When Roger Corman purchased the soviet flick PLANETA BUR, or PLANETA BURG (1962) as it's more popularly known he knew that it was a masterpiece. And as any good exploitation director of the times he did what any of them would do. He chopped it up to make a movie that Americans would watch. This was Curtis Harrington's VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET (1965). It was a highly entertaining bit of cut and paste filmmaking. So entertaining that Corman decided to use more of the footage in QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966) the next year. To make sure that it worked as well as the first one he used the directorial skills of Harrington again. For some reason Roger thought if he could get two feature films from this footage why not use it one more time.

This time he brought fledgling director Peter Bogdonavich aboard, gave him the footage and instructed him to make yet another feature film from PLANETA BUR. Bogdonavich went into the realm of the weird with this one. It seems that there's a manned flight to Venus that runs into trouble so, they send another rocketship to rescue the professor, his assistant and what may be the coolest robot for the time period. When they arrive on Venus there are many dangerous monsters trying to eat our erstwhile astronauts. There are also the prehistoric women. How do we know they're prehistoric? They wear shells for bikini tops and have bell bottom polyester pants. And since the blonde bombshell Mamie Van is their leader they had to dig up some seriously huge sea shells for her.

The film is fascinating in that from a narration by one of the astronauts, we learn that he has the hots for Mamie. even though, due to the fact that his footage is from the original film, they never share a scene together. That doesn't stop him from going ape talking about her and who can really blame him? Mamie was the last of the blonde bombshells and this film uses her to her best advantage.

There are a few things that Bogdonavich does in this film that is nothing short of pure genius. Besides the story line that is fabricated from the footage that had already been seen by the masses twice he manages to deliver a good, tight story. The only new footage he needed was of the prehistoric women. PLANETA BUR carried the rest. And to make doubly sure that he could do it quick he made himself the narrator to prevent relying on an actor for the work. It was also very budget conscious because you know that Corman was only gonna pay him once. The other pure stroke of inspiration was making all the women telepaths. There were no lines to learn during production. No chance of flubbing a scene because they couldn't remember their lines. It would all be recorded in post.

The disc is presented in its original letterboxed form along with some wonderful extras. In addition to the obligatory stills gallery we get two wonderful compliments to the film. The first is the original photo novel from Russia for the original PLANETA BUR. The bigger your television the easier this particular feature is on the eyes. Then there's the one reason to buy this disc. The featurette BEING MAMIE is a newly shot production that gives us the behind the scenes stuff on the flick. It also shows us Mamie as an actress during a time where there was a plethora of blonde bombshells. She even jokes at one point that when she was offered a bit and couldn't do it she'd refer it to either Marilyn Monroe or Jane Mansfield. And they did the same for her. She covers her USO work in Vietnam, something that a lot of people probably didn't know about her. The mini documentary shows a sassy lady with a heart of gold. She also didn't take much shit in her career either. In a story concerning VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN, she tells about how Bogdonavich wanted her to get into the water waaaay off the coast of California and she knew it was dangerous so she told him to shove it. He also tried to get her to bite the head off a real fish for a scene. Needless to say they rigged up a fake fish for the scene. The entire documentary is filled with historic trivia of the time period.

Any flaws to this release of what many consider NOT to be a classic? Really only the footage that Bogdonavich shot. Its a little washed out which could be the age of the print used. Retromedia, the company releasing the disc apologize for the quality of the print up front. And finally, when the prehistoric women drag the robot from the ocean to worship as their god, it's pretty obvious that somebody welded a couple of barrels together to make a robot. Other than that this is a great example of seat of your pants filmmaking that works well. As a last bit of trivia, this is the film that Boris Karloff saw that made him recommend Bogdonavich to direct the fabulous TARGETS.