Entry Forty-Eight: Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Dir: Mario Bava

"10,000 years ago, or 10,000 years to come?  Are they beings of the future or of the past, these men who rule the DEMON PLANET?"

 

Blood!  Leather-clad space babes!  Druggy-as-fuck visuals!  The goddamn godfather of gialli; the legendary Mario Bava makes his Basement of Sleaze debut with this lurid, Technicolor space horror.  Strap yourself in as we blast off for the Planet of the Vampires!

While investigating a mysterious signal emanating from an alien planet, the crew of the spaceship Argos pass through a strange radiation cloud.  Major space babe Sanya (Norma Bengell) goes berserk and attacks hunky second-in-command Brad (Stelio Candelli, Nude for Satan, Demons), while ship's doctor Karan (Fernando Villena, Night of the Seagulls) also loses it and forces the ship to make planetfall.  Once aground, the crew regains their composure, but engineer Wes (Angel Aranda, The Colossus of Rhodes) discovers that the radiation cloud has damaged their instruments, making it impossible to take off again.  Tough-as-shit captain Markary (Barry Sullivan) rounds the crew up for an exploration of the fog and wind enshrouded planet, where they discover the wreck of sister ship Galliot.  Inside the Galliot, they discover the corpses of her crew, including Markary's brother, Toby, who appear to have killed each other.  While the crew returns to the Argos, the Galliot corpses appear on the surface of the planet, rising from cellophane-like cocoons in a supremely eerie scene.   When the crew are attacked by what appears to be a psychedelic lightshow, crewman Bert (Franco Andre) has half his face melted off and dies and crewman Elden (Mario Morales) disappears.  Markary, Sanya and crewman Carter journey back onto the planet, where they discover the pitted and scarred remains of an alien derelict spacecraft and a giant, non-human skeleton.  Exploring the (visually striking, crimson-and-jade) derelict, Markary and Sanya discover the fossilized remains of the ship's navigator and an ancient communication system.  Outside, Carter is killed by unseen forces.  Back on the Argos, crew-woman Tiona (Evi Marandi, Paris when it Sizzles) develops a psychic link with the unseen assailants, while Toby and the crew of the Galliot show up and try to convince our heroes to take them aboard the Argos (nobody but Markary and Tiona seems to notice/mind that they're half rotting).  The undead attempt to take over the Argos, and reveal that they are, in fact, a race of bodiless creatures who need to physically posses corporeal beings in order to leave the planet.  Markary isn't gonna have any of that shit, and devises a plan to use nukes to stop the alien invaders.  Will any of our heroes escape with their lives?  Maybe, maybe not...There's a GREAT twist ending!   

Bava certainly didn't create the "space horror" genre, but he certainly provided a template that would inform the genre for years to come.  The production design of the film has one foot in 50s-era kitsch (the angular, austere, severe-angled sets of the spaceships) and one foot in the messy, "used-future" look that would become popular post-Star Wars (the often-disheveled look of the crew, the barren alien planet).  As with his giallo and Diabolik films, Bava saturates the picture with a kaleidoscope of colors; I imagine it would be most attractive to people under the influence of certain controlled substances.  Planet of the Vampires is perhaps most notable today as a major influence on Alien and it's sequels; the howling wind and fog of the alien planet, the derelict and it's skeletal crew, the vagina-like hatch on the Argos and even the score are reminiscent of similar elements in Alien, and the "possessed crew" sub-plot would later be borrowed for Prometheus.  Jean-Pierre Jeunet lifted the scene where the crew of the Galliot rise from the dead for a similar scene with Ripley in Alien Resurrection.  Hell, Dark Horse Comics even named a major character "Elden" in their Alien/Predator/Prometheus crossover story "Fire and Stone," presumably in homage to this movie.  It should also be noted that the fetishistic black leather spacesuits in this move were lifted with very few changes for the costumes for X-Men (2000).  If you're a Bava fan, or a fan of genre film history, this is well worth your time to check out.