Well, "First Spaceship on Venus" is quite the odd little movie: a vintage space epic filmed in East Germany and co-produced with Poland. It features an international team of characters and a strong anti-nuclear message! Released in German as "Der schweigende Stern" ("The Silent Star," based on a book of the same name by "Solaris" author Stanislaw Lem), it came out in the U.S. two years later dubbed into English and heavily cut. But even in this very imperfect form, the film has an eerie beauty.

And actually, I watched it in an even more imperfect form — I have to confess I watched the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" episode featuring this movie. Please don't all throw rocks at me! I'm going on vacation this week and I just ran out of time. If it helps, I really don't think "First Spaceship" deserves to be an MST3K movie. It just isn't bad enough.

The plot concerns a mysterious meteorite that proves to contain an alien message of some sort. Scientists can't decipher it but are able to determine that it came from Venus. Radio messages to the planet go unanswered, so this can-do Iron Curtain society sends a ship to find out what's happening on Venus. The whole world (represented by a varied crowd and a friendly, presumably state-run media) watches and cheers as their beautiful, candelabra-like vessel takes off: clearly, this future world is a harmonious place.

Things continue in this pre-"Star Trek" vein aboard the ship, as the international team copes with zero gravity  and dodges meteor showers. German Robert Brinkmann (Gunther Simon) reminisces about an old romance with fetching Japanese doctor Sumiko Ogimura (Yoko Tani).

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