Wednesday, September 19, 2012

DER SCHWEIGENDE STERN - DEFA Studios East Germany - "The Silent Star" (1960)

The Mothership has krashed, and it's starting to feel more like "Gilligan In Space" all the bloody time now! The Reverend is gone, the Professor is all but gone, and if Ginger snaps, it'll just be us and Mary Jane left drifting around in a morass of despair!

Oh, well, space goes on! Tonight's feature is kind of a bassackwards re-tread! It's the original undiluted version of "First Spaceship On Venus" Tabonga first wrote about back on November 4, 2008, a Gorgeous George of an East German film from the famed DEFA Studios titled "Der Schweigende Stern" or "The Silent Star!"

The music composed by Andrzej Markowski for "Der Schweigende Stern" is spacey to say the least, and the visuals are truly a wonder to behold, space eye candy, at it's best! I love that woman's head framed by what I think is Earth!!

As the film begins, we find the international crew enjoying themselves at the first interplanetary slumber party sleepover!

They're on there way to Venus, a planet and a Goddess that has been immortalized in more than one song by artists like Frankie Avalon, Shocking Blue and Captain Beefheart! It's also the only planet that rhymes with penis!

It's some pretty serious business, but not exactly everyone is focused on the mission at hand! Tang Hua-Ta in his only film appearance is the guilty party!

Günther (RIPE CHERRY) Simon as Deutscher Pilot Raimund Brinkmann volunteers to go down and check it out, and finds this crystal forest, then falls into a big hole where he is not exactly, but kind of attacked by a bunch of flying robotic insects!

The main ship has to land and try and find out what's going on after they lose contact!

It's precisely at this point that the players in the film, and the viewing audience come to the same conclusion! Time to step it up a notch!!!

And indeed they do with some of the most fantastic cine-magic ever recorded! From here on out, the viewer is bombarded with one fantastic scene after another, and they are all beautiful!

This is about as close as I've ever seen to somebody creating anything that looked even vaguely like one of those great surreal ACE Sci-Fi paperback covers of the 50's and 60's!!

The twin towers of Babel spew forth some "fast and bulbous" creeping terror of horror, and you can only imagine how bad it must smell! Aroma-Rama, no thanx!

Yoko (LOVE FACTORY) Tani as Dr.Sumiko finds out she needed to move that booty a little faster!

Here's yet another still that looks like an ACE or a Ballantine book cover! There were a lot of people involved on this project, so I'm not sure who gets the real credit, so I'll just say it looks like teamwork really paid off!

Strange that after references to Hiroshima etc, the Americano has the last word, and I repeat "We must make sure our Earth continues to blossom, and then we should try to discover life on other planets, Peace Out Ya'll!!"

Here's a couple of examples of the original artwork! "Der Schweigende Stern" ist eine sehr schöner Film that just happens to be available on Netflix! 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5.......what are you waiting for? Blast off!!

5 comments:

  1. Another great "Rainy Saturday Afternoon" movie I use to watch on some local TV channel. Of course that was the edited "American International" (or whatever) version. I have never seen he complete original one.

    This is also another classic episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which you can get on Netflix.

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  2. I've only ever seen the low quality AIP release of "First Spaceship on Venus." Where did you even find this German copy? That is quite a find.

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  3. I have the First Spaceship on Venus version of this film that I got in one of the Mill Creek 50 movie packs. I love that version, so I will have to check this out as well and compare!

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