Forced to land on a planet orbiting an 'iron star', the crew of the starship 'Tantra' finds the wreckage of an alien spaceship and of a long-lost human expedition as well as a predatory energy-based alien lifeform. Much of the story was lost on me as I watched a Russian version on-line while attempting to follow the story by reading the script (with limited success) so I can really only comment on the imagery, which is interesting if not highly original. Similar to Mario Bava's 'Planet of the Vampires', the 'Tantra' touches down on a foreboding, fog-shrouded world only to discover the wrecks of both alien and human spaceships, and an invisible, murderous alien presence. The special effects are interesting, and similar to 'Planeta Bur' (1962), resemble 'realistic' images from 1950s' speculative magazines (fictional and 'factual') but are neither as novel nor as effective the contemporaneous Czech sci-fi film 'Ikarie XB-1' (1963) (with which 'Andromeda Nebula' shares a number of tropes). Watching as I did, most of the back-story (which occurs in a futuristic 'socialist' world in which Earth is part of an enlightened galactic alliance) was lost on me but again the images were interesting (a mix of Soviet-style monumental architecture and neoclassical 'future-tropes'). The film is based on a novel by Ivan Yefremov and was originally intended to the first in a film series. Worth watching for the imagery but unless you speak Russian, I'd suggest investing in a DVD, waiting for a subtitled version to show up on-line, or skipping to the 'special effects' sequences.
Review of Tumannost Andromedy
