marthahunter BACKGROUND: According to Producer/Director Sidney Pink's book "So You Want To Make Movies". Sid's plot for JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET evolved from his idea of a powerful being that could utilize it's brain at full capacity. He then chose to set this alien mental giant on one of the least known planets in our solar system, Uranus. In Sid's own words: "A completely developed brain that is the last vestige of a super society could well have existed on such a planet. The brain's ability to sustain itself in the heated bowels of the planet's core was also within the realm of possibility."This film was shot in Denmark, and it was Sid's second directorial effort that came on the heels of REPTILICUS. The budget was a minuscule $75,000 and the Danish studio was so small that the scene of the Uranian, ice crystal forest was confined to a 32' X 18' set space.According to Sid, the director's cut contained an original, electronic, musical score by Danish composer Axel, and special effects (stop motion animation) by a non-mainstream artist, Bent Barfod. For better or for worse, AIP heavily re-edited this film and we are only left with intriguing stills of the original monsters.Apparently, the musical score and special effects were too avant-garde for the taste of Sam Arkoff. Sid Pink stated that Arkoff and AIP didn't understand or appreciate the exotic look and sound of his film. As a result AIP deleted the unconventional looking effects and the exotic music, and substituted a more familiar American look and feel to the picture. Ignoring Sid's protests, AIP inserted new effects sequences (stock effect scenes from earlier AIP features and one original scene of a stop motion animated monster by Jim Danforth) and replaced most of the music score with "canned music".Without reviewing the original footage themselves, many critics have simply parroted the AIP argument that the original effects were terrible and had to be replaced. More likely, AIP simply didn't want a novel, foreign looking film to scare away conservative American patrons.THE PLOT: In the year 2001, a UN spaceship with five astronauts is sent to investigate strange radioactive emissions that have originated from Uranus (the seventh planet of our solar system). The crew consists of Eric the Commander (Carl Ottosen), Capt. Don Graham (John Agar), Karl (Peter Monch), Barry O'Sullivan (Ove Sprogoe), and Svend (Louis Miehe-Renard).While in orbit above Uranus, a swirling golden light paralyzes the he crew in mid-motion. A malevolent voice intones "Come,, that I may learn and judge... I shall drain your minds and possess you". This alien mind probe would have passed unnoticed by the crew except that a fresh apple from what seemed like a moment ago has shriveled up and decayed. Although the commander knows that the inexplicable blackout that they experienced might have lasted for days, he orders an immediate landing on the planet's surface.As their ship sets down on the landing zone, the frozen landscape ripples and transforms into a lush vegetated area. When the crew disembarks, they are dumbfounded to find themselves in an earthlike forest. Even more strange is that the forest seems virtually identical to the one near Svend's home. Closer examination reveals that the trees and shrubs are rootless.Buildings and beautiful women materialize to further distract and confuse the men. Later, a force field is discovered around the outer border of the forest,. In order to discover who or what is manipulated their minds and manufacturing people and places of their dreams and desires, the commander realizes that they must penetrate the force field and seek out the source of the pulsing radiation.When they pass through the force field, the true surface of Uranus is finally revealed. This is a bizarre world of ice crystal forests with razor sharp edges, pits of frozen ammonia (quick snow), and strange swirling gases. The hostile entity that they seek is located deep in a cavern that is warmed by geothermal gases. Can the astronauts survive the attacks of monsters that are dredged up from their darkest nightmares and still manage to defeat the alien before they fall under it's total control?WHAT WORKS: Set design & costumes: The control room of the spaceship Explorer 12 is nice and roomy with an upper deck and elevator. Plenty of gauges on the wall, well labeled air lock controls, and a large multi-colored panel made the ship interior interesting and attractive.The forest set contained a dense under story and was unusually well detailed with flowers, and fruiting trees. The force field is discovered under a thick mat of moss.The ice crystal forest set was a remarkable Bava-esque design of stark expressionist "trees" , swirling mists, and various colored lighting. The alien's cave displayed more of stylistic sensibility of design.The table-top, miniature set of the landing site was extremely well done. The rippling transition between frozen landscape to forest and back again are some of the best effects scenes.The jumpsuit styled uniforms sported a distinctive blue and white UN space agency logo and appeared realistic for an interplanetary flight. The space suits where electric blue with striking yellow belts, boot inlays, and helmets. The suits gave the impression that they were made of some kind of advanced material that was lightweight but well insulated against the cold.Music: Ib Glindemann's lush instrumental score over the opening sequences can