Movie review – “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women” (1968) * 1/2

Another version of Planet of Storms but a lot more impressive than Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet mainly because Peter Bogdanovich is a better director than Curtis Harrington.

For instance, although both films start with the same plot and have new sequences, Bogdanovich spends the first section of his film using voice over and stuffing in as many of the special effects as he could (the film’s real strength); whereas the Harrington version went to scenes of Rathbone at the beginning. OK yes Rathbone is a better actor than Mamie Van Doren but I think this shows a better appreciation for the film’s strengths and weaknesses.

It’s also a good idea to have one character narrate the whole thing (Bogdanovich does the job), making the story easy to follow, and to have humans on the planet – Mamie and a bunch of girls on the beach. But the film loses points by not doing anything much with them. Telepathy was clever I guess but mostly the girls are just rolling around in the water and sand and after a while it just gets boring.