Well Deserved Praise

I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Mario Bava shakes up the "Italian actors visit Haunted castle in their Fiats" formula by swapping Fiats for spaceships and swapping a haunted castle for an entire haunted planet. Works for me! Two ships of humans are answering a distress signal they picked up from the planetoid Aura. After suffering through a crushing rise in gravity (were the actors indulge in some chuckle-tastic 'gravity struggling'), both ships land. Problem arise almost immediately as those who fell unconscious during the descent suddenly attack their fellow shipmates.The other immediate problem is that the planet is creepy as hell and full of strange lights, fog, floating lights, and bad forced perspective shots. Captain Mark, our hunky hero, grabs some of his crew and seeks out the other ship, where he finds that they weren't so lucky over there as they all managed to murder each other. Slightly perturbed, Mark sets up a guard and buries the bodies of the other ship's crew (that'll be the ones that didn't mysteriously disappear when he went off to find a spade).At this point we get clued in on what's happening (kind of) when the three dead astronauts rise up from the grave in slow motion! Zombies in an Italian film this early is great, plus they are the fast, gun-toting type, like in Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City (1980) - sadly, they don't chase anyone up a roller-coaster like in that film.No, there's a reason these guys are up and about and decimating Mark's crew. Maybe the truth lies in that other ship Mark has discovered. You know, the one with the huge alien skeletons in it. Or maybe the suddenly normal out of nowhere captain of the other ship they arrived with can explain things, if only he could keep his exposed guts from grossing out Mark? As this film is directed by Mario Bava, it's a lot better than you'd expect it to be. Despite the kind of cheap looking optical effects, crappy spaceship effects, and miniature work, Bava still makes this planet are scary place to be, with the constant howling wind, use of primary colour, and all them damn zombies walking about the place. He doesn't skimp on the gore either I noticed, what with all that blood and facial injuries. And checkout all those twists at the end! Also -there's a lot of aspects of Planet of the Vampires that turns up in the film Alien - the distress signal from the unexplored planet, the wind torn, weird geography of the planet itself, the old alien ship and it's occupants. No wonder the Italians would have their revenge with Alien 2 - On Earth (1980)!!!!!

Atmospheric visuals dominate this Italian made sci-fi tale about earthlings who get more than they bargain for when their spaceship touches down on the mysterious planet Aura.They're attacked by an unknown force and later find out that Aura is inhabited by a dying race of vampire beings who have the power to raise the dead and take over the body and minds of the living. Although obviously made on a very small budget, this film is a lot of fun to look at, although the acting makes it seem like a movie made well before 1965. If anything, it feels like a low budget action or serial feature from the 1940s. The alien body snatcher/mind stealer thing was a pretty common element in these movies well before this was made and was often taken to symbolize subversive communist infiltration, although it's hard to say if that was the intent here. No doubt this movie was good source material for numerous big budget sci-fi features that came later.

The crews of two giant interplanetary ships. the Galliott and the Argos, head to an unexplored planet shrouded in fog and mystery after intercepting a distress signal. When landing the two crafts lose contact with each other, and the Argos, lead by the experienced Captain Markary (Barry Sullivan), lands safely after some brief but heavy turbulence. Upon arrival, the crew of the Argos inexplicably attack each other, with only Markary able to resist the strange urge to kill. After they've been knocked out of their trance-like state, they travel to the nearby Galliott to find the entire crew either missing or dead. They bury the dead they find and set out to explore the vast wasteland, but Tiona (Evi Marandi) keeps having visions of the walking dead.Though far more experienced in horror, gialli and sword-and-sandal pictures, the great Mario Bava turns Planet of the Vampires into the most gorgeous sci-fi of its era. The planet, Aura, is desolate but strangely beautiful. Using bold primary colours and going overtime on a smoke machine, Bava infuses the planet with a suitably otherworldly atmosphere, which helps distract from the relatively formulaic plot. The director's love for horror can barely be contained as the crew start to rise from the dead. Placed in makeshift tombs and wrapped in a plastic sheet, they rise like blue- faced ghouls. Free from any distracting edits and backed by Gino Marinuzzi's eerie score, it is the most visually arresting moment in the film.It often gets cited as one of the inspirations for Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), though Scott and writer Dan O'Bannon claim to have never seen it prior to making the film. While Markary and his crew's discovery of giant humanoid skeletons does bring to mind the space jockey found in Scott's masterpiece, the two share little else in common. Behind the visual splendour, Planet of the Vampires suffers from a cheesy script and wooden acting, the common bane of the B- movie. Aside from an exciting set-piece involving an escape from a locked room having its oxygen sucked out, the film is actually quite plodding when it forces us to spend time with its collection of cut- out archetypes. Beautiful, certainly, and perhaps inspirational, but mark this amongst Bava's more mediocre efforts that are still worth checking out.

A spaceship lands on a mysterious planet to investigate what happened to another ship. The crew find themselves controlled by strange forces and having to fend off the reanimated corpses of their comrades. Visually-striking exercise in style from director Mario Bava. It's an incredibly atmospheric sci-fi horror blend with some of the best visuals of any movie from the '60s. The sets, the costumes, the props are all imaginative and inspired creations. It's not for all tastes, however. There is dubbing, there is a thin story, and there are absolutely no vampires anywhere. If you are the type of person who nitpicks movies to death, stop right there and put the DVD back in its case unwatched. This is a fun, escapist movie meant to be enjoyed as such. Just relax and give it a fair shot.