‘Planet of the Vampires’ or — The Allure of Alien Aesthetics?

As a big fan of Mario Bava, Italian cinema and Italian sci-fi I’ve been dying to see ‘Planet of the Vampires’ (1965) for years. I was also keen to discover just how much it influenced Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ (1979) and just what, precisely, those influences were so I was very excited sitting down to finally watch what’s regarded as one of Bava’s greatest movies last night.

What’s initially surprising is, outside the basic premise of landing on an alien planet to investigate the origins of a distress signal, there’s very little that screams ‘Alien’ in ‘Planet of the Vampires’. What there’s a lot of, however, are similarities with ‘Forbidden Planet’ (1956), ‘Event Horizon’ (1997) and even Tobe Hooper’s ‘Lifeforce’ (1985) as futuristic sci-fi tropes meet Gothic horror vibes.

Two spaceships, the Galliott and the Argos, land on the desolate planet Aura after intercepting a distress signal transmitting from the world. As soon as they touch down a mysterious force possesses both crews and commands them to start killing each other. Fortunately Captain Markary of the Argos resists the hypnotic state and manages to bring the rest of his crew to their sanity.

With their ship needing repairs Captain Markary and a team from the Argos set out across Aura’s phantasmagorical landscape in search of the Galliott only to find every member of the craft dead.

But will they stay dead? And just what else is out there?

What immediately strikes you about Bava’s film, although this will be of no surprise to Bava fanatics, is the director’s astonishing use of in-camera effects to create a truly other-worldly environment and atmosphere. Multi-coloured lights, gels, dry-ice, fog, forced perspective, model work and foreground miniatures — all of which Bava was a master with — are utilised to construct not just an uncanny, extraterrestrial world but also a gobsmacking visual aesthetic that’s as mesmerising as it is breathtaking with the film’s obviously low-budget only adding to the inventive magic. The result is one of the most beautiful and ingenious sci-fi movies ever made.

A fantastic example of Bava’s incredible skill in creating an arresting image out of practically nothing occurs during the landing sequence of the Argos with Bava and his team generating the large swirls of dirt kicked up by the ship’s engines by shooting all the model work underwater. This not only adds weight and scale to the scene but also enhances the dreamlike quality of it all.

And then, around 50 minutes in, the crew encounter a derelict alien craft and — BOOM! — suddenly it turns into ‘Alien’. Their approach to the spaceship, their discovery of giant, long dead alien creatures and the distinctly unique design of the craft’s interior is as eerily eldritch as anything in Scott’s movie and the way Bava shows all this off with minimal resources is as jaw-dropping as the unearthly concept itself (how Bava moves the camera around the base of the model while looking up at it to evoke the immense size of the craft is outstanding).

It also significantly ramps up the tension because if the invisible forces of Aura can do THIS to an advanced alien race then what can they do to us?!

Although is it about us? One of ‘Planet of the Vampires’ cool tricks is how it stacks levels of alien-ness on top of one another leading to a pretty satisfying final twist.

I was hoping for something special with ‘Planet of the Vampires’ and I was not disappointed. In fact, my already high expectations were not only exceeded but completely blown away. But that’s Bava at his best for you.