Planet of the Vampires (1965)
One of the obvious inspirations for Ridley Scott's Alien, with a scene of astronauts discovering a derelict alien space craft and the enormous skeletons of it's dead crew. The rest of the plot has the astronauts land on an unnamed world and become possessed by disembodied beings after death and transformed into zombie like creatures.
Mario Bava takes his usual decadent Gothic trappings and moves them into deep space in this atmospheric sci-fi horror chiller. Complete with fog bound sets and cobwebs on the walls - the mind boggles at what created the cobwebs. Space spiders?
Bava's direction is assured and his rich use of colour almost revolutionary - red and blue hued lighting and lots of rolling fog and bizarre rock formations which added to Bava's photography easily covers the limited sets and next to no budget in almost deceptively rich style lulling the viewer into thinking this is more than the sum of it's parts. My only grumble with the look of the film is inside the astronauts space craft. The roof is way too high and never in shot making it seem like a film studio rather than the confines of a space craft.
There's perhaps too much going back and forwards over the same plot points, but Planet of the Vampires remains a hugely enjoyable slice of Italian science fiction with a distinct Gothic flavour.
The new Blu-ray from Radiance Films looks stunning and the sound on the English dub is crystal clear. I went with the dub seeing as Barry Sullivan dubbed himself and the other members of the cast were from all over the world rather than Italy, (although we do get Ivan Rassimov playing one of the crew) I actually think reading subtitles would take away from the experience as it means you wouldn't be marveling at Bava's wonderful creativity on screen.
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