kevinolzak Review of Battle Beyond the Sun

Battle Beyond the Sun (1959)

Seen on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater in 1965

[3/10 · 31 March 2019]

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.