and the characters are so flay that they are almost undifferentiated. It's basically a feature-length promo for the Soviet space program, and it's definitely filmed that way.

The American version of this film concerns a race into space and was assembled by Roger Corman who cut up the original Soviet film and then added some footage of his own. From the looks of things Corman took a ponderous and very serious film about a trip to the stars and made it some what less serious. Certainly the gravity of the performances of the original remain but at the same time introduction of the battling monsters in the final twenty minutes changes everything. Honestly the only real reason to watch this sleep inducing film is the two monsters which battle it out while the astronauts watch. The creatures are nothing if not monstrous to look at and possess forms that are rather unique, namely less than the less than veiled shapes of genitalia. Clearly the filmmakers assigned by Corman were bored and I doubt they really ever thought they'd actually get away with what they did, but there it is on the screen, who monsters locked in a vicious battle thats in actuality a less than subtle commentary of the male female dynamic. I don't think I ever really paid any attention to their shape for the longest time, it wasn't until I had it pointed out to me that the film suddenly became so much more interesting. Unfortunately the monsters are only briefly seen at the end, but in an otherwise somber film, their inclusion is enough to watch the film if you are a monster nut like me.

From the very beginning, I was impressed with the quality of the special effects in this movie which, I agree with other reviewers, were very good for their time. The obligatory monster scene on the Mars moon is mercifully short...and if you can just hold your nose through that part, the rest of the film is good enough to make you feel you're really up there with them. I liked the message of the film too, even if it wasn't the original intention of the longer communist propaganda flick. I disagree with those who completely pan Battle Beyond the Sun. I thought much of it was convincing sci-fi, and I'd recommend viewers judge it for themselves.

Nebo Zovyot (The Sky is Calling) is a 1959 Soviet film about Russia and the US trying to become the first to land on the planet Mars.

The models(Rockets,Space Station)and sets are impressive for late 1959.

The film never made a clean debut in the US, simply dubbed into English as so many Japanese sci-fi films had. This was because the story had pro-communist messages and disparaged America. Being a Soviet film, the messages are all from the other side. The Soviets are cast as the reasonable folks. While the Americans are the reckless and impetuous.

Fun Fact: Roger Corman bought the American rights to the film. He had it edited, dubbed and some new footage added. The result was his oft-maligned Battle Beyond The Sun. Footage from this movie also showed up in a couple of later 60s American B movies.

I saw this movie in its UK premier at the National Film Theatre. It is the original Russian version with subtitles. It was 67 minutes long and this seems about right for its slim story. I doubt if the rumours of a two hour version are true.

The print was in decent shape, with only the occasional scratch, but the image quality wasn't great. I don't know if this was due to the mediocre quality of the original film stock, or was simply because this was only a 16mm print.

If you only know of this film from Corman's Battle Beyond the Sun and are anxious to see it in its original form, don't get your hopes up. The special effects and production design are 'state of the art' for 1959 but everything else is quite poor.

The story is very simple but is OK in its general outline.

It starts with a writer being shown around a Soviet space exhibition. He sits down at a desk looking thoughtful and the rest of the movie is his daydream.

An American rocket lands on a Soviet space station on its way to Mars. The Americans learn that the Russians are also planning a Mars mission and are ordered to set off immediately in order to beat them there. In their hurry to take off they accidentally injure a Russian cosmonaut.

Because they have set off before Mars is in the correct position, they run out of fuel. The Russians heroically shelve their own Mars attempt in order to mount a rescue mission. The rescuers encounter a meteor shower that may or may not have some effect on their spaceship. Eventually they pick up the Americans but also run out of fuel. They land on an asteroid called Icarus, for no obvious reason. The Russians then send them an unmanned fuel rocket which crashes on Icarus, also for no obvious reason. A second fuel rocket is sent and does manage to land safely, but one of the Russians dies (you guessed it) for no obvious reason.

This all sounds fair enough, but the movie makers had only the most elementary idea of how to tell a story in cinematic terms.

The screenplay is very lumpy. It lingers on scenes of marginal importance (and interest) and then omits crucial scenes altogether, so the story jerks forward with scant regard for either temporal or spatial continuity. Basic information, needed to follow what is actually happening on the screen, is given in the wrong place or is too cryptic to really make sense (poor sub titles didn't help). Scenes frequently begin without any preparation and it is only half-way through that anyone bothers to explain what is going on. Sometimes they never do and the visuals are too opaque to fill in the gaps.

