First Spaceship on Venus

"In Nineteen-Hundred and Eighty-Five, during the course of the work undertaken to irrigate the Gobi Desert, a strange fragment of rock was discovered! Several remarkable features of this rock attracted the attention of the scientists engaged on the project! Research revealed it contained a spool! Further analysis showed the material to be extra-terrestrial in origin and not of human manufacture; where did it come from?"

- Opening Narration

First Spaceship On Venus (aka Planet of the Dead, Silent Star, Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply) is a 1960 German/Polish film adapted from a novel by Stanislaw Lem. It depicts the investigation of a strange message which apparently originates with the planet Venus. An English dub was released in the United States by Crown International Pictures in 1962.

Determining that the meteorite/spool does indeed contain some mysterious message and that it was indeed launched from Venus, Earth's interplanetary spaceship Cosmokrator is dispatched to investigate. Shortly before arrival, the message is decoded: it is a blueprint for war, the Venusians planning to irradiate the Earth's surface. However, upon landing on Venus, the astronauts find only an inhospitable environment, and no Venusians. The crew of the Cosmokrator must continue investigating, to determine where the Venusians are, what their plans are for the human race, and what the human race can do about it.

Cast:

Note that this article, in general, employs the names of the characters as provided in the English dub. For the sake of international readers, the following cast list is provided (copied from That Other Wiki):

Oldrich Lukes as American nuclear physicist / Prof. Harringway Hawling Ignacy Machowski as Polish chief engineer / Prof. Saltyk / Orloff Julius Ongewe as African TV technician / Talua Michail N. Postnikow as Soviet Astronaut / Prof. Arsenew / Prof. Durand Kurt Rackelmann as Indian mathematician / Prof. Sikarna Günther Simon as German pilot / Robert / Raimund Brinkmann Tang Hua-Ta as Chinese linguist / Dr. Tchen Yu / Lao Tsu
 * Yoko Tani as Japanese female doctor / Sumiko Ogimura MD

For the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode see here.


 * An Aesop: Anvilicious, natch.
 * All Planets Are Earthlike: Utterly averted.
 * The Atoner: Brinkmann, possibly. Early on, the film hints at a failed prior romance between Brinkman and Sumiko, but it turns out that . It's subtly implied to have been Brinkmann's fault/responsibility, or maybe he'll just Never Live It Down.
 * The Captain: Harringway
 * Captain's Log: Except that it's made not by the Captain but by The Lancer, Brinkmann.
 * The Chick / The Medic: Sumiko
 * Creator Backlash: Stanislaw Lem, who wrote the novel this film was based on (The Astronauts), disowned the movie after seeing it.
 * History Marches On: "Arriving now is Brinkmann, the first American space man to land on the moon!"
 * It Only Works Once: A plot point. The Cosmokrator can land on Venus and take off again only one time. It could be a matter of fuel, but no reason is ever officially given.
 * Kill'Em All: The Venusians' plan.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kicking the rock to cause the slime flood; shooting the slime flood, making it retreat -- and arming the Venusian doomsday device; disarming the Venusian doomsday device -- which causes the Cosmokrator to be flung off Venus before it can rescue the astronauts trapped outside.
 * Polyglot: Prof. Sikarna
 * Raygun Gothic: the Cosmokrator
 * Robot Buddy: Omigou
 * Space Clothes: the Cosmokrator crew wear velour pajamas; the ground crews at the launchpad wear alphabet jerseys.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: 1985, as seen from 1960.
 * Zeerust: "The world's largest computer".