Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is, of course an episode from the vaults. This is a classic episode that originally published five six, twenty twenty two. It is Mario Bava's nineteen sixty five sci fi classic Planet of the Vampires, frequently cited as one of the films to inspire Ridley Scott's Alien. So this is one of our favorites. Hope you enjoy. Dive right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be talking about a longtime favorite of mine, the nineteen sixty five Mario Bava sci fi horror cla Planet of the Vampires. And I want to start off today by saying that I think perhaps this is the paragon example of a concept we've talked about on the show, that the rub the Fur movie, a movie that is more about audio visual texture than about the characters or
the contents of the plot. And that's absolutely the case here because before we watched it again for today, I've probably watched Planet of the Vampires at least three or four times, a couple times without sound on, but at least once with sound. And I honestly could not tell you much about what happens in this movie because whenever I watch it to the extent that I'm paying attention, and it's a movie I kind of love to half
pay attention to. But to whatever extent I'm paying attention, the part of the mind that is engaged is not the semantic executive of the forebrain. It is some kind of abyssal lizard, conscient busness that is only in a realm of pure sensation and vibe. And what a vibe this movie is. The sets, the lighting, and the costumes are like a baroque organ fugue, just washing over your mind and body.
Oh, I agree absolutely on all counts, because first of all, obviously this is a beautiful looking film, a beautiful sounding film, which we'll get into as well. But also I'm in the same boat. This is the second time I've watched this movie this year. I watched it just under a
year ago on an airplane. And yeah, but before I rewatched it, I don't think I would have really been able to tell you what the plot was aside from just the very basic strokes of what is obviously visually happening on the screen.
I mean, I think it really does not help with plot comprehension that I can't tell most of the characters apart. Yes, and I'm not even sure that's unintentional. I mean I can reckgize basically the main characters, the ones played by Barry Sullivan and Norma Bingal, but a lot of the other character I mean, there are tons of just sci fi crew members walking around in these identical costumes, which
I love. The costumes are one of the greatest things about this movie, but they sort of hide all of the actor's identities and make it difficult to sort one character from another. So a guy walks into the frame wearing his like leather Space Child outfit and holding a ray gun, and they say like, oh hello, and I'm like, I don't know if this is the guy that was in the previous shot or not.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, there a number of interchangeable guys in this film that just kind of move in and out in the background. Sometimes they're playing important roles in the plot. But yeah, outside of the two principal actors that we named I'm not really sure who anybody was at any given time unless they're really hammering it home for me.
So for me, this movie is absolutely a vibe trip. It is a huge mood and what's what goes on in the plot is not nearly as significant. Though if you do pay attention to what happens in the plot, there are some other interesting relationships to other films that
you can map out. Because while I don't think anybody would accuse Planet of the Vampires of being one of the best sci fi horror movies ever made, I think it does appear to have been a major inspiration point for several of the other greatest sci fi movies ever made, including Alien, Ridley Scott's original in seventy nine, which I think many would probably say is definitely in like top three top five sci fi horror movies of all time, and it is impossible not to notice the overlap between
this movie and Alien, But of course, with Planet of the Vampires coming much earlier.
Right right, And I believe Dan O'Bannon even made that connection as well. I think when people ask about it, though, if memory serves, Ridley Scott was always like, I've never seen it, so I can't.
Say, oh sure, Ridley, Okay, Well, anyway, I think you could play a really interesting game of comparing and contrasting the cinematography of these two movies, which are maybe you could say, the main selling points in both cases. Whereas Ridley Scott has a very clean cinematography style, everything is very clear and in many ways very The textures are realistic but of course beautifully composed, and the use of
light and shadow and all that. But meanwhile, Mario Baba's movie looks like it takes place in a magical realm.
Yeah, there is a stark on reality to a number of you know, Mario Boba's pictures, and certainly that was the case with Black Sabbath, which we talked about previously on this show. But in this film, yes, everything feels very hatched from the Earth world, and with good reason. I mean, for starters, this is only a mild spoiler, I think depends on how you look at it, I guess. But these are human characters played by human actors, but they are not tearing humans. They are not from Earth,
and ultimately we don't really see them doing much. We don't see artifacts of Earth among their possessions. It's very stripped down. There's a lot of uniformity, not only to know how they're dress, but also just there's a sort of a tidiness and a sterility to their lives and then the world that they've landed on, this abyssle shadow realm. Yeah, it's just absolutely bonkers from a visual sense.
And there's another thing I would say about the sets and the setting of this film, which is that though it's in many ways in line with things you would see in other sci fi of the era like Star Trek TV show, the Original series and stuff, but there is a staginess to the sets that while they are while they are gorgeous and intricately designed, they do not
appear to be trying to evoke reality. Instead, they're more like the set you would see in a very well designed stage production, so it's like suggestive of real shapes and forms.
I really enjoy comparing this film in my mind to a movie that came out the year prior, nineteen sixty four, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, because I mean, these are films on totally different ends of the spectrum in terms of just how well they're executed. Certainly from a visual standpoint, this film is beautiful. Santa Claus versus The Martians is you know, it's amusing, it's funny, it's for kids, but
they're also comparable in a number of ways. You know, there is uniformity to create making your humans some sort of a space species. You have these using sets to create both spaceship environments and terrestrial environments. We might compare the alien world of this film to say, the polar regions that are depicted in Santa Claus Versus the Martians.
