To The Stars By Hard Ways (1981)

Load of rubbish!!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Watch this film knowing it's a pile of rubbish and you realise how good it is. Communism was a strange thing, it did not want their people to stray to the decadent west, so they tried to do there own sci fi epics. I have a communist cuckoo clock, it is a very naked, plain non Bavarian cuckoo clock with a plastic cuckoo, but it was made so that there people had no reason to envy the west and this is another ''cuckoo clock'' it has a bald woman, a robot that is made out of various laundry containers turned upside down with odds and ends stuck on it, maybe bits of my cuckoo clock as well (obsessed or what). I won't explain the plot, but if you enjoyed Solaris, The singing ringing tree etc then get this if you can.

It's hard to comment this movie for the non-Russian auditory but I'll try to explain everything.As far as I see nearly no one here knows the reasons why all the Soviet sci-fi had poor special effects. The reason is simple: in Soviet Union were NO commercial movie industry at all. Movie makers were making their movies and had month pays for their work. When they began making a new movie they showed the screenplay to the ministry of culture and if the ministry accepted it it allotted them some money from the state budget. Any sci-fi had never been that politically correct in comparison to war or revolution movies and thus the budget of such movies was ALWAYS very small. You can understand how much devotion to the work and art was needed to make such films in such conditions. This is the reason why soviet sci-fi movie makers always tried to put into their movies the things that were not dependent on budget. They put ideas. Soviet way of life and way of thinking was much enclosed in itself and developed enclosed. Influence of western culture was rather subtle because all the borders were closed. Contraband products were rare and highly illegal. No one have seen any of the non-Soviet sci-fi movies until the very end of 80's."Cherez ternii k zvyozdam" ("Per aspera ad astra" is the correct translation) have one of the best special effects ever made in the Soviet Union, seriously. So ignore them, they are not the central piece of the movie. The central piece is the ideas, the characters and the acting. The visions of the ecological catastrophe were rather fresh in 1981 for the whole world, the more in the Soviet Union where government always told everyone that the future is bright. According to the screenplay there should have been the ending title saying "All the scenes of the dying planet Dessa were shot at the territory of the Soviet Union". No need to say that that title was censored out (now it was added in the new re-edited DVD version).I see that many of those who have seen "Cherez ternii k zvyozdam" misunderstand its plot. It's very strange because the plot is clear and straightforward, possibly it's all because of the poor translation. In fact only the concluding scene may be found somewhat strange because it has purely allegoric meaning: creation of the new life.All acting is nearly perfect, no need to describe it, especially amazing are the roles of the economical tyrant Turanchox by Vladimir Fyodorov, Ambassador Rakan by Vadim Ledogorov and of course, Niya the Artificial Human by Yelena Metyolkina.9 of 10. Find a well-translated version, turn on your brain and you'll understand why I rated it so.

Cherez Ternii K Zvyozdam - a.k.a. Humanoid Woman is one of those films that you wonder why it was made in the first place. Soviet films usually consist of brightly-colored retellings of traditional Russian folktales and the like. They're usually obscenely cheerful and try to make you feel happy. This one doesn't. It has a surprisingly large budget for a Soviet Film (underwater scenes and using surplus cosmonaut stuff.) But that didn't save it. The whole plot is basically this: cosmonauts find a space station that has quite a number of clones on it. Taking the eldest of the clones back with them to their home, they try to accommodate her to life on earth. Seeing she won't fit in, they return her to her people. Upon arriving at her planet, they find that the place is in chaos. There was some kind of disaster that forced everyone underground. The final water supply for the people was poisoned, so when they cosmonauts try to do something with it, a large mass of white foam forms. Exciting in very few places, boring in most, this film is bad, but not the worst I've seen. I have to agree with Icehole's assessment of Niya: she's a brillo pad on a stick with bulging eyes. Worst of all is the incidental music, that sounds like a cat jumping around on a synthesizer in most places.Avoid this one if at all possible.

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.