Made by Daei, the same people who would gift us with Gamera, and released in the U.S. eleven years after it came out in Japan, this movie has been pointed to as one that Kubrick watched as he grew fascinated with science fiction.

The Pairan aliens of the film are perhaps the best reason to watch this. They’ve never looked better than now, with the gorgeous remastered transfer that’s on Arrow’s new disk. Designed by avant-garde artist Taro Okamoto, they’re unlike any aliens we’d imagine in the West. Instead of humanoid creatures, they’re stars that dance their strange ballet toward camera as they wonder how to reach Earth’s scientists.

One of those aliens decides to take the form of entertainer Hikari Aozora and reach out to our scientists and World Congress to borrow our nuclear weapons to obliterate another planet in the path of our world called Planet R. As no one decides to listen to her, we’re forced to deal with all the impact of having a rogue planet come closer and closer to us. The whole “listen to science’ mantra that our world is ignoring happens here as well, but sadly, we don’t have human-sized star aliens with one giant eye to right our course.

I keep saying to myself, “Don’t get confused.”

This is not 1950’s Prehistoric Women nor is it the 1967 movie Prehistoric Women not is it Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women.

When Roger Corman bought the Russian movie Planet of Storms (Planeta Bur), he used that footage to make Peter Bogdanovich’s Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women and this film, which had to confuse filmgoers. And me, as you can tell, even today.

Corman doubled down on that mind-altering sensation that audiences who thought that they had seen this a;; before by shooting new scenes at the same time that Harrington was making Queen of Blood, as Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue shot their scenes in half a day using the same costumes from that movie.

While Harrington considered Queen of Blood good enough to keep his name on, he used the name John Sebastian, inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach, from this remix. He told Psychotronic Video that the movie “was not even a film.”

Rathbone plays Professor Hartman and Domergue is Dr. Marsha Evans. They’re the only English speaking actors that show up, as everything else is dubbed from the Russian movie. Even the soundtrack is recycled from Dinosaurus! Even crazier, most of the credits were fake so that no one would realize this was made in Russia as it was released during the Cold War.

Roger Corman knows how to get the most out of a movie. He turned the Russian Planeta Bur into both Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and this movie. The former* has new scenes with Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue, but the latter has one major reason to watch: Mamie Van Doren.

The pedigree of this movie is pretty wild, because it was adapted by Peter Bogdanovich, who chose not to have his name credited on the final film. And let’s not forget that this all ties back — since Corman loved to recycle what he recycled — into the early Francis Ford Coppola cheapy and Mill Creek box set favorite, Battle Beyond the Sun.

Five male astronauts and their robot John land on Venus and are attacked by a pterodactyl and then an entire culture of women, including Van Doren. Amongst their number are Verba (Mary Marr, who would go on to edit Rolfe Kanefsky’s softcore movies), Twyla (Paige Lee), Meriama (Irene Orton), Wearie (Pam Helton) and Mayaway (Margot Hartman, who in addition to being in this movie, would go on to be the chairman of the board of the First Stamford Corporation, one of the largest privately held commercial real estate companies in the State of Connecticut; she also wrote and starred in Violent Midnight, Descendant and The Curse of the Living Corpse).

Bogdonovich was asked by Corman to work on the film, as American-International Pictures wanted some girls in it, so he hired Mamie Van Doren and an entire cast of blondes, then went and filmed them for five days and did the narration.

Despite the fact that this had to be remixed together, you have to love the ending, where the robot left behind becomes the new god of Venus. Spoiler warning for a 52-year-old film…

*Curtis Harrington adapted that movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Unknown World was made by two Hollywood special effects men, Jack Rabin and Irving Block, who are two of the film’s three producers. It was directed by Terry O. Morse, who shot the American scene in Godzilla, and written by Millard Kaufman, who also wrote Bad Day at Black Rock and The Klansman.

Victor Kilian, who plays Dr. Jeremiah Morley, lost an eye in a fight scene with John Wayne and was blacklisted for decades due to his political views, which is why he is uncredited in this. He’s invented a big tank that can drill into the center of the world, the Cyclotram, and has taken a crew of scientists through Carlsbad Caverns, Bronson Caves, Nichols Canyon and finally Pismo Beach to find a place where the human race can survive a nuclear war. Sadly, that unknown world makes everyone sterile.

