Planet of the Vampires redux...

Rating: 10/10 (9 October 2008)

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES may just be Mario Bava's greatest achievement: there is a brooding feel to the proceedings that the cavernous sets only serve to enhance; it's as if the movie were set in a cathedral in space. Gigantic landing gear dwarfs the puny astronauts as they disembark from their ship and the misty, storm-ravaged surface of the planet is about as inhospitable an environment as anything theretofore presented in a science fiction fright film. Tracing the mysterious signal (a warning) to its source, they enter an alien ship through a giant orifice that lends the film a subtle, adult edge not normally found (up to that time) in such films. The fossilized giant was likewise unique for its time. I could go on, but I logged on to comment on ALIEN, the PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES remake (though it was never credited on screen as such). Borrowing also from IT!, THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, FIEND WITHOUT A FACE and David Cronenberg's THEY CAME FROM WITHIN (a.k.a. SHIVERS), writer Dan O'Bannon and director Ridley Scott remade PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES without the vampires but with a terrifying new creature courtesy of Hans Rudi Giger. The Alien itself stands alongside THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON as one of the greatest costumes ever conceived for a fright film. Atmospheric in the extreme (thanks in no small part to the score), ALIEN is one of those creepy classics that deserves to be revisited from time to time. As is PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES.