Battle Beyond the Sun is a 1959

1959 in film

The year 1959 in film involved some significant events, with Ben-Hur winning a record 11 Academy Awards.-Events:* The Three Stooges make their 190th and last short film, Sappy Bull Fighters....

 Soviet science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 film directed by Mikhail Karyukov and Aleksandr Kozyr

Aleksandr Kozyr

Aleksandr Kozyr is a Russian film producer and director. He co-directed Battle Beyond the Sun, a science fiction film, with Mikhail Karyukov.-External links:...

. It tells of the "space race", with the USSR forced into competing with the USA to become the first nation to colonize Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

. Roger Corman

Roger Corman

Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...

 acquired the film for US distribution and hired a young film-school student named Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...

 to Americanize it. In addition to preparing a dubbing

Dubbing (filmmaking)

Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...

 script free of anti-American propaganda and supervising the dubbing, Coppola filmed a few shots of two Martian animals fighting and cut them into the Soviet material. This Americanized version was titled Battle Beyond the Sun and distributed by American International Pictures

American International Pictures

American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...

in 1964.