Drive-In Dust Offs: PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965)

A spaceship heads to a remote planet to answer an SOS. Upon arrival on the fog covered world, they discover an insidious alien race that needs warm bodies to propagate their species. Yeah, I love Alien (1979) too! However, the film I’m referring to is Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965), an influential departure for the prolific horror auteur and a gorgeously rendered sci-fi/horror blend.

Now, by no means am I suggesting that Sir Ridley Scott borrowed from Mario Bava (he claimed he never saw Planet beforehand); but I will say that this film also has a giant alien skeleton at the helm of a ship. Regardless of influence (or lack thereof), Planet still plays today due to Bava’s magnificent brushstrokes that drip from every frame.

Planet of the Vampires was also released as (take a deep breath): Planet of Blood, Terror in Space, The Haunted Planet, The Haunted World, The Planet of Terror, The Planet of the Damned, The People’s Front of Judea, and The Judean People’s Front. (The last two are for Monty Python fans. Sorry about that.) A lot of names, and I’m sure distributor AIP used them all to saturate the drive-in market. Or maybe they had a hard time figuring out exactly how to market this one, as Bava doesn’t exactly follow the sci-fi template of the time. Not a big surprise – he usually made the movies he wanted to make, trends be damned.

The story isn’t any more complicated than I’ve already mentioned, but I’ll give it a shot. Two spaceships are headed for a remote planet to respond to a distress call. Before they land, the crew of the Argos is overcome with homicidal impulses and try to kill each other, until Captain Markary (Barry Sullivan – Oh God!) is able to snap everyone back to reality. Once landing on the planet, the crew of the Argos searches for the folks from its sister ship, the Galliott.

However, most of the Galliott’s crew has disappeared, and it’s up to Markary to uncover the truth behind their disappearance, who (or what) is behind the distress signal, and why the dead are being revived and controlled by unseen sinister forces.

That’s basically all you get; it’s a wonder there’s even that much story, what with the meager purse strings opened up by AIP and co-producer Italian International Film. Planet was trotted out to theatres and drive-ins as the lower berth on a double feature with Die, Monster, Die! (1965), and this film had AIP moving up to producing instead of merely distributing these low budget (and highly profitable) Italian flicks, like Bava’s own Black Sunday (1960) and Black Sabbath (1963). And while the subject matter (not to mention funding) falls in line with the grade Z, paper plate on a string potboilers of the day (Invasion of the Star Creatures! The Day Mars Invaded Earth), it distances itself by showcasing Bava’s unique visual aesthetic.

You’re certainly not here for the performances; then again, the English translated script by Louis M. Heyward (Pajama Party) and Ib Melchoir (Robinson Crusoe on Mars) offers hilarious pseudo sci-fi jargon and uber-dramatic dialogue that would give James T. Kirk pause only a year later, so we can’t be too hard on the thespians. As tradition with a lot of foreign genre work, everyone spoke their language, and then would be dubbed over (in this case) to English. So to our ears, Sullivan sounds the most natural, as everyone else was either Italian or Spanish, and don’t quite match. It’s so hard to judge performances based on dubbing, so I’ll just say that everyone is fine and looks good in their black leather jumpsuits. (However, the uniformity of design does make the indistinguishable actors practically interchangeable.)

They look great, actually; and really part and parcel with Bava’s intent – to create a sensual, atmospheric thriller, but instead of his normal palette, he dabbles in the stars. The black leather outfits, and sparse, economical design of the spaceships (they’re massive and very roomy) add to the childlike, comic book appearance of the film. In fact, the whole film looks like the cover of a dime store adventure novel from the 1930s.

But the look is where the comparison ends; this is Bava folks, and the trail of his fantastique is strewn with the grotesque. Bodies are shown flayed through (for the time) gruesome makeup, and once the plot ramps up, Bava puts more emphasis on creating a foreboding mood and less on espousing an eight year olds’ definition of sciencespeak. (Come at me, kiddies!) Speaking of little ones, I feel bad for any parents who dragged them along expecting Robinson Crusoe and got this.

I wouldn’t blame kids for loving it, however; this is part of Bava’s allure – he saturates the screen in gorgeous primary colors that entice newcomers to cinema, and offers seasoned filmgoers a unique prism from which to view hokey material. And there are some amazing sights to behold; the aforementioned skeletal remains, an exquisite use of fog, and a scene where the buried rise from their graves as they tear apart the plastic shroud that entombed them. All this and a twist ending that is common place now, but would have played fresher at the time.

And while the film on an objective level offers modest pleasures to the casual viewer (but is essential for Bava fans), its influence cannot be denied. From a purely visual perspective, Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Death Race 2000 (1975), and even Prometheus (2012) owe a debt to Planet of the Vampires. As for the skeleton? You’d have to ask Sir Scott about that.

Planet of the Vampires is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.