Sci Fi Sunday: Silent Star aka First Spaceship on Venus
This East German/Polish coproduction from 1960 is interesting from a historical point of view but not a great film, although it does have its moments.
When a recording is found from a crashed spaceship from Venus a manned mission to the planet is organised. The crew is made up of representatives from the world’s most powerful nations, Russia, America, Japan, China and others. With only part of the message deciphered before take off the crew works to decode the remaining portion. Are the Venusians friend or foe? And if they’re the latter can the small crew do anything to stop them?
While American science fiction films of the period were obsessed with the communist threat, it seems that behind the Iron Curtain the fear of the atomic bomb was the primary concern. The Hiroshima bomb is an important element of the relationship between the male American and female Japanese crew members (she’s unable to have kids because her exposure to radiation would cause them to be born deformed).
The potential for global annihilation is the films message with the fate of Venus a warning for the human race as a whole and only the united world powers, in the form of the crew, able to avert disaster.
While not in the same league as Hollywood films like Forbidden Planet or This Island Earth the film has an impressive visual style, particularly the scenes on the surface of Venus, in fact the look put me in mind of Mario Bava’s classic Planet of the Vampires. It was nice to see the “one world” message as well, although the American’s were depicted as unwilling to allow anyone to go on the mission.
