Director: Mario Bava
Script: IB Melchior & Louis M Heywood
Cast: Barry Sullivan, Norman Bengell, Angel Aranda, Eui Marandi
Running time: 87.5 minutes
Year: 1965
Certificate: 15
Planet of the Vampires’ director Mario Bava, during his lengthy career, fulfilled a number of film-related roles, most notably as a director, cinematographer, special effects artist and screenwriter. Mostly keeping to lower-budget genre films, he was distinctive due to his visual flair and stylish technical ingenuity; his films often featuring recurring themes and imagery. Probably best known for his horror output, Planet of the Vampires is his interesting take on sci-fi horror and is said to be a major source of inspiration for Ridley Scott when he was making Alien over a decade later.
One can tick off the similarities between Alien and Planet of the Vampires, since both feature a space ship responding to a signal from an alien planet, both feature strange dead aliens and their spacecraft and both feature aliens that effectively pick-off the crew one-by-one until there’s just one survivor left.
It’s certainly true that Bava was capable of making a low budget appear to be much bigger than it actually was. A good example here is with the set design, which is a great combination of model work and matte paintings with lots of dry ice in between. The atmosphere all this creates is nicely foreboding and creepy. The tentacle-like rock formations are particularly eerie.
The cast all play their roles satisfactorily, making some, at times, iffy dialogue sound plausible and they look good in their SS inspired biker leather space apparel, especially the women. And the excellent props that Bava provides them to play or interact with are uniformly excellent, especially the alien skeletons, which are very cool.
I’m not going to review the story as much has already been written about Planet of the Vampires before, suffice to say it holds the attention for the most part, although there is perhaps too much footage of characters wandering around searching for things. Plus, I don’t want to spoil the surprise of what the aliens actually are, for people who haven’t yet seen the film. And, it must be said, the strong ending more than makes up for the film’s other shortcomings, being one of cinema’s most nihilistic finales.
Radiance have done a fine job in restoring the film and it looks great, probably looking considerably better than it’s ever done before. The audio quality is excellent too, really highlighting Bava’s attention to detail when it comes to his soundtracks too. Additionally, there are plenty of special features to get your teeth into…
Audio commentary with Tim Lucas, author of the All the Colors of the Dark book about Mario Bava – Lucas does a great job in providing plenty of details about the making of the film including the fact that the meteor effects were produced by cutting holes into the actual film and the film cost approximately $200K to make and was shot in Cinecitta Studios, one of the largest in Europe.
Transmission from a Haunted World (41 mins) – An almost feature-length documentary featuring an array of film historians including Guy Adams, Xavia Reyas, Alex Benedict, Johny Marius and John Llewellyn Probert. The academics provide plenty of facts and figures about the film and Bava himself and remind us that Planet was one of the first horror/sci-fi crossovers. It was also a co-production between Italy, Spain and the USA and has influenced numerous other films subsequently, for example Titan Find and Inseminoid.
Interview with Lamberto Bava (13 mins) – Lamberto discusses his experiences of the making of Planet of Vampires – he was third assistant director. This is nicely informal and informative.
Super 8 Version (17.10 mins) – Recreation of the German Super 8 digest version which misses out the dodgy flight down to the planet, but otherwise is a pretty good synopsis.
Joe Dante – a Short overview by Joe Dante (4 mins) – Joe regards Bava as an unappreciated genius who he grew to appreciate attending screening of his films at grindhouse cinemas when he was much younger. In fact he saw Planet on a double bill with Die Monster Die.
Josh Olson – A short interview (2 mins) – Editor of ‘Trailers from Hell’, Josh talks about the film, especially focusing on the film’s writers who were also behind the likes of Lost in Space, Reptilicus and Death Race 2000.
Trailer (2.15 mins) – This is fun and to the point
Gallery – 49 stills including some cool posters and lobby cards (mostly black and white)
