Eolomea (1972)

Director: Herrmann Zschoche

Starring: East Germans

More Info: IMDB

Plot: After eight space cargo ships disappear and transmissions from an orbit station abruptly end, the space council and head scientist decide to halt travel to the mysterious region. Suspicion falls on a professor who was once part of the sidelined Eolomea project.

My Rating: 6.5/10

Would I watch it again? Yeah


I loves me outer space sci-fi, especially from the late 60s and 70s. It's the look, perspective and ideas that draw me in. Now we (USA) weren't the only ones making them. The UK churned out a few (JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (1969), 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)), with the latter changing the game entirely. Kubrick's 2001: ASO made sci-fi something serious, something that didn't rely on giant monsters (I'm looking at you, Japan) or alien invasions. By the end of 1969 we had truly gone where no man had gone before...to the moon, Alice!


We won, the Russians lost. but that didn't stop them from making interesting sci-fi films.



The budgets were slack, compared to Hollywood, but the ideas were not. EOLOMEA is half talky and half cool outer space stuff. Half the film is on Earth with the space council and government hashing out what to do (with a little conspiracy thrown in to mix it up a bit) and the other half deals with the day-to-day lonely business of living and working in space.


So we've got a situation where 160 cosmonaut scientists and their ships/space station go missing. Vanished. Where did they go? Should we try and find them? That's the debate. Space travel is halted until a solution can be found.


Dan is stuck on an asteroid or moon or something far from Earth. He ignores the band and flies to and boards a space station that appears to be abandoned. It's not and it's got some of our "lost" cosmonauts. Ultimately he joins them on their secret quest to find the mythical Utopian planet of Eolomea. Does it exist? No one knows.


I really like model work and there's plenty of it here. Sure it can look hokey but there's an effort to make something interesting in a time where CGI wasn't even a concept. I can appreciate that.

Docking Bay 97 perhaps? Hmmmmmmm.

The interiors of the ships and whatnot are lived in, much what you'd expect, and there are attempts at realism missing in a lot of space films of the day. I expect 2001: ASO had a HUGE influence on this.

I can do without the ridiculously silly robot. I guess it's the Hollywood influence.

It's less than an hour and a half and there's enough space stuff to keep the average space junkie like myself glued to the screen. And when it's discussion time in committees and with colleagues, it's interesting and valid points are made. I probably could do without so many flashbacks with Dan and his girl, showing us how much he misses his idyllic life on Earth...I get it, I get it. But then it's an East German sci-fi flick from '72 and that in and of itself makes it more than just a curiosity. For me, it's a must-see.