By TESS HENSON

Take a picture of this. Mild summer night. 1965. You are at your favorite drive-in with your parents and friends. The smell of fresh popcorn and hot dogs wafts through the still night air. Candy is gobbled, soda is slurped, and anticipation runs high for the night’s presentation, for you are here to see Mario Bava’s Planet Of The Vampires, a fantastical and eerie romp through a strange and distant world.

Planet Of The Vampires (1965, a.k.a. Terrore nello spazio, 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 spacio and Terror In Space) is a surreal and genuinely frightening offering by Bava which belies its cheesy title.

Bava takes his penchant for the zoom, and his expert use of colors and applies them to an alien landscape, which works wonderfully in the crags and ancient stone monoliths of the planet’s surface. The eerie visuals are only a part of full frightening effect of the film however, as what follows is a story that is indeed drenched with dread.

Two sister ships, the Argos and the Galiott, have been orbiting a strange planet. At the same point in every orbit, a signal is received from the surface. Even though no life forms have been identified, the captain of the Argos--Captain Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan)--instructs the Galiott to land on the surface in a scout it out mission. The Galiott, whose crew includes Markary’s brother Toby, begins the descent to the planet’s surface. While doing this, contact is lost between the two ships.

Captain Markary then decides that the Argos needs to go after her sister ship, and they prepare to land as well. After re-entry, which includes the crew enduring a G-force of 40 (that’s 40 times your body weight, boys and girls!), the crew goes berserk and starts attacking each other. Only Captain Markary seems unaffected, and after a few scuffles with other crew members, he finally gets everything back under control.

As the crew starts coming back around, they soon realize they cannot remember anything. Shoot, I’d be hard-pressed to remember anything either after enduring 40 G’s! After recovering fully, they find that contact between them and the Galiott cannot be established. They decide to try to find the ship to discover what’s become of her crew.

After awhile, the crew indeed finds the Galiott, crashed on the planet’s surface. Captain Markary and crew enter the wrecked ship, and much to their chagrin, they find the entire crew – including the Captain’s brother--dead. The same murderous sensation had overcome the crew of the Galiott as had been experienced by the Argos. The Galiott’s crew was just not fortunate enough to overcome the urges, which resulted in them murdering each other. Captain Markary and the crew of the Argos prepare to bury the dead. The graves are covered with metal plates and strange metal spikes are used as the headstones.

After burying some of the dead crew members of the Galiott, Captain Markary and Sanya (Norma Bengell) leave two men behind to stand guard, and they return to the Argos for tools and supplies. Soon after they leave, one of the guards suddenly hears his name being called as he rounds the perimeter of the ghost-ship Galiott. When Captain Markary and Sanya return with crew member Tiona (Evi Marandi) and others, the guard is nowhere to be found. Markary and Sanya leave Tiona outside to stand guard while they go back into the Galiott to investigate. When they get inside they find that the rest of the dead bodies they did not bury have strangely enough disappeared.

Meanwhile, Tiona is spooked by something outside and screams. The Captain And crew run out to her and decide that they need to get out of there quickly, as unusual things are happening. They run back to the Argos and soon after, in a surreal and eerie scene, the freshly buried crew of the Galiott rises from their metal tombs, body bags and all.

Back at the Argos, it is discovered that signals have been received from this planet for at least two years. Even though there are now no life forms on the planet, at one time there was an abundance of intelligent life. Repairs need to be made to the Argos, which Wes (Angel Aranda), the ship’s engineer, estimates will take three days. The Captain orders the crew to get some sleep.

Wes seems to suddenly be influenced by an outside force as he tries to disconnect the ship’s meteor rejector--a device which repels meteors around the ship when navigating through space. The Captain stops him in time, and Wes seems to snap out of his trance, telling them that he felt he had no control over his actions. Another will had taken over his mind while he was asleep. The crew realizes they too are vulnerable while unconscious, and decide to put a guard on each other while asleep.

Meanwhile, one of the guards outside the Argos claims he has seen something strange--glowing, luminous floating globes of different colors. The Captain sees them too and while observing them they suddenly hear a scream from another guard post. They find another guard who has been attacked by something, and before he dies, he tells them that Captain Salas, the dead captain of the Galiott, was the attacker.

One of the guards has seen something shiny in a distant valley. The Captain, Sanya and another crew member decide to check it out. What they find is an ancient space ship populated with the giant skeletons of another race of beings that have seemingly also crash-landed on this strange planet. Mark and Sanya enter the odd ship. Suddenly the ship seems to come alive with sound and light. They enter a chamber and find strange devices that the Captain always seems to have completely unaided answers for. For instance, a light that shocks them he says was probably some kind of hand-held lantern that the giant aliens could handle without being shocked. Where did he pull that answer from, I wonder?

Mark touches another button and a strange electronic chant in an ancient alien language begins. The door to the chamber closes, and the air seems to be sucked out of it. As Sanya looks around, she finds what looks to be a tuning fork. The Captain, once again out of nowhere, surmises that the key to opening the door is to find the correct sonic or vibratory frequency. He holds the fork to the door but it does not work. As he tosses it away, it hits the device that he first thought was a lantern. It starts emitting strange noises and he tries to see if it will give off the correct frequency. It does, and the door opens.