The director is more concerned with creating beautifully composed images than generating atmosphere and tension - or even just telling the story. Scenes begin with pointless lingering close ups of people looking thoughtful. Sometimes we learn what they were thinking and sometimes not. They then wander aimlessly around the (often superb) sets with no point or purpose before clustering together and striking poses that might look good in stills but make no dramatic sense. The actors are left to fend for themselves.

In Hollywood it has often been said that when a good director dies he becomes a cinematographer. If Mikhail Karzhukov was ever a good director he must have been dead long before this movie was made.

The overall impression is that Nebo Zovyot is not a narrative movie so much as a series of 'tableau vivants'. It resembles an early silent movie, where the inter titles explain what is going on and the subsequent scenes are merely illustrations - except that here there are no inter titles.

Interestingly, the other East European SF films made around this time which I have now seen in their original versions, Mechte Navstrechu, Planeta Burg, Der Schwiegende Stern and Ikarie-XB1, are all more or less the same. This suggests that Soviet Bloc film makers were working in a bubble with very little access to movies made elsewhere. Stylistically, they were all stuck in the Silent era, when Soviet film-making had been cutting edge.

I know some people might accuse me of being culturally blinkered: trying to impose Western story-telling conventions on a film made in a different cinematic tradition, with different aesthetic values and artistic priorities. I have considered this possibility.

They are wrong.

PS: Many aspects of this review are even more pertinent to Mechte Navstrechu, the other SF film premiered in this NFT season.

PPS: The British Film Institute is currently negotiating with a Danish company to release these old Soviet era SF films on DVD (hopefully with full digital restoration) so many other people will be able to judge them for themselves.

Battle Beyond the Sun was a sci-fi adventure that was created by Roger Corman's American International Pictures when they edited a Soviet sci-fi film into something friendly to the American drive-in. Seemingly, the Russian original was quite sober and serious-minded, while it referenced the cold war and portrayed the Soviets as fair-minded and reasonable and the Americans as underhand idiots. AIP figured that this very un-American message wouldn't translate into dollars, so they re-wrote it changing the super-powers into fictional states known as the North Hemis and the South Hemis. They also removed much of the more serious material and added some alien monsters to liven things up. What remains is that the two competing states are in a space race to be the first to land on Mars. I can't comment on the original version as I have never seen it but this version isn't too good. The story seems – perhaps unsurprisingly given its genesis – a bit muddled. It's not really helped by the fact that given this is a story about a journey to Mars; they don't actually ever get there!

But perhaps the thing that stands out the most about this one is the fact that this cut was helmed by Francis Ford Coppola (under the pseudonym Thomas Colchart). In fairness, there are no signs of Coppola's massive talent here. This was clearly very much a work experience gig for him. The best aspects of the whole thing come from things from the production values of the original movie. There is decent model and set design here. But on the whole, it's a pretty lacking film.

The early 60s found Roger Corman's Filmgroup looking for foreign titles for easy purchase, one such entry a 1959 Russian feature called "Nebo Zovyot" (The Sky Calls), entrusted to a young Francis Ford Coppola to shoot some new footage to support the impressive visual design, issued on a theatrical double bill with Curtis Harrington's "Night Tide." The original 73 minute picture centered on competition between America and the Soviets in the race to conquer Mars in 1997, as a single brave cosmonaut risks his life to save the US team from certain death. Coppola eliminated the politics, redubbed all the characters with American sounding names, and added (with an assist from Jack Hill) the Corman-required monsters closely resembling male and female genitalia (well, female anyway) that gained such notoriety on release as the 64 minute "Battle Beyond the Sun," 9 minutes less than the Russian version. "Nebo Zovyot" enjoys a stylish look which remains intact in color, but the stodgy outline about the rescue of two astronauts from being drawn toward the sun and the lack of fuel to make it to Mars also survives, simply changing the warring factions into opposite sides of the equator, North Hemis representing the Soviets, South Hemis the mishap-prone Americans. The Coppola-shot footage adds up to only two minutes (the reason for the poster, Thomas Colchart pseudonymously credited as producer/director), not worth the lengthy wait for the orbiting asteroid landing at 42 minutes, one brief look at each creature before the gory bout takes place at 53 minutes, it's pretty much a standard dubbing job. After this proved a mild success, the producer gave Coppola the go ahead to write and direct his own opus on location in Ireland, "Dementia 13," while Roger himself was busy doing "The Young Racers," with many of the same actors (FFC also took part in the drawn out shooting of "The Terror"). Corman's later endeavors along similar lines utilized Jack Hill, Stephanie Rothman, Curtis Harrington, and Peter Bogdanovich on titles like "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet," "Planet of Blood," "Track of the Vampire," and "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" ("Planeta Bur," "Mechte Navstrechu," and "Operacija Ticijan" pillaged for footage), all of which at least benefit from the presence of recognizable actors such as Basil Rathbone or William Campbell.

