(Planeta bur). Upon arrival on Venus, a team of cosmonauts finds a hostile environment filled with furious volcanoes and sundry prehistoric beasts, including a cackling, swooping pterodactyl. Working from a dullish source, director Klushantsev went his 1958 Venusian cosmonaut epic Road to the Stars one better with this Soviet classic, overpowering the party-line dialogue with excellent poetic effects. Planet of Storms was subsequently bought by Roger Corman, who used Klushantsev's footage as the basis of Curtis Harrington's 1965 Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and later incorporated footage from the film in Harrington's 1966 Queen of Blood. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Corman ran the original film through the recycling spin cycle one more time with 1968's Mamie Van Doren vehicle Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women, which was the directorial debut of none other than Peter Bogdanovich.

• Written by Aleksandr Kazantsev, Klushantsev. Photographed by Arkadi Klimov. With Vladimir Yemelyanov, Georgi Zhzhyonov, Gennadi Vernov, Yuri Sarantsev. (83 mins, In Russian with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Seagull Films)

Preceded by short:
The Cameraman's Revenge (Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora) (Ladislaw Starewicz, U.S.S.R., 1912). Greg Goodman on Piano. An early classic about adultery in the insect kingdom from the great animation pioneer: a married beetle is filmed in a compromising situation by a jealous grasshopper, then takes his (also adulterous) wife to the movies and sees the final results. (12 mins, Silent with Russian intertitles and English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Seagull Films)

• (Total running time: 95 mins)