Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

mahatmarandy There's a lot of negative things to say about this movie, which the authors of the reviews prior to mine have already done to death, and I'm not really going to argue with them: this is a badly made, lethargically written film. It's a textbook B-movie. However, unlike virtually every other low-to-no budget Science Fiction film I've ever seen, this one actually tries to work some actual "Science" into the fiction, and for that I give them high marks for trying, even if the rest of the flick completely undercuts the interesting time dilation aspect of the film.Here's the deal: A flotilla of starships have been on the planet "Centaurus" for some time, and are heading back to their homeworld again, launched in six-month intervals. There's a human civilization (Composed of Asians) on Centaurus that has fallen on hard times, and appears to have been colonized by the Caucasians. En rout back home, some Centaurans rebel on one of the ships, and it goes off course, eventually crash landing on the heretofore uncharted planet "Solaris 3". The flagship of the flotilla decides to go back to look for survivors, and eventually meet up with the child of the survivors of the crash.Here's the cool stuff: 1) They point out in great detail that they're traveling near light speed, and hence time is passing slower for them aboard ship than it is back on their homeworld. The starship's helmsman points out that by the time they get home again, his brother will be 32 years older than him. It only takes the rescue ship three weeks to get to Solaris 3 in subjective (Shipboard) time, but objectively, on the planet 18 years have passed. How freakin' cool is that? Come on, after a lifetime of watching lousy SF films where interstellar flight is as easy as hopping an airplane to Reno, you have to admit one which actually deals with Einsteinian Relativity is pretty sweet! It's a very cool idea to have someone look at a functional ship he just saw six months before, and yet it's derelict wreck that's been sitting in a jungle for 18 years. What's that? You find relativity confusing? There there, sparky, that's OK. Why don't you go back to watching Star Trek and leave the science fiction to the big boys, OK? That's a good boy... 2) The race relations aspect of the movie is pretty neat, too: the astronauts are all Caucasians, the Centaurians are all Asians, and neither side really trusts the other. Some of the Caucasians don't even consider the Asians to be human, despite the fact that they obviously are. Again, in an age when all SF postulates a future where all races live together in a spirit of peaceful unity, it's kind of charming to see a movie that dwells on how hard it can be to attain that kind of unity. 3) This movie actually goes out of it's way to imply a larger history than we actually see on screen, which is pretty clever. The Admiral believes (According to dialog in the film) that humanity established interstellar travel millenia ago, and then lost it for whatever reason. The Centaurans are the descendants of human colonists that adapted to the conditions of the planet Centaurus over scores of thousands of years, which is why they look different than the spacefaring humans who found them. 4) Irene Tsu is just smokin' hot in this movie, seriously. It doesn't hurt that her cave-girl sarong is slit up the leg all the way to her waist, but even without that she'd still be just..wow. I remember seeing this movie for the first time when I was 10 (On Dr. Paul Bearer's "Creature Feature" show) and getting strangely attentive whenever she'd come on screen and eat a banana or kick her legs when being carried off. I was only 10, mind you, I had no idea what it was about her that was affecting me so, I just knew that I felt pleasantly happy whenever she was on screen. 5) The final twist of the movie actually came as a big shock to me. Granted, I was ten, but it does kind of come out of nowhere, and it is sort of neat.To conclude, I'm not saying this is a good movie because it certainly ain't. I *am* saying that it tried really hard, that it's got more interesting ideas than an entire season of Next Generation, or the entire series run of Seaquest (Not that that's hard in either case), it actually tried to say something about race relations, and while it unquestionably failed artistically, I have to admire it for tackling the big questions when so few more professional productions would even take the chance admitting the questions exist.Probably the MST3K version of this film is the best way to watch it, though, because it is deadly dull, and Joel and the 'Bots really do liven it up quite a bit.

