Battle Beyond the Sun
Nebo Zovyot / The Sky is Calling

USA/USSR 1962
produced by
Roger Corman for Filmgroup, AIP/Mosfilm
directed by Thomas Colchart (= Francis Ford Coppola), Mikhail Karzhukov, Aleksands Kozyr
starring Ivan Pereverzev, Aleksandr Shvorin, Konstantin Bartashevich, Larisa Borisenko, V.Chernyak, Viktor Dobrovolsky, S.Filmimonov, Taisiya Litvinenko, L.Lobov, Alla Popova, Marina Samojlova, Gurgen Tonunts
written by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the film Nebo Zoyvot written by Mikhail Karzukov, Yevgeni Pomeshchikov, Aleksei Sazanov, music by Lex Baxter, Ronald Stein, special effects by G.Lukashov, Y.Schwech, Al Locatelli

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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After a big nuclear war, earth is divided into North Hemi and South Hemi, ad both part want to succeed in going to Mars first, and as it is, it seems that South Hemi is closer to reaching the goal, as they are already preparing to shoot a manned rocketship to the red planet from their spacestation - when the space station gives abode to an allegedly damaged North Hemi-spaceship - the crew of which has actually only gone there to spy around a bit and then use the station's privileged position in space to launch the first North Hemi Mars expedition. Unfortunately theough, once airborne, the North Hemi ship doesn't make it to Mars and has to make an emergency landing on some barren asteroid. The South Hemi folks however are nice enough to abandon their Mars mission for a rescue attempt - which leaves the South Hemi ship stranded on the asteroid as well. The South Hemi spacestation then sends a fuel rocket to the asteroid to save both the South and the North Hemi crew ... but the fuel rocket's captain is killed by the asteroid's local monsters when delivering the much needed fuel. When both the South and the North Hemi astronauts return to earth on the same ship, they are celebrated as heroes, because while none of them might have reached Mars, they have laid the foundation for world peace ...

Battle Beyond the Sun started its live in 1960 as an epic space opera from the Soviet Union called Nebo Zovyot - but then Roger Corman and AIP got their hands on it, cut the film down to approcimately half - and lost most of the plots character motivations and pacifist undercurrents in the process -, added a few non-sensical monsters and sold the whole thing as a special effects spectacle - and it's true, Battle Beyond the Sun does feature some pretty nice effects for the early 1960's, and sometimes it even comes across as a pretty intelligent movie, but most of the time, it just seems chopped and a tad shallow, and especially the monster-scenes are almost ridiculous in the context (even if the monsters look rather inspired) - and somehow, it leaves the audience with the desire to see the whole thing in its originally intended version ...

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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