Rent Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Influential - Planet of the Vampires review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Mario Bava’s celebrated sci-fi / horror hybrid has two scout ships lured to a planet by a distress call. Both ships are sucked into q gravity well far more powerful than the planets mass can produce and when the crew gain consciousness they immediately attack each other. The captain of the Argos stops this and they search for the sister ship. It’s found but all the crew are dead having murdered each other so the Argos buries them and prepares to replace some equipment from their ship to escape. But it’s not long before the dead crew rise up to stop them and it’s revealed that the native population exist on a different corporal plane and whose Sun is dying and intend to use the dead astronauts to colonise the human world. As always with Bava he takes a minimal budget and makes it go a long way - the interior of the ships is very good and the alien landscape works very well with swirling mists and pulsating lights to disguise the budget. What makes it interesting is its influence - the exterior of the spaceship is that of the ship the crew in Alien discover and in this one they find another ship with the skeletons of giant humanoids. Although Dan O’Bannon denied it at time this whole sequence inspired the Engineers in Alien and even more so in Scott’s prequal Prometheus. So Bava’s film is worthwhile on its own terms but also the influence it has had. - 4/5