And then also they both rely on that old trick of having some sort of a tripod landing gear on your spaceship, and that way you can have the model shot, but then you can also incorporate it into your set because your characters are walking amid the legs of the landing legs of the vessel.
That's right, and there's a lot of good So there's fun model work, but also good force perspective sets where there will be a like a miniature of clearly everything's actually just being shot pretty close to the camera, but there will be miniatures of things taking place in the background while characters are like descending across a clearly just a ramp that's hidden by some rocks or spires or
something in the foreground. And it's very good at while not actually looking realistic, sort of intoxicatingly inviting you to suspend your disbelief. It is not something that looks real, but you're all in on the environment because it's playful.
Yeah. Yeah, Bava leans into the unreality of everything. And also I would say that that Baba appears to to only do the things that they can do really well on the screen, and you don't see this film attempting to do things that it cannot do all that well, you know what I'm saying, right, Yeah, because it absolutely excels at lighting. And I mean lighting is at least
half of everything here. I mean because there are times where you can tell, Okay, in the background, yes this is some sort of a cardboard box with lights on it, but you don't notice it so much because of how it is, you know, how everything is lit. And then just the integrity of the overall set.
Yeah. Another thing I wanted to mention that I noticed on this rewatch was, as I said, several times I've watched the movie on mute with like music playing, or you know, while I was hanging out with people or something.
And there's a very different experience when you actually watch it with the soundtrack, not just because you hear the lines and understand what's going on in the plot, but also it creates another layer of vibe, another bid for a different kind of sensory experience, which is I think the audio in this movie invites you to become hypnotized
and go to sleep. There are many just types of slow, repetitive, low level sounds that go on, kind of drones and hums and soft beeps and the sounds of bubbling mud in the background and things like that.
Yeah, absolutely with this film. Every time I have watched it or attempted to watch it, I have fallen asleep multiple times. And that's not a slam on this movie. That's not saying this movie is boring or it's not interesting. It's I think it's it's it's an exciting film in many respects, and it's beautiful to look at. But not only does it have this visual sort of hypnotic, you know, pulsating feel to it, much like I get like other
Bava films. This, Yeah, the sounds here both then the music, the electrical sort of the electronic sound effects and then also just the straight up sound work in the in the movie are all weirdly captivating. I mean, on one level, and we'll credit the musician in a bit here, but on one level, you do have some traditional mid sixties action movie music that occurs, but it occurs kind of sparingly, and for a lot of the rest of the film, we do have like a deep ambient vibe going on,
especially when they're on the ship. We get some nice ship hum going on, electrical sounds here and there, and then oh, I was especially in this watch, I was really impressed by all the sounds of footsteps and running in the ship. There's this metallic clanking sound that really resonated with me for some reason.
Totally agree. In fact, in the very opening scene when we're first coming into the ship's command room, there is something that I at first thought was supposed to be a heartbeat, but then I later thought, well, it's either machinery or I think maybe it's just supposed to be the slow footfalls of Barry Sullivan's character as he wanders from station to station in this room, looking over people's shoulders.
Yeah, the footfalls are great when they're on the ship, it's that metallic sound, and then when they're out of the ship, it's kind of this sand grating against metal sound. And then there are also some scenes with kind of plastic or rubber sheeting that also has this tremendous sound
effect to it. And so I was thinking as I was watching this, as like, Okay, I'm not really someone who experiences ASMR, but I feel like this movie gives me as close to the ASMR experience as I can personally imagine.
Oh wow, yeah, I'm the same boat. I'm not an ASMR person, but I can see what you're saying. It is a movie that comes pretty close to inducing an altered state of consciousness on its own. Just watching it kind of lulls you and puts you. It's almost like it synchronizes your brain waves to a different kind of rhythm.
Yeah, and also Bava gives the scenes a lot of room to breathe, which I think also adds to this tranquil feeling.
Though at the same time, I don't want to overstate this movie and make it sound like it's Tarkowsky or something. I mean, like, in most ways, I would say The Planet of the Vampires is not a profound film, and it's also in most ways not a very exciting film, but it is a profound experience somehow, at least for me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah. It's certainly not trying to be anything profound either. It is it's setting out to be the most gorgeous and stylish space horror film that it can be in the mid sixties, and getting to the elevator pitch for this one, I would say you could just basically sum up Planet of the Vampires by saying it is the grandaddy of all space horror films.
You look at Alien, Event, Horizon, all those, and then you look at the old portrait of Planet of the Vampires and you say, ah, they have its eyes.
Yes. So the basic plot here, and we'll get into the more into the depths in a bit, but it concerns a pair of space ships piloted again by non tearin humanoids, and these ships are responding to a signal from a shadowy world with a dying sun. They end up getting stuck on the surface of said shadowy planet. This planet turns out to be a world of mystery, death, undeath, possession, and madness. Will they escape you'll have to watch and find out.
Tune in next time. Let's hear that audio.
Planet of the vampires harboring a form of life worse than death. Planet of the bloodless creatures who take men's bodies but attack like vampires.
