Directed by Mario Bava
Written by Renato Pestriniero, Ib Melchior, and Louis M. Heyward
Starring Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell, and Angel Aranda
Unrated
Runtime: 88 minutes
Available from Kino Lorber on July 26

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

Planet of the Vampires is a real oddity in the filmography of one of the greatest Italian horror directors, Mario Bava, and a standout in the history of sci-fi horror in general. Bava was a pioneer of low-budget genre filmmaking, and his solo directorial debut, 1960’s Black Sunday (orig. La maschera del demonio), is widely regarded as a classic of gothic horror cinema. In addition to establishing the giallo film genre in Italy, serving as a direct precursor to the work of Dario Argento and his contemporaries, Bava directed one of the earliest examples of the slasher genre in 1971’s Bay of Blood. Though he was reportedly working on a sci-fi project at the time of his death in 1980, Planet of the Vampires remains the only sci-fi film for which Bava is credited as director.

There had never been a film like Planet of the Vampires when it was released in 1965. Sci-fi/horror films of that era were mostly monster movies of one sort or another. Even when the horror stemmed from an extraterrestrial threat, the plot was usually earthbound. Planet is instead set primarily in space, following the crew of the spaceship Argos as it and its sister ship the Galliott explore a strange signal from the planet Aura. It’s a now-classic sci-fi horror plot that has really become a subgenre unto itself, including such classics as 1979’s Alien and 1997’s Event Horizon.

The comparisons to Alien are, in fact, numerous and well-documented, and Dan O’Bannon (the screenwriter for Alien) has admitted to the influence of Bava’s earlier work. The broad, thematic similarity is the only real commonality between Planet and the tense, effects-laden scare-fests that sprang up in the years since its release. Despite its otherworldly setting, the film feels far more similar to Bava’s gothic horror films of the same era, like 1963’s The Whip and the Body and 1966’s Kill, Baby, Kill. The cavernous sets are lit in classic Bava fashion, with deep shadows between lurid greens, reds, and purples. The close-up shots of the faces of corpses, with empty eyes staring out from pale, gray flesh, are very reminiscent of his other films as well.

It’s a film that’s more likely to be appreciated for what it inspired than on its own merits, though. The plotting is fairly slow and will likely frustrate modern audiences, and the relatively brisk 88-minute runtime certainly feels longer. This may be down to the odd way it was handled as an American-Italian co-production. American International Pictures had found success releasing a spate of Italian genre films, including several of Bava’s, in the US, and began co-producing such films in the mid-60s. Planet of the Vampires was one of the resulting co-productions, and I wonder how different the Italian and American versions of the film are.

The writing credits are the most observable difference: Ib Melchoir served as the primary screenwriter for both versions, but the Italian-language film credits five other screenwriters including Bava himself. There is a lot of technobabble in the English-language version, which may or may not have been carried over. The title is another example, as the film features some undead spacemen but nothing that could really be interpreted as a “vampire.” The Italian version of the film was released under the much-less-misleading title Terrore nello spazio, “Terror in space.”

The added context is one of the nice things about the Kino Lorber Studio Classics version of the film that I had the chance to look at for this review. It includes a good selection of bonus materials, including an audio commentary by Bava biographer Tim Lucas and “Trailers from Hell” segments on the film with director Joe Dante and screenwriter Josh Olson. The new 2K master also looks terrific, always important but essential when it comes to the work of a director like Bava. If, like me, you’re interested in the history of your genre films, this is a great pickup.