pleasantly linger in the mind well after the film is over. Capeheart and Tableporter's lounge music over the final credits help maintain the dreamy feel of the film through the last frame. Although AIP replaced the original electronic score with stock musical cues (largely from "The Day the World Ended") from Ronald Stein, it worked prettywell for this film.The colorful, impressionistic title sequences of the spaceship passing by Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were created by Bent Barfod and are quite lovely to behold. Once again, the overall dreamlike quality of the film is strongly enhanced by these sequences.John Agar: Despite chasing everything in a skirt, John Agar's character loosened things up and his charm helped spark the film. John delivers the film's best line to crewmate Barry: "Paradise Uranus, complete with rats, several Eves, and even your apples".Ann Smyrner: Smyrner was a striking nordic beauty who possessed both talent and intelligence. She made Ingrid an unforgettable character who was by far the most real and independent creation on the planet.Primary Concept: The concept of an entity that can fully utilize it's brain at full capacity with nearly unlimited mental power has seldom been explored in cinema. In this case, the powerful alien brain doesn't merely create illusion, but is able to transform matter into other forms.Obviously, the astronauts are not breathing illusionary oxygen in the manufactured forest, nor do they build an imaginary acetylene torch (the alien does replace the torch that was fabricated in the blacksmith shop with an illusionary one though).One has to wonder if Mr. Pink's script that was copyrighted in 1960 was somewhat borrowed by Gene Roddenberry's Talosians in "The Cage" (mind probes, illusions of pleasure and pain) and "Savage Curtain" (earthlike zone on an inhospitable planet with past characters brought to life).WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Dubbing: The dubbing of the foreign cast members speaking phonetically is delivered in a most stilted fashion. This problem is a serious detraction.Greta Thyssen: Apparently, Greta plays herself here. That means we have a prima donna scene stealer who thinks she is a "star". Sid Pink commented on how Greta was something of special effect herself. Her sex pot attributes were largely phony. Sid stated that "she was intentionally almost bald under the wig, allowing her to pull up her cheeks and creating those sexy almond eyes. Her boobs were mostly cotton and her fabulous rear was built into her costume.Worst line of film: After walking though a woods with luxuriant plant growth, Don says "Has anyone seen anything alive?" Hello Don, plants are alive.FINAL WORD: For some reason, this film often gets short shift from the critics who dismiss it too hastily. Perhaps, this is largely due to some bad mouthing from Ib Melchoir (who's screenplay was heavily revised by Sid Pink) as well as the AIP business decision to Americanize the non-mainstream special effects.Through the combination of some surprisingly imaginative sets, the sublime use of color and music , the concept of though control and illusion, as well as some early- sixties cheese, make JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET a fun and compelling film to view. Unlike many of the more technical cut and dry science fiction films out there, this one can seep into the viewer's subconscious and lodge itself into a kind of alpha dream state.

romanorum1 The movie's setting is 2001, when according to the opening monologue, "the planet earth is no longer racked by wars and threats of annihilation. Man has learned to live with himself." Really? A bit optimistic there! Anyway, the United Nations, the world's governing body (Yikes!), has undertaken missions to determine if life exists on the planets of the solar system. So far there has been no luck. The current rocket mission is to explore the surface of planet Uranus (pronounced as Ur-ah-nus), which has a cloud-top temperature of 200° Centigrade. After all, it's almost 1.8 billion miles from the sun! It emits a "strange radiation" and is not very dense, being composed of ammonia and methane. These facts do not faze the five men in a rocket ship who seem to land in a forest (actually an icy surface). It is obvious that little or no pre-landing preparation was accomplished, for there were no orbiting satellites, no unmanned probe, and no specific information gathering. Ah, details, details . . .After boring dialogue that consumes nearly one-half of the picture, the explorers finally depart their spacecraft with their rubber suits and headgear. They find weird happenings, like green plants that do not belong there; they lack root systems. Houses and windmills automatically appear when the spacemen think about them. It seems that the planet is using mind control to dominate the spacemen. The memories of the men are used to format illusions instead of the realities of the planet. They include the Danish pastries, er, alluring earth women who do not really exist on Ur-ah-nus. When Captain Graham (John Agar) is rescued after sinking in a quicksand-like substance (ammonia snow particles), he says rather haltingly, "I . . . am . . . glad . . . you were here . . . to pull me out." "Be careful," the boss wisely utters. The men do encounter a one-eyed Allosaurus – they think it's a rodent. It seems that one of the crew has a fear of rats. "That's it," utters the commander, "Our deepest and greatest fears