I'll tell you this, if there are any intelligent creatures on this planet.
There are enemies in this outer space world. The living dead try to escape into life.
Sallus no justice body, and I'm just one of many beings on this planet inter survive. It's impressive that our race continued to exist. We arranged for several of you to kill each other so that we could take over your bodies. You are our last chance.
No never, We'll all of us give up our lives to save our own race.
All right, So this is our second Mario Bava film. But just to mention the basics here. Mario Bava Italian director, legendary Italian director who of nineteen fourteen through nineteen eighty, with an unmistakable obsessive and phantasmagorical emphasis on visual composition. Like we said before, a strong still. Just any screen grab from a Bava film is instantly identifiable.
Especially a certain distinctive use of colored gel lighting, like a fond of shining up on someone's face with like a purple light, or a set that's lit with like a green light or something.
Yeah, and you know he did black and white films as well, like nineteen sixties. Black Sunday is black and white, though he's one of these directors once you see him working with color, how do you go to black and white?
Black Sunday is great, though, that's a more darker, more serious sort of witchcraft witch hunting film.
Yeah, most of his films were more easily identifiable is horror. He didn't just do horror. But I think there are only two films that he did I could be mistaken on this that are classifiable as science fiction, and this is one of them.
Some of his best known movies I think you would put in the shallow genre like Blood and Black Lace. And I think did he do Bay of Blood bag? Yes, yeah, that's blood. My memory is Blood and Black Lace is pretty great looking and Bay of Blood are recall being ugly and not not making any sense as a Bava movie, and I didn't really like it.
Blood in Black Lace, that's the one with Cameron Mitchell in it.
Oh yes, yes, so.
Planet of the Vampires has all the touches that you might expect from Bava. Brilliant Gothic colors, characters staring through portals and windows, lots of doors and windows, like this is a film that loves space doors and the space doors are wonderful in it.
People looking through glass at things, and I always thought that was an interesting detail, like how much that happens in here?
Yeah, also bright blood, high style, and of course just great lighting. Now this one is based on a novel, a novel by the author Renato Pesternaniro who was born in nineteen thirty three, and if I'm not mistaken, it's still alive. And I don't know that any of his works have been translated into English. I looked around, I couldn't find any. I could be wrong, but he seems to have written books in Italian for a number of decades.
There's some kind of note in the credits about this being based on something that appeared in a serial. Am I wrong about that? Or is this a standalone novel?
My understanding is the novel One Night of twenty one Hours. But we have to remind ourselves that back in this time period, sometimes novels would do this, even like big works like Dune novels from Frank Herbert might be serialized initially before they're published as a complete novel. So it was just a different publishing world back then, certainly in the US and I imagine in Italy as well. Now, the screenplay credits on the film, beyond the author we
just mentioned, there are seven credits, including Bava himself. Oh and you know, the more the better, you know, And if you want to read all of them, you can certainly look up the IMDb profile. But I thought we would mentioned a couple of them because they're like I believe a couple of are Italian screenwriters that Bob, at least one that Bob had worked with on other films, a couple I believe for Spanish screenwriters. And then we also have two screenwriters come in for the English version.
The first is ib Melcor who lived nineteen seventeen through twenty fifteen. Danish American writer with some impressive credits. He wrote and directed fifty nine's The Angry Red Planet and sixty four as the Time Travelers. He was a co screenwriter on Robinson Crusoe on Mars and sixty four and his nineteen sixty five story The Racer was adapted into the nineteen seventy five Corman produced Paul Bartel directed movie Death Race two thousand.
Oh Wow. Melkar was also one of the writers behind the hilarious nineteen sixty one Danish kaiju movie reptilicous Ha.
I believe this one was covered on MS two three k oh okay.
I don't think I saw that one.
More recent to MS two three k oh okay. Yeah, all right. The other screenwriter on the English version Louis M. Hayward, who of nineteen twenty through two thousand and two had his hands in a number of bikini movie screenplays back in the day, but was also a producer on such films as both Doctor Fibes movies, The Vampire Lovers, The Oblong Box, Which Finder General and more. All right, let's get into the cast. So this previously mentioned one of
the two principal characters. One of the characters that we actually can instantly identify, and this is in large part do the fact that, I mean he has a screen presence, he has a lot of screen time, and he's an older actor in this film is Barry Sullivan playing Captain.
Mar Marcari, Markery Mark and the Funky Crew.
Yeah.
So.
Barry Sullivan lived nineteen twelve through nineteen ninety four, American actor of TV and film, active from the nineteen thirties up into the nineteen eighties. He was never, I think, a huge name, but he seems to have been like a very dependable hand in pictures, very very long stretch, sometimes as the lead, but oftentimes you is part of extended cast. Some of his other notable films include Cause for Alarm in fifty one, The Bad and the Beautiful
and fifty two and nineteen seventy four's Earthquake. M He pops up twice on Night Gallery, and he did at least one other horror movie, Pyro The Thing Without a Face nineteen sixty four English Spanish co production.
What did Pyro The Thing Without a Face? It seems like two different titles jammed together.
Yeah.
I haven't seen it, so I can't really speak to it, but it looks like it has some sort of a creature effect or makeup effect going on in it. Not even sure if if it's Barry Sullivan and the creature of fact stuff, but at any rate, he's in this film, and I think he's the lead.