As Mark and Sanya escape the alien ship, they notice that the other crew member that came with them is gone. They ask back at the Argos, but he is nowhere to be found. Tiona is in shock from seeing what she claims to be the dead crew of the Galiott--mutilated and bloody, and walking around! Back inside the Argos, one of the guards alerts them that he has seen something. The Captain joins him and they witness, staggering out of the mist, two of the supposedly dead crew members of the Galiott who beg them not to shoot.

The Captain brings them on board the Argos and they tell him their story. They claim not to remember anything except preparing to land on the planet and then waking from unconsciousness on the planet’s surface. Mark believes them and tells them to get some sleep. Tiona is not convinced however, stating that she is sure she saw the buried dead up and walking around. She decides to prove it and they re-open one of the graves. It is indeed empty.

The two returned crew members of the Galiott, Captain Salas and crew member Keir, have not returned to their bunks as Captain Markary instructed them to do. Instead, they have gone to engineering to dismantle the Argos’ meteor rejector. They are caught when Captain Markary discovers they are not in their bunks and alerts the rest of the crew. Salas and Keir overhear, and in order to continue with the dismantling of the meteor rejector, Salas decides to provide some diversion. He runs out of engineering and is cornered by Mark and the others.

When confronted, he reveals that he is not actually Salas--not in mind anyway, only in body. See, the original beings of the planet are parasitic, and have inhabited the bodies of the Galiott’s crew, making them more like zombies than vampires. This planet’s sun is dying, and they want to merge with the crew in a symbiotic relationship in order for their race to survive. The rejector has been taken from the Argos, and the beings attempt to strike a deal--the rejector for a parasitic ride in the prospective hosts.

Mark does not deal, and instead prepares to blow up the Galiott with all it’s living dead. First, he has to return to the Galiott to retrieve the meteor rejector. On the Galiott, Mark’s dead brother Toby confronts Mark and Sanya. Mark shoots his brother and they successfully bring the rejector back to the Argos, being chased all the while by the Galiott’s undead crew. Tiona and the rest of the Argos’ crew except for Mark, Sanya, and Wes are killed in the conflict. The Galiott is destroyed and the Argos takes off. Wes replaces the meteor rejector and is then ordered by Mark to get some sleep. However, he is restless, and at one point hears something outside his quarters. He sees Mark’s face reflected in the metal mirror of his door--holding his blaster and watching him--almost debating whether to enter the room.

After the Captain leaves, Wes runs to Sanya to tell her what happened. He tells Sanya that he feels Mark has fallen under the control of the parasitic space beings as well. Sanya does not agree and they go to find the Captain. They find him, and Sanya suddenly turns on Wes and tells Mark that he has found out about them, as they have indeed become hosts for the alien space seed.

Sanya begs Wes to join them, but he refuses and runs to engineering to destroy the meteor rejector. He is killed in the process. Mark and Sanya decide that without the meteor rejector they will never get home. They decide to land on the nearest planet, which just happens to be…Earth. Roll credits.

Based on the story "One Night Of 21 Hours" by Renato Pestriniero, and published in Interplanet #3 Science Fiction Magazine, Planet Of The Vampires delivers some real thrills and chills ala later fare like Alien and Lifeforce. In fact, I have read that perhaps Dan O’Bannon was influenced by this movie when writing Alien.

There are indeed some similarities. The scene where Mark and Sanya discover the ancient alien space ship is nearly identical to the same scene in Alien. The feeling of oppressive dread, and to some extent, claustrophobia, is borrowed from heavily by the later Ridley Scott film. It may be interesting to note that one of the script co-writers is Ib Melchior, the same guy that gave us the cult faves Reptilicus and The Angry Red Planet.

While there are no scenes of chest-bursting, the gore quotient is pretty high for a mid-sixties film not directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Nice scenes of bloody corpses, and the shot of Salas exposing his rotting torso a la Black Sunday (this time in full color), abound.

Even though this is a film to be taken somewhat seriously--not quite B-rated, but almost--there are still some cheesy qualities about it that make it perfect drive-in fare. Sci-fi phrasing like "fraction of a megon" and "meteor rejector" give it an almost Flash Gordon appeal. What the heck is a "megon" anyway? The fact that the ship has no protective plating or shields is almost unbelievable. A device that repels meteors seems to be the ships’ only defense.

The costumes are fun too. Instead of your typical astronaut-like suits with bulbous see-through helmets, this crew dons black leather with yellow and red piping, and makes it look good! The helmets are more like leather skullcaps rather than anything protective. Another thing, one cannot under any circumstance, withstand a G-force of 40! It is stated at one point in the movie, that the crew’s bodies could withstand 25 G’s--again unbelievable. Of course, that is when you’re still thinking that they are human, which, as it turns out, they aren’t.

Then there is the Bava factor. This film is beautiful to look at. The resplendent blues, eerie greens, and glowing reds are abundant all throughout this film, and in nearly every scene. Anyone who watches Bava films for visual style will not be disappointed here. As a matter of fact, his filmic style is even more strange and surreal in this film, because the backdrop is one we are not familiar with--a dead alien planet.

The soundtrack music, written by Gino Marinuzzi, Jr., is also weirdly effective. There is some musical theming to it, but it is mostly comprised of strange pulsating incidental sounds, which set the stage perfectly for the thrills and chills to come.

My source for this article is the MGM Midnite Movies DVD. The film is presented here in it’s widescreen theatrical release format of 1.85:1. The print is crystal clear, and the colors full and vibrant. The special features include the original theatrical trailer and French and Spanish language subtitles. It is not rated, and the runtime is 88 minutes.