For the rest of the romance, we simply hear Falcon and Seagull conversing over buzzy radio, as they orbit Jupiter and Saturn respectively. They talk about inconsequential things, as when one tries to get the other to remember the words to 'that capitalist tune' The Trolley Song. All of this is over random shots of recognizable NASA space hardware. The mission's object is to establish a perfect Communist colony to mine methane on the moon Ganymede. Toys of a monorail and a Ferris wheel 'represent' the proposed Ganymede base. We hear that records of the glorious achievements of world Communism are included in the spaceship manifests, to instill the proper spirit for the new colony.

We also see space capsule interiors with business-as-usual shots of Cosmonauts alert or slumped asleep in their command chairs. The space costuming is pretty good, and designers Dana Carter, Shane Gabier and Cecilia Rubalcava deserve a nod. The scenes of the spacemen are just more wallpaper filler behind the film's incessant voiceovers. At one point the Cosmonauts do hand exercises to the soundtrack, an amusing visual.

Only occasionally does the film come near to suggesting a fake Soviet-bloc historical film. Voiceovers in English tell how the two ships started out on their mission but disappeared somewhere in space. Rather than admit failure, the Comisars quietly shut down the Interkosmos project and demoted or reassigned its key Earth Base personnel. The closest the film comes to political criticism is when a theory surfaces that the ships were meant to be lost, so that their records of Communist history would be preserved if the earth were to perish in a nuclear war. Aliens, at least, would be able to appreciate the evolutionary pinnacle of earth culture.

That only accounts for about two-thirds of the film's running time. Other digressions include choreographed marching drills performed by two girls' field hockey teams, in bright outfits. At one point they form a Busby Berkeley-style pattern of a hammer and sickle. Another sidebar is an odd sequence with "Little Space Pigs". Voiceovers relate the term to describe spacemen, but what we see are small rodents (Gerbils? Hamsters?) in and out of cute toy space suits, with odd backgrounds matted behind them. Just as the field hockey material resembles a possible short subject folded into the present production, the 'space pig' footage is similar to earlier Jim Finn short subjects about small pets.

Too much of the show drones on and on without rewarding the patience of its audience. Every once in a while the voiceovers hit a cute phrase, as when we hear that "Capitalism is like a kindergarten of boneless children." But the feeling is that the film's essential emptiness is being inflicted upon us. The effect is of a minimalist vacuum, an odd sort of torture that reminds of a Peter Sellers gag line in the original Casino Royale: "Oh, you're going to nothing me to death." We really know that we're stuck in experimental film limbo when a lengthy segment simply plays old footage of Marineland dolphins performing, while the theories of Karl Marx (or a close imitation) are recited in what sounds like Spanish.

Facets' presentation of Interkosmos looks reasonably good. The image quality on the plain-wrap disc is limited only by the variable quality of the re-purposed stock footage. The titles affect a Soviet-style artwork pattern. The soundtrack is much more interesting than the film's visuals, with a variety of music cues by Jim Becker and Colleen Burke. The radio-static space communication audio blends well with various 'atmospheric' sound effects. The only sync-sound footage I can remember is a math quiz "Stress Test" being taken by a couple of Cosmonaut candidates. That perhaps accounts for the film's subtitle on the jacket cover, Interkosmos Stressprüfung 0175.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Interkosmos rates:
Movie: Fair ++
Video: Good
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: None
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: October 7, 2007