I don't know exactly what to say about Barry Sullivan in this movie, because on one hand, I feel inclined to be critical and call his performance extremely boring, But then again, I don't know what I would change about it. Like, I don't know how different this movie would be if you had a very exciting actor giving a more lively performance in this role, and it might actually undercut some of the other things I like so much about it.
Yeah, I was having the same experience because at first I was thinking, like, oh, man, Barry Sullivan is such a bore. Why couldn't it have been Cameron Mitchell, for example, in this role. But then as I started wating, as I continued watching it, I was really thinking, well, what would Cameron Mitchell have done differently? You know, this this character is what he is. He's very stoic, you know, he's dry, the he's in many ways sort of the typical leading man hero that you would have in classic
Hollywood films. He's a cool cucumber under pressure and yeah, he's kind of like the dad of the picture.
Yeah.
So yeah, I ultimately I'm going to land on saying Barry Sullivan's good in this if nothing else, you can have doen it. He can set him apart from all the other male characters in the film, because most of the other male characters are kind of interchangeable.
Now, one character I always did recognize is the character Sonya played by Norma Bingal.
Yes, yes, very captivating screen presence, beautiful eyes of course, dressed in stylish spacesuits. The whole time she lived. Nineteen thirty five through twenty thirteen. She was a Brazilian actor and musician and later director and producer. Was a big star in Brazil, and that's where I think she was mostly active. Though Natural Issue appears in some Italian films
as well. Obviously, because this is an Italian film, certainly outside of Brazil, this is her best known work and yeah, captivating, even if I would say, you know, she's still subject to the reduced ambient acting temperature of this movie, that's.
A good way of putting it. Yes, I would say the general temperature of the acting in this film is low, and that affects everyone, whatever their individual charisma might be. And in other context, it's clear that Norma Bengal has loads of charisma because she also had a career as a singer, as I think you mentioned, and I was trying to find some of her music. Not a lot of it seems to be all that easy to access
these days. But there's one record she put out that I must get a physical copy of if I can find it anywhere. It's a nineteen fifty nine Bossa Nova album, and I dug up a few tracks from it. First of all, the album is called you Ready for the title, Yeah, it's Ooh Norma. I think six or seven o's in the ooga Ooh Norma. And the tracks I heard I thought were just great, very smooth and rough at the same time, like a pad of butter melting on a crocodile's back. Two thumbs up.
Yeah, yeah, you sent me some links to this. There's a cover of fever On here that's quite nice.
Some other tracks, Yeah, she does a song called ho Ba La La. I've never heard that before, but it's great.
Yeah yeah, so yes, solid Bossonova performance. In my opinion, I do take a little Bosonova from time to time.
Does anybody out there have a copy of this record? If you are a listener of our show and you own Ooh Norma, you must write us contact it stuff to blow your mind dot com. I want to know all about this, all.
Right, so we'll come back to her, I'm sure. But other actors in this, let's see, there's Angel Aranda. This is an actor playing the character Wes west Kent. Another wonderful name.
These Mark Marcury and Wes west Kent.
We have to these are all you know. It's laying the seeds for the reveal that these are not Earth humans. They're from somewhere else where. They have different naming conventions. But anyway, this actor lived nineteen thirty four through two thousand. Spanish actor. He was also in nineteen fifty nine's The Last Days of Pompeii and seems to have done a fair amount of westerns and sword and Sandals sort of movies.
I think this was a big time for sword and sandal movies in Italy.
Yeah. Now we have another female character in the film, another crew member. This is Tiona, played by the actor Evi Marandi, who was born in nineteen forty one and I think is still with us. A Greek actress that was active from around nineteen fifty nine through nineteen fifty seventy four, did mostly thrillers and crime pictures. It also appears that she was in the Italian mass superhero film gold Vase The Fantastic Superman from nineteen sixty seven.
I liked her in this too, not just because she was a person I could actually recognize, but she's got cool, big hair, which complements the costumes well. So the costumes. Maybe we'll get into this more when we get down to the costume designer credit. But the costumes have these collars that look like Dracula capes. Did you also make that connection?
I do when I You've pointed this out to me before, and and so I think about that when I look at the costume. But at the same level, I don't think I ever put that together myself looking at these costumes, and I would, I would. I would say it's not overt. It's not in a way where you're like, whoa wacky space vampires, you know, I think they look pretty sleek.
Well, it's also because these characters are not the vampire characters. They're the ones who are the victims of them. But yeah, they've got these very very high collars that like come up past the back of their hairline and over their jaws.
Yeah, and then they have these kind of skull caps that they that they wear sometimes, and they have helmets that they also wear sometimes. But then also when Sonya and Tiona, when they take their help their skull caps off, they both have just enormous beautiful mid sixties hair.
Yeah, And so I think those, like the tall collars on the characters are somehow well complimented by any actors that have big hair.
Yeah, and boy do they ever enormous hair. Now. Well, I say most of the rest of the male characters in the film are interchangeable, but I I'm gonna mission to mention a couple of them because they have connections to other films we've talked about. We have Stilio Condelli, who plays either a character named Brad or Mud according to IMDb. And again I have to be honest, I do not know which character Brad or Mud was. I don't remember. But Candelli pops up in nineteen eighty five's Hercules.