Then why the bizarre looking monster on one of Mars moons? I wouldn't spoil the surprise of what this creature looks like, but it is very obvious and a truly hairy situation. The American version of this alleged Russian science fiction gem is certainly an eye-opener. It's another one of those American International releases that actually had been made by somebody else, pull apart and recreated, making a stew that no audience probably wanted to even stick their fork in. In this case, the original creators came from Russia, and technically speaking, this film has some extremely beautiful sequences that are imaginative in scope, but covered up with American dialogue and a story that makes no sense, and most of all a conclusion that seems to go on far too long even in the film's 67 minutes running time.

Of course they changed the names of the characters, and the spaceship commander's wife is humorously named Ruth Gordon. It's too bad that American international didn't get someone with half of her talent to dub the lines because they sound so ridiculously lame, and the voices simply don't go with the characterizations. The film itself is basically a moving painting, as if someone had taken their brush, created what they thought the outer stratosphere look like and fell into it just like Mary Poppins and her charges did a few years later.

If the original story in the original film is as beautiful as the photography, then this must have been a sight to behold. It is almost an outer space version of Dante's inferno where nightmarish figures becomes beautiful (with the exception of the monster), hiding the fact that the dangers the astronauts face are immense. americanizing this was a political slap in the face to Russia at the time, but being a lowly studio like American International, I'm sure was barely even acknowledged. This is worth a one-time viewing for its visuals only, and giving true credit where the true credit was due.

The premise is OK. The Earth has managed to stay afloat despite terrible trials. Two adversarial forces have designs on Mars. The movie is talky and dull. The movie has no pacing and is dull. The science is unclear and dull. There is pointless stuff going on and it is dull. The butchering of the original led to incredible dullness. The special effects were quite dull. The scene at the end with all the "heroes" coming in on speedboats was almost embarrassing. You'd swear it was a half hour before the Academy Awards. Don't bother with this blather. Apparently, some of Hollywood's great minds got together to produce this sludge. If I didn't mention it, it was dull.

Fair but dull late '50s color Russian-made, English-subtitled sci-fi. Has a fair amount of typical for the era pro-Russian propaganda and derisive depiction of the American way of life. Russian scientists and cosmonauts plan a trip to Mars but in the meantime rescue and aid a pair of US astronauts. When the Americans learn of the Russian plan, (it's no secret) they are ordered by their superiors to head to the Red Planet first, even though they're ill-prepared. Of course the Russians have to save the astronauts bacon yet again and end up on one of Mars's satellites. The Mars plan is kaput and now everyone has to figure out a way to return to Earth. Some nice visuals and the Mars rise effect as seen from the satellite is impressive. The slog through the story is dull though. Not much exciting action here. Roger Corman got his mitts on this film and added dubbing and some added scenes, including a pair of rather grody monsters, and named it Battle Beyond the Sun. Catch that if you can. The quality of this, the Video Dimensions DVD of The Sky Calls is very good. The color is great and the picture is clear. Recommended for fans of un-embellished Russian imports.

Watched the American re-dubbed version of this Soviet Union film under the title of 'Battle Beyond The Sun' from 1962. The movie has the world divided into two conglomerates, the Nothern Hemis and the Southern Hemis. Each Hemis sends a mission to Mars but after many incidents no one reaches the red planet. In the end each Hemis decide they will try again but this time in co-operation with each other. Which is a nice ending, a negative leading to a positive. Being (not well) dubbed one can't gauge the performances of the original Russian actors but it looks very good with lots of blues and reds giving atmosphere to the sets and costumes. It would be good to see the original in a good print in the Russian language with subtitles.