Battle Beyond the Sun

1959 science fiction film

Battle Beyond the Sun is a 1962 science fiction film. It is an English dubbed and re edited American version of Nebo Zovyot, a 1959 Soviet science fiction film. Roger Corman acquired the Soviet film for US distribution and hired a young film school student named Francis Ford Coppola to "Americanize" it. Like the original Soviet Nebo Zovyot, Battle Beyond the Sun is a tale of a "space race" between two nations competing to become the first to land a spacecraft on the planet Mars; unlike the original, in which the competing nations are the USSR and the US, Battle Beyond the Sun focuses on the fictional future countries of North Hemis and South Hemis. The names of not only the Soviet characters, but also their performers, and the crew credits as well, were altered on the screen to American sounding names in order to further disguise the film's origins: thus Soviet stars Aleksandr Shvorin and Ivan Pereverzev became "Andy Stewart" and "Edd Perry", and Soviet directors Mikhail Karyukov and Aleksandr Kozyr became "Maurice Kaplin" and "Arthur Corwin" – and were demoted to Assistant Director status as well. The advertising and release print's designated director is credited as Thomas Colchart; sources vary as to whom that name actually belongs (Karyukov and/or Kozyr, Coppola, or a hired American dubbing director).

In addition to preparing a dubbing script free of anti American propaganda and all references to the USSR and USA, and supervising the dubbing, Francis Ford Coppola slightly re edited the footage, eliminated the framing "daydream" sequences, and even saw to it that a pastel rhombus shape was matted in on a frame by frame basis, to cover the Cyrillic letters CCCP (USSR) which adorned the space station and Soviet rocketships. Coppola also filmed a few shots of two space monsters fighting and cut them into the Soviet material. According to Jack Hill, who worked on the new version (it was his first paid job for Roger Corman), Coppola's idea was that one monster would look like a penis and the other a vagina. The new monster scenes were shot on a sound stage in Hollywood. Hill and Coppola also shot some footage of the Rose Parade at Pasadena.