are being dug up by our subconscious by whatever the power is out there and pitted against us!" The novice astronaut chimes in that it is not only the fears that are used but also the desires (cute chicks) as part of mind control. Oh, the tension! What to do?Before long the space heroes are smooching on the Danish pastries (Ingrid, Greta, Ann, Mimi). But time is running out for them to blast off from their optimum orbital position. If they miss it there will not be enough fuel to return to earth. Oh, the horror! Then they encounter other oddities, like the giant tarantula. They soon (not soon enough) encounter the telepathic Big Eye-on-Brain, which is exposed without any covering! Big Eye's sinister plan is to conquer the earth (HA HA HA HA HA). "You will submit, and I shall possess you." Oh, the pressure! Can they stop this maniacal alien? The ludicrous ending will not be revealed here. Darn!Directed and produced by the incomparable Sid Pink, who gave us "The Angry Red Planet" (1959) and "Reptilicus" (1961), this Danish honey was made on the cheap ($75,000). Filming could not have taken more than a few weeks. It shows: wretched dubbing, laughable dialogue, wooden acting, cheap sets, and meager production values. The film was sent to American International, who reportedly made several special effects changes before the American distribution to theaters. So aging is not an issue with this stinker, as it was awful at the very beginning! Hard to believe it was even worse than it is! John Agar, that creature from Earth, made such films as "Tarantula" (1955), "The Brain from Planet Arous" (1957), and "Attack of the Puppet People" (1958). Surprisingly he is only the second-in-command here. The other actors are better left unnamed.

flapdoodle64 This film can only be enjoyed by people who enjoy schlock, either for the inherent aesthetic value of schlock films or for the pleasure of making fun of them. If you don't fit into either category, you're wasting your time with this one.Having said that, here's the positive points of this film: 1. Interesting FX by Jim Danforth and his Projects Unlimited, especially the stop motion transformation of the planet, the monster, and the pre-psychedelic lighting.2. Sexy Scandanavian babes, especially the one wearing a negligee.3. Mildly interesting pseudo-intellectual yet silly plot, which prefigure's Star Trek's legendary pilot film 'The Cage.' The major downside to this film is John Agar as the token American, who, as is usual, is completely unlikable. The 2nd annoying thing is the use of stock missile footage for the rocket as it blasts off...even a primitive FX shot is better than stock footage.Probably because the film was shot in Denmark with awkward dubbing and a foreign village, the director succeeds at creating a certain feeling of a dreamlike mood...at least in a few moments.At the same time, you'd have to be a sap and not realize that the inclusion of these beautiful Viking women, especially the gal wearing the negligee, were a cynical ploy designed to sell tickets to adolescent males. Lucky for us the enjoyment of such things is not confined to just adolescent males.

MartinHafer The immature teenage hiding inside of me can't resist--this is a movie about astronauts traveling to Uranus (snicker, snicker)! In the film, they pronounce it "Ur-an-us"....yeah, sure! As for the film, I was expecting it to be a lot worse than it was. My reason--it starred John Agar. While he was not a terrible actor, his career was spent appearing in any film provided the check cleared! The movie itself is a very mixed bag. I'll be giving it two separate scores--one for technical merit and one for artistry and originality--sort of like figure skating.Technically speaking, this movie was a pile of doo-doo. The special effects were among the worst I've ever seen for a 50s-60s sci-fi film. In particular, the rocket special effects were simply awful--consisting of a fuzzy rocket ship that appears to be cardboard flying across a terrible painting of space and later when it lands it is a child's plastic toy! It really is worse than the UFO special effects from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (these were pie plates suspended from wires). Also, many of the monsters were cheap and crappy--and about as bad as you'll find in the genre. I'd give this aspect of the film a 1 and not a smidgen more! It's really sad, then, that the story itself is so good--as it's burdened with such ineptness. The story gets interesting just before the rocket lands on Uranus. A strong mental force takes over the ship and probes the astronauts' minds. Then, when they actually land, the planet looks much like Earth--as this force can make the planet appear just like home--including providing people who are from home as well. Interestingly, the only people these men seemed to think of were hot babes in lingerie--proving these guys were pretty smart! The problem is that what exactly the force intends is uncertain. And, as the film progresses, the force seems malevolent--or at least having fun toying with them. The men are faced with a dilemma--how do you fight something this powerful and that can control what you see?! Apart from a rather flat and anticlimactic ending, I'd give this an 8--it was very original and very exciting.Overall, I think a 4 is a reasonable compromise. This film was intelligent and worth seeing--even if the special effects were abominable. This is one movie that could really, really stand a remake!!