This is the one with Lufrigno that we watched. He's also in nineteen eighty five's Demons and seventy four's Nude for Satan.
Wow, what a title do you think that got? People into the theaters.
Some theaters. Now, we also have the actor Ivan Rasimov as a character named Carter or Dervy. And this guy's interesting because he lived nineteen thirty eight through two thousand and three, Italian actor who played a lot of heavies. He was in Sergio Martino's All the Colors of the Dark from seventy two. He was in Baba's nineteen seventy seven film Shock, and he played Lord Grau in the Humanoid that's the off brand Darth Vader in the Star Wars knockoff that we watched.
Wow, Dervy Jones Locker.
All right, Well, let's get to some of the behind the scenes names here. Just because this is very much like you say, the texture of the film is so important, we have to discuss some of the folks who brought that together. First of all, we have Gino Maronosi Junior, who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety six, son of an Italian conductor and composer. Obviously the same name Senior and Junior, but Junior worked in Italian and European film
and TV. He also is credited with electronic effects on this film, and again those electronic effects are not isolated. They are found throughout the picture and are marvelous. I think I got even a hint of theram and at times.
Oh yeah, yeah, there's a lot of beeping consoles and machinery inside the ships, and a great scene where they discover some derelict artifacts and an alien technology that has its own sound profiles like the you remember the sonic or the high voltage sonic locks and keys and the tuning fork.
Yeah. Yeah, anything interesting in this film, even halfway interesting, has a signature sound, and if you hear a sound, you're gonna hear it again, and probably like somewhere between four to five times minimum, which I think adds to this sort of hypnotic feel. It's like this is a movie that on some level is just playing with sound.
But also my memory is that there's not a lot of music in this movie. I didn't take specific notes on this, but my general impression is there are a lot of scenes that have no music and there's just ambient environmental sound.
Yeah. Yeah, there are long stretches of ambient sound, which I love. There are a few spikes of more traditional action music, but then there are also, like to say, the end credit music, is rather nice and is kind of a mix of these things, like it's creepy, but it's not just pure electronic ambience by any stretch. Now, we've been gushing over the sets and all in this film, so we should mention that the set decoration art direction credit goes to Giorgio Giovanni, who lived nineteen twenty five
through two thousand and seven. We've mentioned them before because they're credited on Bava's Black Sabbath the Evil Eye and was also art director on nineteen eighty six Is the Name of the Rose In nineteen eighty six is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Oh, interesting man Munchausen has I can see that connection. That also has some fantastic weird sets.
Yeah, and I mean certainly the Name of the Rose from eighty six is everything's very much based in a specific medieval environment, but beautiful sets in that movie as well. And then costume designer we have Gabrielle Mayer, who also did costumes on the stylish Mario Bava film Danger Diabolic from nineteen sixty eight.
I can see that connection. Now we've been gushing about the costumes, but one thing that's worth admitting is there's not a great variety of costumes in this movie. Most of the characters for most of the movie are all wearing exactly the same thing. And yet I love these costumes. There are these full body space leather or maybe fake leather, I don't know, vinyl or leather jumpsuits that have their
like black with yellow lining. And we mentioned that they have these very tall collars that come way up, like past the jaw, past the hairline in the back. And then sometimes these caps that go on that I believe have a kind of don't The leather caps have a kind of widow's peak to them, like they come down a little bit in the forehead, almost like Dracula's hairline or something.
Yeah they do, Yeah, they do, now that you mention.
It, just tremendous. Is so good?
Yeah, these costumes, for one thing, you see them a lot, and you don't really see any flaws in them. You don't see the costuminess shining through. And then also everyone has one and this gets into something I really liked about the film. Like anything that exists in the film, there's a sense of mass production to it. So everyone has these costumes when sometimes they wear the helmet, but the rest of the time you see multiple helmets, all identical,
setting around. It's not just one space rifle like ray gun that they have, which is a great design by the way, and especially with the sound effects like sounds and feels clunky and steal, but everybody will have one at different times, you know, and then there are multiple ones setting around on racks. We also see this with
some time detonator devices. When they go to fetch one, there's like, you know, three dozen of them or something in the cabinet, and I don't know, there was something about that that felt like, I don't know if it was like a mid sixties thing and realizing like the future is mass production, like the space Age is mass production, and therefore, you know, anything that these these characters have, they're going to have a whole bunch of them and they're all going to be alike. Yeah.
The only thing that really differentiates the costumes for most of the movie is they will have these little insignias that seem to indicate rank, like the number of z's you have on your upper pectoral region is like, how what rank you are?
I think. Now there is the one section in the middle and I don't think this is explained at all, But suddenly our two main characters, at least Sonya and and Marcari are wearing different costumes, Like they're wearing orange and gray jumpsuits instead of the traditional black, And every time I watch it, I'm like, what what's happening? Why are you wearing different outfits? And these are fine jumpsuits, don't get.
Me wrong, great jumpsuits. They look kind of like the Running Man uniforms.
