This is another piece of Russian space culture I found over on YouTube. The YouTube channel it’s on simply describes it as ‘Monolith 14’ with the addition of ‘CCCP 1974’, which presumably means it was made in the Soviet Union in 1974. And it’s very, very strange. I don’t know if the accompanying video was a promotional film specially made for the music, or is simply bits of an old Russian SF flick, which the band has recycled. It shows Soviet cosmonauts travelling to an alien planet, and getting shot at, bald android people, who are dead white, with bit sparse fur growing on their bonces and goggles walking around menacingly; a woman with eight eyes, four in each eye socket, examining a human couple, who are placed in man- and woman-shaped receptacles above which is some strange machinery ready to do, well, something or other to them; and a human bald bloke in a black tracksuit being pulled by invisible forces down a long corridor to be seized by the white android baldies. All while standing in a trough filled with dry ice. it looks a bit – but only a bit – as though the makers were influenced by THX 1138. I have no idea what’s going on, and I can’t find a film with the title in John Clute’s Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (London: Dorling Kindersley 1995).
If the video is from a genuine Soviet SF film, then I’d like to see it. It looks fun and more than a little mind-blowing. It’s another window into the alternative universe that was Soviet SF. The best known Soviet SF films are Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Stalker, adapted from the novels by Stanislaw Lem and the Strugatsky Brothers respectively. This shows there’s much more out there, which needs to be rediscovered.
Tags: 'Monolith 14', 'Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia', Andrei Tarkovsky, Cosmonauts, John Clute, Science Fiction, Solaris, Soviet Union, Stalker, Stanislaw Lem, Strugatsky Brothers, THX1138
June 27, 2017 at 11:03 am |
Film like as
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfW-F_nlJxI eng subs
June 27, 2017 at 11:24 am |
Thanks for both of these.
June 27, 2017 at 11:05 am |
Google it (1st and 2nd film):
“Moscow — Cassiopeia with English subtitles”
“Teens in the Universe with English subtitles
March 14, 2018 at 4:52 am |
In this video ( Monolith ´14) of 1974 on youtube, see one cell phone (!!!) in 1:58 time. Advanced vision of future? Sovietic electronic engineering ?
May 24, 2018 at 8:10 am |
Das ist ein Film. Oder Serie? Ich weiß nur das ich es als Kind angeschaut habe und mich echt fasziniert hat. Würde es gerne mal wieder anschauen.
May 24, 2018 at 8:43 am |
Danke, Dark. Ich habe unglucklicherweise keine Ahnung ob es ein Film oder Serie war. Es ist sehr interessant, und ich auch mochte das ganzes schauen.
June 25, 2019 at 1:17 am |
This movie is real. In the US it is called Teens in Space. I believe there are a few copies on Amazon