Let me tell you, people were obsessed by the center of the Earth in 1951.

Have you ever heard of the Shavers?

Richard Shaver first encountered these creatures from Lemuria when the tools at his factory job started playing other peoples’ thoughts into his brain. He could also hear the Shavers torturing people underground. Now, you may say that he was mentally ill, but he also was writing to the pulp magazine Amazing Stories. He claimed to have discovered an ancient language he called Mantong. Editor Ray Palmer (the namesake of DC Comics’ Silver Age version of The Atom) thought that Shaver was onto something. He helped him write A Warning to Future Man,” where Shaver discussed cities within the Earth, populated by the good Teros and the evil Deros. This was turned into “I Remember Lemuria!” which appeared in the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories. That issue instantly sold out and then something really odd began: thousands of letters began appearing saying that they’d had the same experiences as Shaver.

Amazing Stories‘ readership either loved or hated the Shaver stories. According to Wikipedia, “Palmer would later claim the magazine was pressured by sinister outside forces to make the change: science fiction fans would credit their boycott and letter-writing campaigns for the change. The magazine’s owners said later that the Shaver Mystery had simply run its course and sales were decreasing.”

That didn’t end the Shaver stories. Palmer credits these tales with the public fascination with UFOs. John Keel’s 1983 Fortean Times piece “The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers” claims that “a considerable number of people — millions — were exposed to the flying saucer concept before the national news media were even aware of it. Anyone who glanced at the magazines on a newsstand and caught a glimpse of the saucer-emblazoned Amazing Stories cover had the image implanted in his subconscious.” Indeed, Palmer was quick to defend the Shaver stories and claim that “flying saucers” were their validation.

Palmer’s newsletter after The Shavers were forced out of Amazing Stories? The Hidden World.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

In Italy, this was called Anthar l’invincibile but it was also released as Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules in the U.S. when Embassy Pictures released it to American TV stations as part of their Sons of Hercules package. It also has the AKA titles Anthar the Invincible and Soraya, Queen of the Desert.

It’s directed by Antonio Margheriti and written by Guido Malatesta (Maciste Contro i Cacciatori di Teste), Arturo Rígel and André Tabet. It starts with the evil Ganor, Devil of the Desert (Mario Feliciani) murdering the sultan, nearly doing the same to his son Daikor (Manuel Gallardo) and forcing Princess Soraya (Michèle Girardon) into marriage.

She’s so upset that she jumps out a window, only to be saved by Anthar (Kirk Morris), who just as soon nearly loses her to slavery. Anthar is the level of another shirtless hero in a Margheriti movie, Yor Hunter from the Future, as he gets captured or screws up more often than any other peplum good guy.

The end is amazing, because Margheriti rips off — pays tribute to? — The Lady from Shanghai, which is pretty wild when you think about this movie’s budget and that it was a film that was following the peplum trend and it still has the energy to pull something from Orson Welles.

There’s also a battle between Anthar and a rhino. I mean, where else are you getting that?

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

This played double bills with — The Terrornauts. And much like that movie, this one has a great poster that advertises a movie I want to see more than the one that I actually watched.

Based on Joseph Millard’s The Gods Hate Kansas, this was directed by Freddie Francis for Amicus. He claimed that the studio spent all of the budget for this on the aforementioned The Terrornauts, leading to an inferior film.

This one is about the Master of the Moon (Michael Gough!) spreading a “Crimson Plague” that wipes out a whole bunch of humanity so that the government will send the bodies of the victims to the moon to hide what really happened to them, at which point he will bring them back to life and use them to fix his spaceship.

It’s a really complicated plan that gets torn apart at the end by hero Dr. Curtis Temple, who basically tells the Master that if he’d just asked for help, humanity would have done it. This causes one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy to just start crying.

Supposedly this was Anwar Sadat’s favorite movie. I only have IMDB as a source for this, but I find that absolutely hilarious and have decided that it must be true.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.