Yeah, but yeah, I was wandering sort of off hand. I was like, well, why did they change jumpsuits? The other one is getting laundered. This is the backup jumpsuit. I'm not sure, but it's still as if they explain it. Yeah. Oh and finally, Carlo Rambaldi, who lived nineteen twenty five through twenty twelve, was the model maker on this A legend who worked on a number of films, noted for designing et and the mechanical head effects for the creatures
in Alien. He was a creature creator on the nineteen eighty four Dune movie, So you know what that means. This guy was doing sandworms or guild navigators or maybe both.
Oh did he make Edric for David Lynch.
Maybe I didn't look up specifics on that, but I mean, if you're creating creatures, they're like, you basically have two to shoes from there, and that was it's arguably the more extravagant design and effect. But he also worked on The Never Ending Story, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Frankenstein, eighty Barbarella, and many more, and sometimes he's just credited as Rembaldi.
Oh you know you've made it when you can just go by one name. Yeah, well that's a heck of a resume, because like basically every movie you named there has some pretty awesome models in it.
All right, let's get let's get more into the plot of this baby.
Okay, Well, I think this is one of those movies where it might be kind of dull to try to recap the plot in a more granular way. So this is one of the ones where I think it makes more sense to summarize the whole thing briefly and then focus on some details that stood out and maybe some interesting readings. So here's the sort of higher level plot rundown.
You start with two deep space exploration vessels, the Galiot, and I think this is the Greek word argo, but I think they say argus in the movie, don't they.
So the crew members of this one are technically argonauts.
That would make sense.
Yeah.
So yeah, the Argus and the Galliot, and they receive a signal from a distress beacon on a previously unexplored planet called Aura, and the two ships attempt to land, but as they're approaching the planet's surface, the crew members aboard the Argus, with the exception of Barry Sullivan, only Captain Marcury is able to resist this. They all seemingly go mad, or they become possessed or something. There's an invisible force that makes them start beating and choking each other.
Yeah, obvious shades of Event Horizon, which would of course come much later. Event Horizon, of course, was not shy about borrowing elements from other films.
Yeah, And eventually Captain Marcery discovers that a sufficient physical jolt breaks the trance, and the possessed crew members are then beaten and returned to their senses one by one. So the Argus lands on the planet's surface, which is an infernal, chaotic terrain of these jagged rocks and spire shapes, boiling bogs full of white mud, strange lights shining through the fog, and these hues of purple and yellow that very much recall the Verdulach. So it's another planet, but
just Carpathian sorcery crackling through the atmosphere. And they discovered that the other ship, the Galiat, has also successfully landed nearby. They originally didn't know its fate, but they see it in the distance, and so several crew members make an expedition across a simmering lake of mud to check on the crew of the Galiat, and when they arrive, they find the crew all dead, apparently having murdered each other in the same kind of friends that sees the crew
of the Argus. So they conduct field burials of the crew members that they can access. But there is one section of the ship, I think it's the command room of the ship where they can't get in. The door is locked from the inside, and several bodies remain in there. They look at them through the glass and they're like, Okay, we have to go back to our ship to get a cutting torch to access the room. But upon returning they find that the dead bodies have disappeared from the
locked room, and so strange things start happening. Captain Marcury decides that they have to escape the planet, but their ship can't take off because of damage, including damage to the so called meteor rejector, which I love. It's a phrase that is said many times in an object we look at over and over. That's like, got these two little tubes that are connected on the top, kind of like a pair of binoculars. But I believe the function of this device is to allow the ship to travel
through space without being smashed by rocks. It rejects the meteors.
Yeah yeah, and it's a cool looking bit of the satic.
Cool looking prop, right, So they need some time for the engineer to finish repairs on the media rejector. Meanwhile, the surviving crew members start disappearing while out on watch and stuff, and some start giving reports that they've seen dead men from the galleat up and walking around. There's one part where this is confirmed because they open up one of the graves that they dug and we can talk more about the graves in a minute because I
love them, and they find nobody in there anymore. Eventually, Captain Marcury and Sonia Sonya's Norma bengal Agan. They investigate a weird find. There is a derelict ship of unknown origin and around it are the skeletons of gigantic humanoid aliens. So the skeletons look human, but they would have been
like fifteen feet tall or something. And they conclude that this ship and these aliens, whoever they are, were also lured to the planet by the distress beacons, same one they responded to but ages ago, and were probably killed by whatever force is attacking them now.
So obviously direct connections to Alien.
Right here, Yeah, lured to a planet by a distress beacon, you set down and investigate there is a derelict ship of unknown origin with some kind of alien corpse inside a skeleton that looks like it's been there for centuries, and something on the planet killed the aliens who operated the ship. That that's the situation in Alien and it's
the situation in Planet of the Vampires. So it's a pretty strong similarity and their visual similarities too, with like the way the skeleton looks stretched out like the engineer
in Alien and the skeleton in Planet Here. And so eventually two crew members who had previously been thought dead show up on the ship, and they are soon revealed to be not their original selves but dead bodies that have been reanimated and possessed by some kind of incorporeal beings native to the planet somehow like the native inhabitants
of this planet. It's almost suggested that because of the decline of their species, they've been reduced to a kind of ghost like or wraith like existence where they have no bodies of their own and must only and can only exist by occupying the more vital bodies of still living beings from a more vital planet.
Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of like hungry ghosts.
The planet Aura is dying because the sun is fading, and the Distress Beacon was in fact designed to lure in aliens that they could possess and then steal their spacecraft to escape the planet and find greener pastures elsewhere. So the remaining humans try to prevent this by blowing up the galleat, and they succeed there and eventually escape on the Argus, with the only survivors being Marcury, Sonia
and Wes the Engineer. But spoiler for a twist coming, Marcury and Sonia announce to West that they are actually also possessed by the invisible vampires of Aura, and they give a little speech they say, you know, they tell Wes, come along, merge with us. It's great, it's bliss, And so Wes reacts by trying to destroy the ship. He attacks the media rejector once again and he's killed in the process. But without a meteor rejector, the vampire versions of Marcury and Sonia have no choice but to land
at the nearest available planet. And they zoom in on the viewscreen and what is the planet? It is Earth. We see like North and South America, and so I guess or Earth is next.
Yeah, this is very exciting, and I think I'd actually forgotten about this twist from when I watched the film just a little less than a year ago, and so yeah, I was excited by the first of all the dark
twist here. We've talked about some other films from this era and how at times it feels like they were very hesitant to end things on a bummer note or on a dark note, and this is certainly kind of a dark note because we have these like psychic parasitic aliens that now can't can't go to the technologically advanced planet. They have to come to this barbaric planet of Earth. And we get the super zoom in and we see
the city of New York. I believe it's supposed to be New York, much in the same way that we see some zoom INDs of New York City in Santa Claus versus the Martians, by the way, but part of me was a little disappointed that it was clear that this was a then modern day Earth that they were arriving at, because for a second there was thinking, oh, what if they're about to arrive at truly like a prehistoric day in Earth's history, or you know, very early
on in human history. And maybe because they talk about when the aliens are pitching their whole like let us live inside you thing, they're kind of like, well, you just have to reduce your will a little bit, and it's it's not like a parasitism, it's they're kind of
making the case that it's more like symbiosis. And I was thinking, like, wouldn't that have been a nice twist if they if it's kind of revealed that what we are is due to their interference, that like the You know, the mystery of human consciousness is wrapped up in the fact that psychic aliens from another world infiltrated our species at some prior age and human evolution.
We are the vampires. The vampires are our consciousness or something.
Yeah, yeah, but I guess instead it's supposed to be like nineteen sixties New York and they're going to show up there instead, which is fine. Which is fine, not a criticism. It's still solid dancing. Yeah, we don't need to see this. I'm glad they didn't try and actually film a sequel, but yeah, this is a solid twist ending. I liked it a lot.
Now, there was something I just briefly wanted to mention. I was looking at a chapter in a book called Horror in Space, Critical Essays on a film subgenre, edited by Michelle Brittany from twenty seventeen, and there's a chapter in this about space horror movies that are specifically quote undead planets in vampiric dream worlds in outer space. This is by an author named Simon Bacon. The top line
title of the chapter is under the influence. Now it goes into a lot of complicated detail about like postmodern theory of hyper reality based on Bouderyard and stuff, And
I'm not going to go in depth on that. I just want to say that it's got a cool idea that basically that earth life and our natural societies in an industrialized world, a state in which we are constantly hyper aroused by technology and media all around us that are presenting us imagery and just a barrage of super normal stimuli that creates a kind of Disneyland reality where the senses never come to rest and as a result, we never experience something that feels like the real world,
like we are alienated from a sense of baseline, authentic reality by the fact that we are that we are in a constant state of hyperstimulation and arousal. And it contrasts that with what is often shown to be life aboard a spaceship in science fiction movies. So you can think about the slow tranquility of the scenes where characters are walking around in the command room as they're just flying through space. That of course space itself being without sound in it, that's a big part of it. You
know that it's just a very calming void. And in fact, in a lot of these sci fi movies, characters literally go into a state of suspended animation. It's like an unnaturally tranquil condition where that hyper stimulated reality recedes and you can almost approach a more authentic and real version of connection to the physical environment by going into the
void of space. So I thought that was interesting. But then the second half of it is that a lot of these space horror movies that involve a kind of vampiric entity in outer space, like a planet that wants to drain our life force or something like that, it often seems to work by taking those astronauts who have been rendered kind of tranquil and more in touch with a real baseline reality by their space travels and trying to put them in these states of hyper excitement and arousal once again.
All right, So it's almost like through space travel they have disconnected from the artificial world, become more in line with the underlying reality, kind of achieved sort of a space Buddha hood. They're being like sucked back into the into into into the material world, into the world of again all this super normal stimuli, a world of desire and ravenous hunger.
Yes, And to use a very cliched example, it's like, by going into space, you essentially are able to unplug from the matrix. And then there are all these movies that, in some way or other, there's a there's a monster in space, and what it wants you to do once you come within its influence is to kind of use you use your body or use your brain to itself plug into your matrix that you've just gotten out of.
All right, And so the argument here is these distant worlds are kind of a way of holding the mirror up to Earth itself, to what our actual society and culture and media is doing to us.
Yeah, so I thought that was kind of interesting.
