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Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
For Planet of the Vampires Mario Bava turned his visual sense to a new genre, the space
opera. By 1965, American movies about interplanetary travel had dwindled to a few minor pictures a
year: Two exceptions were Robinson Crusoe on Mars and
First Men In the Moon. But Italy was
having a mini-boom, mostly through the work of prolific director Antonio Margheriti. With their overlit sets
and emphasis on flashy
action, pictures like Wild, Wild Planet played like Sword 'n Sandal pix transplanted to
rocketships. In contrast, Bava's stunning Gothic variation weaves a weird tale of flying saucers, ray guns and
zombies that looks like no other space movie ever filmed.
Synopsis:
Twin spaceships Argos and Galliot land on the dark and foggy planet Aura,
and the nightmare begins. On the Argos, Captain Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan) and Sanya (Norma
Bengell) can barely restrain members of the crew from maiming each other in inexplicable fits of
violence. Worse, when they investigate why no communications are coming from the Galliot, they
discover its entire crew is dead, with evidence pointing to an orgy of killing. While trying to repair the
Argos and warding off phantom sightings of strange lights, Mark and Sanya
investigate a derelict alien craft nearby. It is littered with the grotesque skeletal remains of
alien creatures. When their hastily buried casualties begin returning from their graves, it finally
becomes obvious: Spectral beings on Aura are possessing the spacemen's dead bodies, hoping to
escape to a new world.
Planet of the Vampires is an outerspace thriller that has almost nothing in common with similarly
plotted pictures, like Curtis Harrington's Queen of Blood. In the standard space epic,
hardware and special effects are everything. Here on the ghastly planet Aura, they take third place
to Bava's signature lighting and atmospheric effects.
Explaining what's so special about this picture requires one to say what it isn't:
Planet of the Vampires
doesn't have a well-written script or interesting characters. The action is repetitive and the
plot plods along to a rather unexciting conclusion. Its appeal lies in director Bava's
creation of an eerie and unsettling alien world that is its own
reason for being.
The action takes place in two very unnatural locales. The interior of the Argos is vast and gloomy,
with large interior spaces similar to those in Ikarie XB-1(Voyage to the End of the
Universe) but with none of their optimistic futurism. The spacemen sit at uncomfortable
stations in a cavernous piloting room, and the rest of the craft is made of bulkhead doors and
industrial-sized machinery.
But the Argos is cozy compared to the hellscape outside: a rocky, steaming, boiling nothingness. The
volcanic activity and bizarre gases allow Bava to conjure all manner of weird lighting
schemes. Glowing rocks and phosphorescent mists bathe the characters in reds and greens; after a
few minutes of unmotivated lighting schemes, even the most strangely colored key lights seem perfectly
natural.
Bava clearly wanted to create the self-contradiction of a Future Gothic style, just as his
Diabolik would later create
a Gothic Comic Book look. The strongest images, such as huge scarred faces soaked in green light, or
spidery figures creeping in hallways or struggling out of shallow graves have a direct affinity with
shots in Black Sabbath or
Blood and Black Lace. Bava fans don't
have to be persuaded that a pleasing movie can be made from visuals alone. If you
enjoy the raw look of a Fritz Lang or Tim Burton picture, then Planet of the Vampires will be
your cup of tea.
According to author Robert Skotak, 1
this was a true international production begun as a coproduction between AIP and Italy's Fulvio
Lucisano, and bringing in Spanish money later on. 2
AIP truly appreciated Bava (then still obscure in
the US) and connected him up with writer Ib Melchior, who had apparently been a positive creative factor
behind AIP moneymakers The Angry Red Planet,
Reptilicus and
Journey to the 7th Planet, and had
just come off Paramount's prestigious Robinson Crusoe on Mars. The cast was
mostly Italian, with
the aging second-stringer Barry Sullivan in for an American name and Norma Bengell representing
the Spanish interests. Born in Rio and already an established name in South America, Bengell's extensive
Brazilian credits don't read like the series of 'sex movies' that some some sources imply.
Working at the height of his popularity in Italy, Bava adhered to his personal style of production - a
small crew and a low budget. The art direction was inventive but he used few if any expensive sets.
Even the cheap Margheriti pictures had the
occasional optical but almost all of Bava's effects were done in the camera. This refusal to expand
into the riskier, less personal scale of 'normal' filmmaking kept Bava artistically pure but out of the
mainstream. "Important" directors were supposed to spend money, not try to stay small-scale. Tim Lucas'
upcoming megabook on Bava will hopefully make the case for Bava as either
a man who couldn't handle the stress of bigger productions, or as an artist who desired control of
his work too much to let it be dissipated in a film-factory setting.
