Essays and Reviews


    THE HEAVENS CALL
 
(Nebo Zovet)
Director: Mikhail Karyukov & Aleksandr Kozyr
Year: 1959

Runtime: 80 minutes

Country: USSR

Cast:
Ivan Pereverzev, Alexander Shvorin
Screening Times:
March 8, 2007 6:30 PM
Screens at Jackman Hall
Images courtesy of Seagull Films.
 
  
 


This tale of two rival space probes, headed for Mars and the moon, only to crash-land on a nearby asteroid, features spectacular spacescapes, as well as a prescient visualization of the Earth's orbit cluttered by man-made satellites. Roger Corman helped himself to the film's plot and footage for the 1963 opus BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN , re-edited and reconfigured into a cheesy drive-in movie by an ambitious young director named Thomas Colchart. These days, he goes by the name of Francis Ford Coppola.