Planet Of The Vampires (1965) What? Master surreal visualist Mario Bava goes to outer space? Where do I sign up?
Even if you tried to imagine a sci-fi horror movie from the Italian director of painterly dreamscapes drenched in primary colors, you couldn't come up with anything more weird than the actual film he created.
So let's hit the hyper-drive and zoom off to the ominous planet Aura......which already looks decked out for Halloween.....foggy, dark, multi-colored rock formations and bubbling pools of who the hell knows what......woo-hoo!
Two spaceships filled with hardy explorers land.....and their crew's outfits match the planet perfectly - black leather complete with wrap-around high neck collars. (Those collars are a hoot....maybe a deterrent against vampire bites?) This gang's decked out like they're on the hunt for a sado-masochistic leather bar....
They're led by American B-movie toiler Barry Sullivan and a host of dubbed in Italian actors And they're all quickly shit out of luck as soon as they land, possessed by the planet's invisible parasitic residents. Deaths and fights-to-the-death regularly break out between the crew members retaining their human identities and the poor suckers zombie-fied by the...uh....Aur-ians? Auri-ites? Auri-ilians? Whatever.......
Along the way, they come across the giant skeleton of another unlucky voyager who landed eons ago. Hmm.....sound familiar? No wonder it's hard to believe the screenwriters of "Alien" when they claim they never laid eyes on this movie before writing their script.....even though Bava's massive alien corpse bears a passing resemblance to the "Alien" crew coming across the huge 'space jockey'.
But let's get back to Super Mario Bava,,,,,,shrouding the entire film with so much dread and gloom, you'll wonder why the human crew didn't kill themselves......if for no other reason than to avoid ever having to wear those sever leather collars. Imagine the chafing.....oh, the humanity.
With an ironic twist borrowed from at least two "Twilight Zone" episodes I remember, 'Planet Of The Vampires' neatly wraps up as a nasty little galactic excursion......and another perfect item to add to your October spooky-season watch list. Blast off...and boo! 4 stars (****).
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