When the effects in Planet of the Vampires fall within Bava's bag of tricks, the results
are marvellous. Many foreground miniatures and other twisted-perspective gags are perfect, putting
the artless fakery of AIP's Sid Pink movies to shame. But many specific illusions, while always interesting,
come off much less successfully. Most angles on the spaceships in flight suffer from an insufficient
depth of focus, making them look like what they are, toys attached in front of the camera. And some
Aura-scapes immediately ring false because of focus shifts between miniature and full-sized parts of
the frame. In one angle, the foreground and far distance are in sharp focus, while, illogically,
the middle ground live-action miniature is not. This isn't expected from the Bava who created such
magical illusions in the
Hercules movies and Caltiki. Some of the physical trappings, like the unconvincing ray
guns, also don't make the grade. On the plus side, the sleek leather-vinyl costumes are both attractive
and interesting. They must have given Bava's costumer a good trial-run for the remarkable rubbery suits
later perfected for
Diabolik.
Ib Melchior's script is an unfortunate bore made worse by undeveloped ideas. Interesting intended concepts,
such as the spacemen being
able to momentarily see the Auran phantoms in their extreme peripheral vision (corner-of-the-eye
ghosts, so to speak) are insufficiently supported by the visuals. The idea of hosts and parasites is explored
a little bit more, especially in the American version where Melchoir seems to have been able to add dialogue
on the subject. But the fact remains that the action onscreen is a repetitive series of fights and
disappearances among interchangeable spacemen. Keeping track of who's possessed and who's not is
difficult and unrewarding. Cutting between the two spaceships is also confusing. Melchoir's script
intended for the Galliot to be a crashed wreck, but it must have been too tempting to the budget to make them
identical-looking.
The film's most successful scene is the exploration of a third, alien spaceship that is discovered
to be a derelict ruin. The spacemen climb into what looks like a futuristic spider's lair and
almost become the victims of aliens who may have died centuries before. The monstrous occupants
are dessicated skeletons but their still-functioning machines trap the heroes inside. The wholly
original scene is the film's best transposition of the Gothic into outer space.
The only thing to break the eerie mood is a moment of unintended comedy when Barry Sullivan
grabs a glowing disc that not moments before delivered a shock to Norma. He's doltishly
surprised when the disc shocks him as well.
MGM's DVD of Planet of the Vampires has only one drawback - it's not 16:9 formatted and
therefore doesn't get the full benefit of the superior DVD resolution that's helped make many of the
entries in
Image Entertainment's Mario Bava Collection so remarkable. The picture otherwise looks simply
great, with a sharp transfer that (finally) shows off Bava's compositions in their full 1:85
aspect ratio. Shots that on videotape had characters half-cropped out of frame or made symmetrical
compositions look lopsided, are now balanced and complete.
MGM went back to original Italian elements and had to sort out a complex puzzle between the original
Terrore nello spazio cut and AIP's American version, which had trimmed some scenes while recutting
others longer. As a result, this DVD is somewhere between the Italian and American cut, adding as much
non-dialogue footage as possible. There is a European disc in 16:9 that reportedly restored one
of the original continental cuts, with French or Italian dialogue. It was quickly withdrawn from
stores, presumably because it was discovered that MGM possessed all of the rights, and is now
a hotly desired collector's item. After all the praise and attention for MGM's restoration,
4
it seems that
their corporate clout will slow or stop the release of an original European Terrore nello
spazio DVD.
For American fans accustomed to trash versions of these movies, the best news by far about MGM's
disc is its restoration of the moody original score by Gino Marinuzzi Jr., an electronic jumble
of strange sounds and tones. Unable or unwilling to legally investigate the music status of a
number of European AIP titles, Orion pictures had a handful of them rescored with shoddy synthesizer
noodlings in the middle '80s. Planet of the Vampires not only looks as good as it did in
1965, it finally has its correct music score back in place. 3
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Planet of the Vampires rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Very Good
Sound: Very Good
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: December 19, 2001
Footnotes:
1. Ib Melchoir, Man of Imagination by Robert Skotak. 2000,
Midnight Marquee, Baltimore. Return
2. There are so many recorded titles for Terrore nello
spazio, it must set some kind of record for international distribution: Demon Planet, The
Haunted Planet, The Haunted World, The
Outlawed Planet, Planet of Blood, The Planet of Terror, The Planet of the Damned, Space
Mutants, Terror en el espacio, Terror in Space. One wonders if all these titles were
really used ... The Outlawed Planet is awfully close to The Outlaw Planet, the title on the cover
of Ib Melchior's final script. Return
3. Of course, the next highly-awaited MGM title that needs to have its
beautiful symphonic score reinstated for DVD is
The Conqueror Worm (Witchfinder
General). A DVD release had been put on hold so that the music issues
'can be worked out', as home video executives say. Return
4. Savant wrote an article on the restoration of this film for the September
2001 issue of
Video Watchdog (#76).
DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson
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