The original Russian version "Sampo" is by one of the greatest Russian directors of all time, Aleksandr Ptushko. The American version "The Day The Earth Froze" is a total travesty and in no way reflects the brilliance of Ptushko's film making skills.
America has a long tradition of butchering Soviet era cinema (as much as I like the work of Roger Corman, he destroyed a number of Soviet era science-fiction films by cutting them to ribbons and re-presenting them as "American" space movies, one of them is where Francis Ford Copolla got his break re-editing it).
And MST3K just takes this cultural vandalism a stage further by taking the film even further out of its original context (they did the same for the classic 1981 Soviet science-fiction film "From The Thorns To The Stars" or "To The Stars By Hardways" and rebranding it as "Humanoid Woman") and the real irony is, they are sneering about a film that was already butchered by American cinema, not the original film (they did the same with Finist The Brightest Falcon as well).
I am a huge fan of B-Movies, exploitation, blaxploitation, sleaze, etc so its not the idea of trash movies I don't like, its the fact that they have taken Sampo and the work of a great film maker, Aleksandr Ptushko, by butchering it not once, but twice for an American audience who have no idea of its original source.
And I am from the UK, don't speak a word of Russian, so its not like I am intrinsically biased in any way, I just thought with all the comments , it was time to add a counter-opinion.
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DuanePostum
10 years ago
Then why don't you just watch your original Russian version and shut up, you snob? Oh yeah -- you probably would never have seen or heard of this movie if it weren't for the "travesty" of "cultural vandalism" that dubbed it into American for you. P.S. Nobody was bashing your precious Ptushko's direction or editing; it's a solid, epic style movie. There's room for humorous variations on anything, -- we call it Freedom.
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Razzbar
9 years ago
His comment was interesting and informative. Yours is just arrogant, oppressive, ignorance and narcissism. You embarrass me as an American.
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franklinlj
8 years ago
I think, that since the film was butchered, the misty riff on the resulting mess was quite funny, and justified. Still, I like watching parodies anyway, even of good films, so would prob have enjoyed the misty version of the original.
Speaking of that, where can I get the original? It sounds fascinating. I' ve been interested in the Kalevala ever since I found out it was one source of inspiration to Tolkien, Finnish also inspiring his invented Elven languages.
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jjk50
8 years ago
All the four Russo-Finnish movies MST3K did were good films, lavish productions for their time. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with the MST3K versions. I would like to see all of them in their original versions.
Also to the post that said the movie was dubbed into American, there is no such language. It's called English.
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