Unable to establish radio contact, and with 21 hours of oxygen left and no mission control to guide them, the astroquintet decides to make an emergency ocean landing off a rocky desert coastline that may be Earth -possibly Mexico -or a strange, new planet.Īs they begin their trek across the desert towards what they hope is the U.S, they come to believe the Earth was decimated by a mysterious, cataclysmic ecological event or nuclear war. No one is waiting for them no Earth-orbit rendezvous is prepared. What’s unknown to the crew: Earth lost contact with them 900 days ago (just over 2 1/2 years) -and considered Ganymed 2 lost. The other two explorers, portrayed by Claus Theo Gardener and Uwe Friedrichsen, built extensive German-based resumes, with the late Friedrichsen in 121 projects and Gardener moving into directing.Īs with the Russian you-either-love-it-or-hate-it epic-mindbender Solaris (1972), Operation Ganymed is an introspective, metaphysical journey concerning a United Nations-sponsored team of three Americans, two European, and one Russian who return from their four-year (left in 1985 and returned in 1989, according to the video box description in the film it’s 1991) catastrophic mission to Jupiter’s moon in which, while they discovered rudimentary, primitive life (they pontificate on the foolishness of spending $38 billion for one tube of green slime), it was at the cost of 21 crew members, including two that perished on Ganymede’s surface.

The remainder of us video and genre fringe geeks will recognize the third-billed Horst Frank, who became a go-to bad guy for spaghetti westerns (1968’s Django, Prepare a Coffin with George Eastman and Terence Hill ), Euro war epics (1964’s Mission to Hell ), and Italian Gialli (1971’s Cat o’ Nine Tails for Dario Argento ). Heiter in Tom Six’s art house stomach churner, The Human Centipede (2009). The long-awaited, inferior DVD currently in the marketplace came as result of respected German actor Deiter Laser (who I remember from the obscure and equally rare VHS The Elixirs of the Devil, a 1976 German take on the ‘70s Euro-horror nasties The Devils and Mark of the Devil ) achieving his first taste of worldwide fame with his turn as the mad Dr. If there’s ever a film that deserves a full-blown digital restoration from its original 35MM print-which was bestowed this year by Arrow Video to Def-Con 4-then Operation Ganymed is the film. Astute post-apocalypse fans will instantly notice those U.S-issued VHS tapes were most-likely plundered by the producers of the less intelligent Canadian exploiter Def-Con 4 (1985) and the South African gimp-clone Survivor (1987).

Recognized as a winner of a few Euro-science fiction film festivals, the film earned a domestic stateside-release when star Jürgen Prochow impressed U.S audiences with his break out rolls in Das Boot (1981) and Dune (1984). And beware: most of those are DVD-Rs (but don’t complain and just be happy the film is at least digitally preserved). sigh, that’s the copy/version I rented from Tapes n’ More so many years ago!) The film was popular enough in Europe to warrant DVD reissues dubbed or subtitled for various markets-but are barebones VHS rips. (How rare is the tape? A VHS is currently for sale on eBay for $78.00. The now ultra-rare tape sought by VHS/Beta collectors doesn’t even appear in U.S tape guides.

Capricorn one subtit