Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40437 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-10-01
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Running time: 79 minutes

From Amazon.com
In a utopian future of universal peace and brotherhood--1985 to be specific--a mysterious artifact found in Siberia is discovered to be a message from Venus. While the recording is studied, an international team of scientists is rocketed off to make contact with the mysterious planet. It takes the film some time to get going (worldwide harmony makes for a beautiful future but pallid drama when everyone gets along so nicely), but things begin to cook once they land on the misty wasteland of Venus. Swarms of metal bugs hop from glassy mutant trees and bubbling black mud oozes after our astronaut heroes, but no Venusians can be found amidst the geodesic architecture and buzzing power plants. What they discover instead is a terrifying conspiracy wrapped in an anti-war parable. Based on a novel by Polish science fiction legend Stanislaw Lem (whose work also inspired Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris), this German science fiction adventure is a visual treat, from the sleek, grand, silver spaceship and a funky purple Venus landscape of alien ruins and crystalline bubbles. Decently (if prosaically) dubbed and trimmed down to a brisk 78 minutes, it's an entertaining triumph of psychedelic art direction and desolate alien weirdness presented in all its brightly colored, widescreen glory. --Sean Axmaker

Video Details
Mankind's most incredible journey! After discovering a communications device from Venus containing a message of the impending attack of Earth, an international crew of astronauts and scientists embark on the first manned expedition to the mystery-shrouded planet. Upon arrival, they discover the ruins of an advanced civilization that destroyed itself in its zealous quest to master atomic weaponry.

Synopsis
Originally released in East Germany as Der Schweigende Stern ("The Silent Star") and in Poland as Milczaca gwiazda, First Spaceship on Venus was partially intended as an anti-nuclear tract. In 1985, a strange, extraterrestrial spool is discovered, leading to a manned expedition to Venus. The multinational crew includes American Brinkman (Gunther Simon), African Talua (Juliusz Ongewe), and Japanese Sumiko Ogimura (Yoko Tani). After several special-effects setpieces (and reams of dogmatic dialogue later), the crew lands on Venus, only to discover that the planet's population was wiped out by a nuclear error. Armed with this knowledge, the expedition returns to earth with a warning for all mankind. The film was based on a novel by noted Eastern Bloc sci-fi novelist Stanislaw Lem. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Who knew that Venus had a chocolatey, gooey center?
First Spaceship on Venus provides us with this critical piece of advice - if you go to another planet and find yourself closely pursued by black goo, don't shoot it - not unless you want something really bad to happen to Earth, at least. You have to admire the optimism of these filmmakers, though, as they -from their 1962 perspective - imagined that in 1985 the world would be a pretty happy place where people wore great big letters of the alphabet on their shirts for some insane reason, where a moon base would already have been established, and where scientists from all countries worked together to send a spaceship to Venus. Why Venus? A strange metallic object has been discovered; scientists have concluded it came from the famous Tunguska Event of 1908 and is nothing less than a spool containing a message from another planet - a planet which, given the trajectory of the object that exploded over Siberia all those years ago, had to be Venus. Lickety-split, it's up, up, and away to Venus, as Earth seeks its first contact with an alien race.

Things start to go a little downhill when the grouchy scientist from India interprets the mystery spool and learns it details a plan of attack on Earth by the Venusians. Of course, there's also the obligatory meteorite-dodging scene that has to play out. Undaunted, though, our international crew of a half dozen men and one woman (someone had to serve the nutritious liquid beverages, I guess) sporting exceedingly ridiculous spacesuits (leisure suits for space, I would call them, complemented by banana suits for takeoffs and landings) continue their mission to Venus. The landing mission doesn't go so well, either.

There's really no chemistry between the crewmembers, not even between the man and woman who supposedly had some kind of relationship in the past. The crew commander is interesting, though, because his hair seems to grow taller as the movie progresses and he also seems to experience some sort of German silent expressionist film flashbacks from time to time. Frankly, I didn't really care who made it back and who didn't, and Venus itself turned out to be less interesting than the interior of the boring ship (where chess games were the highlight of space life).

First Spaceship on Venus does at least attempt to be a serious science fiction movie, but at its heart it is yet another anti-nuclear film of the early 1960s. Frankly, I would not have tried to make a point at the end of the film because, all told, the whole thing was rather pointless to begin with.

Switch on the emergency gyro
It is the 1962 view of 1985 (they could have picked 1984). All is right with the world. We discover a rock that contains a spool (what ever a spool is); the spool is discovered to contain a message. And want a message. In 1908 Tunguska (read the facts about this in the book "The Fire Came by: The Riddle of the Great Siberian Explosion" by John Baxter - 1976) a great explosion took place. Evidently this was a space vehicle of extraterrestrial origin. It jettisoned the spool upon exploding.

We do not have time to decipher the message do it will have to be deciphered on the way to Venus. Our East German space ship rivals those of Japanese sci-fi with one exception. This ship has an emergency Gyro that can only be activated by using a special hammer to break the glass.

Mean time what will we find on Venus and will it destroy or carry a message to all mankind.

You get what you pay for
NOT as described by Amazon or the jacket - not the 130 minute original but the 78 minute dubbed version shown in the UK. The same poor quality picture (resolution 720 x 480) and sound as the 2000 release but much cheaper.
Based on Lem's 1951 first novel The Astronauts the theme is pacifist - compare with the also 1959 "On the Beach".
The fuzzy images on the DVD do not do justice to the excellent camerawork and (for the time) special effects.
At this price worth getting to compare with US films of the period.