Movie Monday: Journey to the Seventh Planet

This week's Movie Monday is the 1962 sci-fi epic Journey to the Seventh Planet!

Okay, "epic" is pushing it a little. Okay, a lot: despite the amazing poster (virtually none of which takes place in the movie), Journey to the Seventh Planet is an example of trying to make a sci-fi epic extravaganza on the budget of your average Perry Mason episode:

Journey was a Danish production for American-International, produced and directed by the wonderfully named Sid Pink. Starring American C-level leading man John Agar (looking very skinny) and a host of Danish actors, it's about a ship of astronauts on their way to Uranus (pronounced, without exception, as "your-ah-niss" to prevent giggling):

Not only has the world by this time developed the ability to travel at a really fast clip (our intrepid heroes mention going from the Moon to Mars in under an hour), but there is nothing on Earth but peace, thanks to it being under total control by the United Nations (Glenn Beck was right!). So this trip is basically just one of exploration, not survival or a need to conquer.

On the way, the astronauts are met by some sort of being that is represented by a disembodied voice. It warns them of impending doom, putting them all to sleep for a week. Despite this, they continue on with the mission. Soon, the astronauts land on the titular seventh planet and learn that Uranus looks...just like home?

Turns out that all that the astronauts are seeing are replicated memories made real. That includes houses, trees, the sky, and, of course, dames!

It takes the astronauts a little while to figure these are all illusions, and eventually they make their way into an ice cave where they fight a series of monsters, concluding with the physical being that threatened them earlier:

Our heroes defeat the evil brain, and get back on the rocket to head home. One of the astronauts tries to bring his lady friend back with him, only to learn that she, too, is an illusion. The End.

Apparently director/producer Pink had all the SFX done in Denmark, thinking they were top flight. American-International got one look at them, and their jaws dropped to the floor. They quickly hobbled together new monsters and dropped the footage in (you never see the astronauts and the dinosaur-type creature in the same shot, for instance), in a desperate attempt to salvage the movie.

They didn't. Journey to the Seventh Planet is so cheap, so slack, that even though it's only 77 minutes the film feels interminable. All the characters are dull as dishwater, and the women are sexy in a Pat Nixon/Mamie Eisenhower kind of way. That worked for Dick and Ike, but as eye candy they are the Halloween equivalent of getting an apple for Halloween.

Strangely enough, the most visually compelling stuff comes last: the end credits are delightful, with the text flying in and out of the screen at crazy angles, wrapping around the planets while a fun little toy rocket flies about: 

The idea of a big alien being mostly a thought monster was a bit ahead of it's time--this seems like the idea sci-fi movie for hippie kids to get stoned to just a few years hence--and filling a planet full of the astronauts' own thoughts has an invasive, unsettling feel. But other than some fancy lights superimposed over the actors (it's a far-out freak-out!), not much else is done with this hook. The astronauts take to the news that none of what they see is real with a shrug, and basically just walk around until they fight something to shoo their laser guns at.

With all the remakes being made nowadays, there is no earthly reason (ha! see what I did there?) that Journey to the Seventh Planet's basic premise couldn't be given the big-budget reboot treatment. And then maybe we'd get something half as interesting as the poster.