186 words about The Witches Cave

A story of Soviet space travel

“Who Watches the Watchers” is a classic 1989 Star Trek: TNG episode about a team of Starfleet anthropologists who inadvertently reveal themselves to the Stone Age civilization they’re observing. The Witches Cave is a 1989 USSR sci-fi movie that starts with exactly the same premise, then hits the gas so hard that it turns into a synth-heavy riff on Conan the Barbarian, or at least Yor. Our hero, Inspector Bruce, is sent from “The Center” in space to check up on a philologist who has broken “the principle of non-interference” and helped a primitive tribe on the planet he studies. Inspector Bruce is immediately cool. When the chieftain’s daughter touches the pilot patch on his uniform and asks “You are big warrior?” he responds, “Well, yeah.” Things go south after a local bad guy kills the trusting philologist, and Inspector Bruce enacts solutions that are more Kirk than Picard. I don’t want to oversell it, but in 80 minutes, Bruce kicks a caveman in the balls, fights giant bugs and robots, says some problematic shit, wins a duel, and discovers the dreadful secret ... of The Witches Cave!