Andromeda Nebula or Tumannost Andromedy (1967)
IMDB meta-data is 1 hour and 17 minutes of runtime, rated 5.6 by 315 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
DNA: Soviet
Verdict: Melancholy.
Tagline: TMI or TLI.*
A craft on a deep space mission is trapped in the gravitational field of an iron star and cannot escape. Since they are stuck the elderly captain decides to answer a distress signal that comes from a planet in the iron star system, where they find one (or is it two other ships, it being hard to tell in the murk) and they are set upon by a cannibal cloud, suffering casualties, including the captain’s squeeze. Remember the cloud from The Wall (1967), this is its evil twin.
Meanwhile, back at HQ chaps with big chins dressed for Greco-Roman wrestling babble about compressing time. They watch a girly dance, sad to think those babes were long since dead before the video traversed space to reach them. Huh? The sun shines, the waters lap, everyone smiles all the time. It is exhausting to watch all this good humour. They seem only sightly interested in the fate of captain and crew.
Meanwhile, back at the Iron Star the crew finds fuel on the downed ships and pirate it to power their way out of the gravity grip and return. Hooray! Aged captain decides he has to live with the painful memories of this expedition, despite the suggestion of the on-board medic (who wears a crash hemet!) that she erase his memory.
The design, art work, and sets are marvellous. It looks like a considerable investment for what then seems to be a truncated movie. Was it intended to be the first episode of a series? Some reviewers entertain that speculation. Certainly there are many unexplained references like the Great Ring, Station 57, that medical helmet, and what’s for dinner? None of this is helped by the AI generated subtitles.
Those sets and designs would have attracted that film cutter-extraordinaire Roger Corman, but he seems to have missed this one.
What traps me is an iron sofa. A near approach and I am pulled into its gravitational field with little chance of escape for the next hour. Best to stretch out and accept my fate.
* TLI is Too Little Information, Mortimer.