Wordiezett So much average

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

qmtv Pure crap. Crap story, acting, dialogue, cinematography, music, sets, scenes, lighting, fx. Garbage all the way around! Stupid costumes. They spent most of the budget on cheap sets. Crappy non imaginative camera work. Crappy acting all the way. Dialogue was stupid.Apparently it inspired Alien. Alien is a crap movie too. Alien was better, but not much.Very slow movie. Nothing happens. How, when did the last two get infected? We are never told where these two ships are going to. The big reveal came around 1 hour mark, where the vampires needed new bodies. And at the end when the last two were revealed to be infected and that they had to land on earth. This movie is slow, and it sucked. They had a budget, and spent it on crappy props. Better to spend the money on a script, and if they didn't have it, then don't make the movie. Then if you're going to make a movie, get better sets, actors, dialogue, camera work, etc. At least if the story sucked, then we would have something decent to look at.One of the worst movies ever made. If you don't believe me, go see it. Then go read the reviews of people who liked it and give it so high marks. My rating is a 1. Failure!

Bryan Kluger Mario Bava is one of the more prolific Italian horror filmmakers that ever graced the big screen. His work is well known throughout film buff's circles and critics alike. Even though most of Bava's projects were done a smaller budget than we might be used to today, they were always a perfect specimen of what every movie should strive to be like, visually. No matter the budget, Bava always added great detail to his sets and was a master cameraman, who framed each shot perfectly and beautifully.It's no wonder than nearly 35 years after his death, Bava is still talked about and his movies celebrated. One of those films is 'Planet of the Vampires' from 1965. This is not one of his best films by any means, but it might be his most interesting. Don't let the title fool you. There are no vampires in this film. In fact, if I were given the option to name this film, I would call it 'Alien'. And yes, I'm speaking of Ridley Scott's 'Alien' from 1979. If you think about Scott's 'Alien' film, going into 'Planet of the Vampires', your head might explode or your chest burst open by the numerous similarities in both films.'Planet of the Vampires' was first though. Nearly fifteen years before. But where 'Planet of the Vampires' left off, 'Alien' picked up and added all of the strong characters, the debilitating fear and scares, and one hell of a monster. Yes, 'Alien' is by far a better film, but it's great to see where Ridley Scott and his writers were influenced by their genre bending film 'Alien', whether they admit it or not.The story starts out with two large ships traveling through space on a mission to explore the vastness outer space. The two ships traveling together receive a distress signal from a strange planet in the distance. The ships travel to the planet to investigate, but as they are landing on this strange planet, the crews become possessed and start to kill each other off. Only Captain Markary (Barry Sullivan) has not been possessed and is able to get his crew back to normal. Both ships crash land on the planet, where Markary and his crew set out to find the other ship. Once they find it, the soon see that the other crew have all killed themselves on the way down.When the Markary and his crew start to bury the deceased, the dead in fact start to get it and cause trouble. This leaves Markary and a few of his surviving crew to try and repair their ship and get off the planet before they too become consumed by this mysterious evil. There is actually a scene here where Markary and his crew discover another ship on this alien planet where they see large skeletal remains of some big alien life form. All of this was done in 'Alien', but only better.The film mostly consists of Markary and his remaining crew, searching and figuring out a way to survive, with almost no real action up until the end. And even then, it isn't all that spectacular. But really drives this movie home is the intricate and amazing sets, practical effects, makeup, and costumes. Every little detail is paid attention to by Bava, and shows up nicely in each frame. But the story line isn't all that thrilling and the pacing is quite slow. 'Planet of the Vampires' is visually stunning from start to finish, but it's story execution is lacking. Luckily a great mind in Ridley Scott was influenced enough to make this movie into something more.

utgard14 A spaceship lands on a mysterious planet to investigate what happened to another ship. The crew find themselves controlled by strange forces and having to fend off the reanimated corpses of their comrades. Visually-striking exercise in style from director Mario Bava. It's an incredibly atmospheric sci-fi horror blend with some of the best visuals of any movie from the '60s. The sets, the costumes, the props are all imaginative and inspired creations. It's not for all tastes, however. There is dubbing, there is a thin story, and there are absolutely no vampires anywhere. If you are the type of person who nitpicks movies to death, stop right there and put the DVD back in its case unwatched. This is a fun, escapist movie meant to be enjoyed as such. Just relax and give it a fair shot.

chaos-rampant Bava had two talents. He could build in an interesting way, and talent number two, he was a lush painter with a camera. Seldom is this put to powerful cinematic effect. But he really was a magician in that old-timey sense, someone who has a fondness for illusory things.And this is perhaps his most pure, in the sense that you get to see the man perfecting spells in his laboratory, trying out a few new ones. The subject is manufactured vision. Okay, the story of two spaceships landing on a planet to investigate a strange radio signal is memorable but goofy, the acting is awful, the costumes cheesy, the sci-fi concoction harks back to Forbidden Planet and other films. But here's the laboratory.The spaceship is Bava's workspace. The interior is always obviously a Cinecitta soundstage, simply dressed on one side with blinks and machinery - it never convinces that this is what you see from the outside as the ship. No one really puzzled about the science of it, because there isn't any. This is the studio, the constructed space where the story of discovery of something menacing is going to be engineered.Bava was never one to think in terms of fluid composition like Tarkovsky (Solyaris) or Scott (Alien), the camera is unexciting. But there are screens inside the ship, and now and then the actors intently peer through them to the alien environment outside.This is Bava's turf. Here the camera can be static because the landscape is vast, timeless - a painter's vision of landscape. The colors and atmosphere can be gauzy because it's a new world, half-glimpsed for the first time. The story muted because it's all strange, the wandering ethereal, the focus on visual discovery. This new planet is aptly called 'Aura', it's an aural effect he's after.Here is where Bava in his capacity as engineer can try out a few cool experiments.a haunted house movie in space, in the trapdoor scene.the alien skeleton and ship, last remnants of ancient visitors.space zombies rising from tombs (someone at AIP decided these were vampires but that's not said anywhere in the film).the planet is inhabited by unseen - spectral - entities with the power to control gravity and the mind, who 'take over' their human hosts in the vein of the Body Snatchers film.all of this anchored in two spots, the device that makes 'space travel' possible as a binocular thingamajig, a cinematic device for seeing; and the shift to 'auran' consciousness happens during sleep.All this elucidates the way Bava works - story as separate from visual imagination, the latter clean, static, painterly; and the notion that for any of this to work, it has to be a dream that you slip into whose aura overwhelms the conscious mind. This is precisely what Solyaris was all about, the dream in context of memory.The difference is Italian sensibility, the belief that nature should be framed, opera instead of meditation.