*Ikarie XB-1 I (Voyage To The End Of The and similar items

Vintage original 11 x 14 in. US lobby card from the 1960s Czech-produced sci-fi film, IKARIE XB-1, released in 1963 and directed by Jindrich Polak, in which in the year is 2163, Starship Ikarie XB-1 embarks on a long journey across the universe to search for life on the planets of Alpha Centauri. As indicated in the center of the bottom border, this is card #7 from the set of 8 cards. It is unrestored in near-fine condition with a Canadian censor stamp. Ikarie XB-1 is a 1963 Czechoslovak science fiction film directed by Jind?ich Polak. It is based loosely on the novel, "The Magellanic Cloud," by Stanis?aw Lem. The film was released in the United States, edited and dubbed into English, under the title Voyage to the End of the Universe. While it shows some influence from earlier American ventures such as Forbidden Planet (1956), the film was also influential in its own right ? critics have noted a number of similarities between Ikarie XB-1 and Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and it is believed to have been one of the many 'space' genre films that Kubrick screened while researching 2001. The 1963 children's film, Clown Ferdinand and the Rocket [de], from the TV series about the clown directed by Jind?ich Polak, was produced using the props of Ikarie XB-1. Ikarie XB-1 is best known internationally through an edited and English-dubbed version which was given a limited theatrical release in the USA in 1964 by American International Pictures. The AIP version also occasionally screened on television in the USA and other countries at various times over the ensuing years but, apart from its screening at Trieste, the original Czech version was rarely seen outside Czechoslovakia until its release on DVD in 2005. AIP made numerous alterations for the English-language version of the film, which it retitled Voyage to the End of the Universe. Almost ten minutes of footage was cut, the names of the cast and staff in the opening credits were anglicized, and the ship's destination was renamed "The Green Planet." However, the biggest change was AIP's recut of the closing scene, which created an entirely different ending from the original. In the Czech version, as the Ikarie approaches its destination its viewscreen shows the clouds around the White Planet parting to reveal a densely populated and industrialized planet surface. For the English version, AIP excised the last few seconds and substituted stock aerial footage of view of southern Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. According to one reviewer, Glenn Erickson, AIP's edits and script changes were intended to create a gimmicky "surprise" ending, revealing that the Ikarie and its crew have come from an alien world and that the "Green Planet" is, in fact, Earth.