October Edition #15: PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES

Director: Mario Bava
Screenplay: Mario Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua
Starring: Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell, Angel Aranda, Fernando Villena
Release Date: 1965


At the far end of our vast galaxy two spaceships, Argos and Galliott, approach a strange planet in response to a distress signal they have been following for the last two years in the hopes of finding intelligent life. Due to the planet’s immense gravitational pull they both crash-land miles apart. Upon landing the crew of the Argos are suddenly and inexplicably compelled to attack one another. They are only prevented from killing each other by Captain Markary’s (Sullivan) sheer force of will. Once the chaos has settled down, they set off on an expedition across the fog-enshrouded landscape to find their sister ship. Once there, they find only death and destruction. The crew of the Galliott, including Markaray’s younger brother, were unable to stop themselves from totally obliterating one another. They bury several of the bodies, but when they return to collect the rest discover that they are missing. This is only the beginning of a terrifying descent into hell, as the stranded crew of the Argos are besieged by strange, ghostly orbs and, most disquieting, the droning voices of the dead crew of the Galliott, beckoning to them from within the utterly alien landscape.

Things got a bit awkward when everyone showed up to the office Halloween party dressed as Clu from TRON.

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES is the first Mario Bava film that I have ever seen, and I honestly don’t know why it has taken me this long. The man has a sterling reputation of producing some of the most stylish, startling, visually astonishing genre films of the last fifty years, and if this one is any indication of what the rest of his oeuvre has to offer, I cannot wait to dig in for seconds. This flick has two very strong elements going in its favor: an unmistakably awesome visual style, and oodles of spooky, otherworldly atmosphere.

The eerily beautiful landscape of the alien world.

Bava obviously poured his heart into every aspect of the design of this world, squeezing every last dime he could out of what was obviously a miniscule budget. Right from the get-go we are presented with a series of spaceships which are obviously models, yet the combination of sleek curves and inventive lighting lend them an otherworldly, heightened reality. The sets in the interior of the spaceships are sparse, simple, with lots of open spaces amidst the “futuristic” machinery, and the costume design is simultaneously stupid and awesome, all spandex and leather with yellow lines, resembling a non-glowing version of the costumes featured in the recent TRON: LEGACY. The terrain of the alien world is utterly devoid of life, a dead rock shrouded in impenetrable mists and eerie red-gelled lighting effects. Everything looks totally artificial, yet totally unlike anything of our world, and at the same time absolutely gorgeous. The cast is convincingly inserted into this landscaping using, literally, smoke, mirrors, and some clever forced-perspective trickery. Strictly from a design standpoint, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES is a complete triumph.

Where it falters is in the characters. The sloppy English dubbing certainly doesn’t help matters, but as it is all of the performers are rather stiff and emotionless. This is an emotionally cold movie, much like Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I didn’t particularly care about what happened to anybody, but I was genuinely creeped out by what did transpire. Bava totally succeeds at creating a dreadful atmosphere of being somewhere utterly alien, surrounded by what appears to be the walking dead. The scene where the crew members of the Galliott rise from their unnatural graves is a masterfully directed scene of sublime eeriness. This was obviously a huge influence on Ridley Scott’s ALIEN, as there are several scenes here that appeared in that film  nearly fifteen years later, most glaringly a scene in which Captain Markary discovers the ancient remains of a massive life form lying in the cockpit of a strange spacecraft which turns out to be the source of the initial distress signal, much akin to the massive Space Jockey discovered by the crew of the Nostromo in Scott’s picture. And while that film maintained a far more muted color palette, the planet LV-426 retained the same jutting rock formations and swirling mists seen in Bava’s film. I’m not saying anyone was ripped off, but someone who worked on ALIEN definitely saw this movie and used it as inspiration.

Inspiration for ALIEN?

Captain Markary eventually discovers that the planet’s original inhabitants are a dying race of spirit-like beings that possess the dead bodies of other species in order to guarantee their survival. They hope to possess the crew of the Argos and make their way back to our world, full of millions of warm bodies which they can inhabit, thus setting of a race against time to retrieve a much-needed meteor rejecter from the Galliott so that the few human survivors can escape this hellish world. Not everyone makes it, and the ending is quite dark for a movie from this time period, if not a bit illogical and silly.

A taste of the otherworldly set design.

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES is not for all tastes. It is a bit slow, and will seriously test the patience of anybody raised on a strict diet of fast-paced modern film making techniques. But for anyone who is willingly to sit back and bask in the sheer artistry of a true master of the art form, I give this film a solid recommendation.

My Rating:
8/10