A bit long but worth seeing. The story of Kir Bulychyov and Richard Viktorov is interesting and honorable by the same Richard Viktorov along with Nikolay Viktorov. It made me think of Tarkovski, "Solaris" and "Stalker". Yelena Metyolkina is impeccable in the role of the Niyya clone. And all the other actors are very credible and convincing. The film has a little humor, thanks to several characters. The decorations and the costumes are very well done. And Aleksey Rybnikov's music is super special.

Whenever there's a Sci-Fi/Fantasy film festival doing a special around virtually untraceable movies, in my case the Offscreen Festival in Belgium, you simply must attend it as much as possible, because where else will you ever be offered the chance to see titles like "To the Stars by Hard Ways". The festival scheduled a theme around Sci-Fi movies from behind the Iron Curtain and, amongst more commonly known classics like the original "Solaris" and "In the Dust of Stars", they showed this peculiar but strangely poetic and compelling space allegory that consists of three main chapters. The film is set in futuristic Russia, where stereotypical house robots stroll around bleeping and people go to their jobs on distant planets. An outer space mission brings back an intergalactic female immigrant who has curly white hair behaves very nervously. The lead astronaut decides to take her into his house for research and to introduce her to earthly hospitality. The first chapter of "To the Stars by Hard Ways" revolves on the girl, Niya, integrating with her new family. She becomes friends with the astronaut's mother and adolescent son and learns about jealousy when she meets his girlfriend. In spite of her relatively happy new life, Niya has unclear but nightmarish flashbacks about what overcame her on her own planet. The tone of this first chapter is moody but tolerably sentimental. It's like a futuristic soap opera, but from the Soviet Union. The second chapter depicts the space trip to Niya's home planet Dessa. The nightmares and flashbacks stimulated her to slip aboard as a stowaway during Stepan's first official mission as an astronaut. The second chapter really is nothing more than a transition between the sequences on earth and on a distant planet. The middle section is rather dull and contain quite a few irrelevant and unnecessary comical interludes, like dropping off a passenger on his home planet called Ocean. He's a watery blubber thing who lives in a washing machine and is petrified of cats. The third and final chapter is the most interesting for the fans, as it concerns pure and genuine Sci-Fi full of desolate apocalyptic landscapes, malignant looking alien races and uncanny atmosphere. Niya's planet Dessa has become uninhabitable due to a massive industrial catastrophe while the tyrannical rules, called the Turanchoks, are selling clean oxygen at high prices. The final chapter of "To the Stars by Hard Ways" is exciting, often unsettling and very absorbing. It's a bit of a shame that most comments around here (expect for those written by Russian users) are so harshly negative and mainly talking about the notorious MST3K treatment that the movie received in the late 80's. Now, I'm as much a fan of MST3K as anyone else, but there's a lot more underneath this film's campy surface and deserves some deeper analysis. People are complaining about the horrible dubbing, the terrible music, the cheap and campy special effects and the bad acting performances. I beg to differ on practically all points. Another major advantage about seeing this type of movies at a festival is that they respect cinema enough to seek for a 35mm version in the original language. Personally I liked the psychedelic music tunes and the special effects, well, … Naturally they're not very groundbreaking or on par with the contemporary super popular "Star Wars" franchise, but what do you expect from a film from a politically and hermetically sealed off country without much of a cinema culture. "To the Stars by Hard Ways" is primarily a very ambitious story-driven movie, from the hand of the acclaimed Russian novelist Kir Bulychyov and directed by Richard Victorov with great devotion and passion for Sci-Fi. The acting is terrific, especially from the central figure Yelena Metyolkina who made her first ever screen appearance in this film. "The the Stars by Hard Ways" definitely isn't without flaws, but it's a captivating experience that forces you to switch on your brain functions as well as all your senses. Recommended, but please watch the original version or the respectfully restored 2001 version.

Unfortunately, for Sandy Frank, I have only seen his movies via MST3K. Now that MST3K is gone it looks like he hasn't really done anything. Or I really don't like watching them without the MST3K comments.This movie is proof of it. It stinks. There was a reason why this movie never, naturally, was released to the United States.It was just like every other poorly written, directed, dubbed, edited, etc movie of its day. Instead of seeing it via, SciFi, eventually, we have this travesty.There isn't much to say about it since if you want to watch it you should never watch it without the MST3K. It is like pizza sauce on a pizza. Its not a pizza without it.

Humanoid Woman - a.k.a. Cherez ternii k zvyozdam is probably among the worst films ever made. This stinker has quite a bit to turn you off. Among the bad things are:1. The main heroine is a stick with bulging eyes and a white brillo pad on her head. 2. The rest of the cast isn't much better. 3. The robot is everything you hate about robots and extremely fake looking. 4. The music alternates between an out-of-tune classical orchestra and an equally out-of-tune synthasizer. 5. Most of the latter half of the film is quite repetitious - showing the heroine clasping her hands backwards to create an invisible barrier.Avoid this one at all costs. Not even MST3K could save it.It doesn't surprise me that Sandy Frank imported this. He's known for importing quite a number of stinkers into the USA.