The premise is OK. The Earth has managed to stay afloat despite terrible trials. Two adversarial forces have designs on Mars. The movie is talky and dull. The movie has no pacing and is dull. The science is unclear and dull. There is pointless stuff going on and it is dull. The butchering of the original led to incredible dullness. The special effects were quite dull. The scene at the end with all the "heroes" coming in on speedboats was almost embarrassing. You'd swear it was a half hour before the Academy Awards. Don't bother with this blather. Apparently, some of Hollywood's great minds got together to produce this sludge. If I didn't mention it, it was dull.

1997: after a catastrophic atomic war, the Earth has divided into two rival nations, the North Hemis and the South Hemis, both sides locked in a battle to be the first to land on Mars.Battle Beyond the Sun started life as a state-sponsored Russian sci-fi movie called Nebo Zovyat— a breath-taking, prophetic vision of the Soviet Union's journey into space; in the disrespectful hands of opportunistic producer Roger Corman and a young and eager-to-please Francis Ford Coppola, what was once awe-inspiring becomes laughable, the pair badly dubbing and drastically re-editing the original two hour epic to a mere 64-minutes of clumsy space melodrama (albeit it with impressive effects), 'enhanced' by silly inserts of space monsters that look suspiciously like genitalia.It's dull going as the two nations race to the 'Red Planet' only to fail with the finishing line in sight, and the feel-good moral of the tale—that rival nations must co-operate if they want to achieve truly great things—does little to compensate for the sheer shoddiness of the whole cut-and-paste approach and the frustrating fact that the wonders of Mars remain unseen.

Nebo Zovyot (The Sky is Calling) is a 1959 Soviet film about Russia and the US trying to become the first to land on the planet Mars.The models(Rockets,Space Station)and sets are impressive for late 1959. The film never made a clean debut in the US, simply dubbed into English as so many Japanese sci-fi films had. This was because the story had pro-communist messages and disparaged America. Being a Soviet film, the messages are all from the other side. The Soviets are cast as the reasonable folks. While the Americans are the reckless and impetuous. Fun Fact: Roger Corman bought the American rights to the film. He had it edited, dubbed and some new footage added. The result was his oft-maligned Battle Beyond The Sun. Footage from this movie also showed up in a couple of later 60s American B movies.

My giving this a score of 3 is NOT what I would give the original Soviet version of this film. It seems that American-International (a studio that specialized in ultra-low-budget fare in the 60s) bought this film and utterly destroyed it--slicing a two hour plus film into a 64 minute film! Plus, much of this 64 minutes was new material (such as the "monsters")--so you know that this film bears almost no similarity to the original. The original film appears to be a rather straight drama about the Soviet conquest of space--though I really am not sure what it was originally! For insight into the original film, read Steven Nyland's review--it was very helpful.By the way, this was the third Soviet sci-film I've seen that American-International bought and then hacked apart to make a "new" film--standard practice to a company that was willing to put just about anything on the screen to make a buck--provided, of course, it didn't cost them much more than a buck in the first place!! This Americanized film was about two rival world powers (NOT the US and Soviets) trying to be the first to Mars. The tricky "bad guys" try but fail and the "good guys" rescue one of the idiot astronauts and then head to Mars. Unfortunately, they are temporarily stranded on a moon of Mars where they see some monsters (added by American-International) that are REAAAALLY cheesy and one does bear similarity to a certain part of a female's anatomy. Then, they are rescued--returning to Earth heroes.The bottom line is that the film was butchered--turning an incredibly beautiful piece of art (for the time) being turned into a grade-C movie. Because of this, the Soviets really had a reason to hate America! I'm just shocked that the horrible job A-I did with this film didn't convince them to refuse to sell more films to these jerks! It's worth a look for a laugh, but the really bad moments that make you laugh are few and far between. So, the film is a dud--not bad enough to make it a must-see for bad movie buffs and too dopey to be taken seriously. I would really love to see this movie in its original form--it must have been some picture.UPDATE--nietogimenez sent me an email indicating the original IS available and said you can just Google for it.