Usually, when someone says a certain movie is the same as some other certain movie, what they mean is that the makers of the second film basically just ripped off the ideas from the first film. In the case of Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, however, they are literally the same movie. When Roger Corman bought the rights to a Russian (back then we called 'em Soviets) sci-fi film, he figured he could dub the thing, splice in some footage of Basil Rathebone, and call it a new movie. Having completed that, he then decided he could rearrange the dubbed footage yet again, splice in some footage of Mamie Van Doren, and call it yet another new movie. Thus Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women was born, with the same core cast and dialog, but with a couple scenes used differently to create a different "plot." It occupies the remaining slot on disc two, side two of the 50-movie box set from Mill Creek.

Where as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet was a movie about a group of astronauts wandering around the surface of Venus, getting attacked by some monsters from time to time, then leaving, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women is a movie about a group of astronauts wandering around the surface of Venus, getting attacked by some monsters from time to time, then leaving. The primary difference here is that the movie is set in the distant future of 1985 instead of 2010, and the pterodactyl happens to be worshiped by a race (as in, like, seven) of hot women who spend most of the day wearing shiny Capri pants and seashell bikini tops while lying awkwardly on very uncomfortable looking rocks by the ocean.

When the explorers shoot down the pterodactyl, the women mourn him then ask their fire god (a nearby volcano) to to take vengeance on the demons who have slain their god. The volcano apparently listens, erupts, and melts a robot that was also in the other film. He was kind of a crappy robot, and his main function was to stand at the mouth of a cave and announce in monotone robot voice, "I am here." His function in both films remains pretty consistent.

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet features a bit where the astronauts keep hearing an eerie female voice singing to them (and by voice, I mean a Theremin, which doesn't sound very much like a human voice), and one of the astronauts (or cosmonauts, comrade) thinks he sees the woman at one point. Except for some inconsistencies in the narration that sets up the movie, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women could then almost work as a Rashomon style "slightly different viewpoint of the same series of events," one in which we get to see the mysterious woman, or women.

That said, there's really not that much reason to watch both of these movies. You can watch one or the other, and they're both pretty fun, but they're also the same movie only slightly rearranged, so there's not much point to sitting through it twice. Personally, I'd rather watch Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet since the Basil Rathebone scenes are extremely short, and the bulk of the movie is astronauts yanking on dinosaur tails. The new Mamie Van Doren scenes in Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women are much longer and very poorly acted and break up the flow of the movie a lot more while adding very little. I can't remember, but I think they also cut out the tail-yanking scene in this version, though they left in the lizard monsters, carnivorous plant, and pterodactyl.

As I understand it, Corman actually managed to make yet a third movie out of this same footage, which must qualify him for some sort of an award. Not a good award, necessarily, but an award never the less.

Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics