First Spaceship on Venus

Absolute classic by Director Kurt Maetzig. This 1960 East German film is one of the landmark space adventures that many have looked to as inspiration. The DVD I have, despite being all packaged nicely, has obviously been copied many times and probably videotaped off a sheet so it has a choppy dark washy crackling texture. I assume I am still getting a nice flavor for the sets and effects though. I love the sci-fi movies that start with the first 10 minutes narrated by a radio personality telling you about the advancements of modern man and his far reaching atomic abilities while hyping up the unbelievable mind tingling events that are about to unfold. This film starts in the distant future of 1984 as an international community of scientists stumble on what would be the black box of a spaceship while irrigating the Gobi dessert. They set off on the task of translating it but to limited success. They conclude that the message is from Venus and the only way to truly answer is to send up a spaceship on an atomic quest of mind dazzling preportions. The best of the best is assembled to make the journey as they spend a great deal of time showing the mundane perspective of space travel albeit with ass-kicking rocket computers and an endless display of astral gadgets. They encounter the contractual asteroid field every space adventure has and it of course knocks out something on the outside requiring the nail biting space walk to repair it. The funny thing about this movie is how nice everyone is to each other in a cosmic feel good help thy neighbor of every color and gender. It's nice. So the conflict. It starts as they approach Venus and discover the black box translation further decoded is actually the plans to conquer and occupy Earth by the Venutians. Our heros all agree to continue to Venus where they find a poisonous gassy and unfriendly environment. When they finally land and explore we are introduced to some great visuals of a trippy landscape and a dead Venusian civilization. Spoiler alert.