CelluloidRehab Somewhere in space, where no one can hear you scream, the Cosmos 1 is heading off to somewhere else. The crew have been on this 6 month mission. They are an advanced space faring race with their futuristic lockers and guitar-looking radar wall screen and the tendency to do space/time conversion formulas. Somewhere else another space vessel, Cosmos 3, has problems. The ship and crew are being held hostage by Centaurians (think of Klingons without the brown paint and sash, but all Asian) and because of it they crash onto a "prehistoric" planet.The commander of Cosmos 1, Admiral King (played by the walking corpse of the late Wendell Corey), disobeys orders and goes on a rescue mission to Solaris. 3 months later .....Cosmos 1 arrives at the planet, where 18 years have gone by. A rescue party is sent down, lead by Commander "I don't like Centaurians" Scott with Dr. Farrell (played by the incomparable John Agar), Lt."Why won't he shut up" Bradley, Stuart Margolin as the Chief and some nobody who's expendable (think of the red shirt security officers from the original Star Trek series). At the same time, Linda (Irene Tsu) escapes to the planet to stretch her legs.On the "prehistoric" planet below, they find the crash site and the lone survivor; a Centaurian named Tang (Robert Ito). The rest of the movie is just a "stew" containing paper machete sets, stock footage of an iguana, a rubber iguana on fire, a sock-like jumping tree snake, a hopping spider plush toy, animal cruelty towards a chimpanzee (Teeko), stock footage, the admiral's slurred confused alcoholic rants and a trio of cavemen brutes. We top this with scenes upon scenes of the lecherous, chauvinistic, sexual harassing, karate practicing Lt. Bradley (who never shuts up). Visualize the Watney Smith character from Outlaw of Gor .... CABOT !!Though the budget of the movie (and by proxy the intelligence of the write/director) was low, the movie still manages to be infused with a thought provoking plot about race relations, cultural differences, not being understood, being different, going through turmoil and finding a resolution. As a rule, you probably won't need more than 5 or 6 shots of SoCo to be able to see this.You will probably recognize some of the actors. They had long and fulfilling careers, but you would not have bet on that after seeing this movie. Riveting performances like "crossing the log when we could go around or jump over the liquid" scene and Irene Tsu's unforgettable banana scene. This scene is both erotic, inappropriate and confusing (the skin of the banana ,and by proxy the banana itself, is bite-proof, yet not peel proof). Robert Ito's "hopping" interpretation of Tang will haunt me for the rest of my days. I highly recommend this movie if you are not alone, not on any sleep inducing medication nor in possession of a dissection kit and are watching the MST3k version of this movie. In my final thoughts I noticed a similarity between this movie and another MST alumni, The Clonus Horror. Now to a bit of SAT deja vu :The Clonus Horror is to The Island as The Women of the Prehistoric Planet is to …. a) Star Trek b) Star Wars c) None of the above d) Battlestar Galactica.... for those even remotely interested the answer will be in my next review.-Celluloid Rehab

metalrox_2000 Perhaps the worst movie ever shown on MST3K. Misleading titled, actors who aren't believable as humans. A Cardboard set, and outright laughable special effects. I guess one could list the plot as a goof. There was something that came out of this movie that started a trend. Something we see today. Prop Advertisements. Tang, a children's fruit drink, was the name of the only one left on the planet. subliminal advertisement! What a concept.I wonder how Tang's sales were after this movie. Wait, I guess that really isn't a positive. I guess as far as this movie is concerned, the glass is really half empty. Kinda like the people's head who starred and those who wrote it. half empty. No brains, just space for rent.

foxbrick-1 And it's a real pity that it was in the first national, Comedy Channel (pre-Comedy Central) season of MST3K (before Josh Weinstein left to work on THE SIMPSONS, and before Mike Nelson signed on as a utility actor), so it presumably won't be reissued on home video in their version, while my off-cable VHS tape is on its last legs. The cast makes the film, as several have noted here, as does the twist ending you know M. Shyamalan is waiting to spring on us again any film now...I won't reveal it, but its probably the oldest cliché in bad written SF, so ridiculously hack that even the usually shameless film industry hasn't bothered with it much over the decades.However, quite aside from seeing Stuart Margolin beginning his long, deft, typecast career, and Robert Ito with surely no inkling of his similarly long television career to come, for this viewer, the female cast, led in this regard by Irene Tsu and Merry Anders, is remarkably lovely. Arthur C. Pierce, truly an undersung contributor to the Whacked tradition of film-making, provided us with so much in his few mid-'60s features. It's a pity we haven't given him more attention...or, perhaps, not. But these are wonderfully weird (not least in their utter lack of realization of how schlock they are), and often hard to find, films.