Yeah, Yeah, I like that. I like a good academic read on on pictures line like this, where clearly and clearly they weren't intending to really make any statements, and this sort of thing with the Planet of the Vampires no more than event Horizon was trying to.
Yeah.
I guess the argument in favor of theories like this would be that there is sort of common thoughts that people are having in a kind of inarticulated or subconscious way that are coming through in these works of art and entertainment.
Yeah, I mean, the myth is popular because the myth is doing something that it's stirring certain thoughts, and sometimes there's a uniformity to the thoughts that are stirred by the myth, and so yeah, it's all fair game to analyze exactly what is the collective experience of this story.
Now, to jut off in a totally different direction, I want to mention how Rachel and I totally went down a labyrinthine rabbit hole trying to figure out the font of the opening credits of Planet of the Empowers, because whatever it is, it's first of all beautiful, I love the design, and second it seems to have made it or something like it seems to have become recently popular in the publishing industry. Rachel was looking at the screen.
She said something like, I've read three books in the past year that had to cover with this font on it, and so we kind of turned into that guy in Zodiac trying to track all this down, and much like Zodiac,
the Mad Investigation had an inconclusive result. Turns out these books don't actually use all exactly the same font as the movie or as each other, but they all kind of look similar, and that look is an elegant sans Sarah or only barely Sarah to all caps font that is a bit like hand lettering, and it emits fumes of retro Hollywood. I think the closest real font we found too, it was called Lydian and you so you can look that up and get a close approximation, but
not exactly. And then after the whole thing, I realized, in fact, this text might not even be a standard type set at all, might just be hand painted lettering. I'm not sure, but either way, it's gorgeous and it looking at these credits it made me want to wear sunglasses indoors and like walk around the block with a campari on the rocks.
Yeah, yeah, it's you know, sometimes I feel like I suffer from font blindness and ultimately can't tell some of these fonts from each other. But this is this is nice. These are nice fonts. I'll give you that.
Also, can we talk about how spacious the command room in this ship is.
Oh, it's enormous. It's like a it's like a TV church set or something.
You know, it's bigger than my house. There's gigantic, like there is just tons of open floor space with nothing in it, And I think about how that contrasts to a lot of other movies where the command room is very cramped. It's like seats right next to each other and these consoles directly in front of them. That this command room is like a warehouse.
Yeah, like, yeah, you can compare this to say Alien, where everything is very cram and you certainly don't have wide open spaces in which characters could conceivably dance with one another. I imagine some filmmakers of the day were probably asking, why is there not a dance number in this Well.
But there is a well choreographed fight scene in this big room.
Oh yeah, And you know, I have to say I was kind of shocked to hear myself thinking this, but I dug the fight choreography in this film. Like it's a lot of times from this era that the action as a little cowboy asque, you know, when you're looking at US and European films. But there's something about the physicality in this that it feels like it's the right level.
There's a scuffle kind of late in the film that's pretty well put together, and there's a moment early on when like the crew members are going crazy where one character there are a couple characters on screen, and then a character runs in from off screen with tremendous speed, attempting to clobber or grapple somebody. And I think this is the scene is accentuated by the sound of those metallic footfalls in the ship. But it's like wop, and there he is, and uh, yeah, it feels very real. Now.
Another scene that stands out to me every time, and I know it stood out to you as well, that we've got to talk about is the scene where the buried crew members rise from the grave.
Yes, so again it's you get it's not really revealed at this point, I think, but you certainly get the inclination that, yeah, these are not normal Earth humans because they're burial practices. Their field burials are weird. It involves not just digging a pit, but in across at the top of it. No, they dig out a hole, They wrap the body in plastic, place the plastic wrap body in the hole, cover said hole or ditch with metal plating, and then erect a weird metal obelisk at the head of the grave.
The obelisk looks like a cowtools version of a pocket knife saw.
Yeah, and it's it's wonderfully weird, like it doesn't match up with with human religions and funeral traditions, so it's just like early on you're just like, what are what are they doing? Why? Why is this what they do? And yeah, it adds and it's enough like an actual grave and grave traditions that we can connect with it and we can connect with the undead stuff to follow. But it's it's also just weird and inhuman it's it's wonderful.
But the really I'm not sure exactly why this is, but the thing that makes the scene where the bodies come out of the grave perfect for me is the clear plastic they're draped in because they rise up, they don't just like cut through it and then stand up. They stand up with the with the plastic sheeting still wrapped around them and ooh, it's it's chilling and it's beautiful.
Yeah, this is one of my favorite scenes in the whole picture because of course we have this hellish lighting behind the entities as they rise, so it's you know, we already have this very apispheric feel to the environment. They're rising up in this this plastic or rubber sheeting, and we get the wonderful sound effects of that rubber or plastic stretching and being ripped. Like when I look at the still I can hear the sound. That's how
strong it is. And I think one of the things that works here is that on some level, I don't know if they intended this, but it's almost like it is a rebirth and it's in the plastic or rubber is like a birth call that must then be ripped from the creatures before they can go forth, and you know, cause their mischief.
Do you remember the scene later This is another undead reveal where they're the crew members who come back and they're acting like that, oh yeah, sorry, we're still alive. We were just somewhere else and you need to let us onto the ship now. And there's a moment where one of their vests gets knocked open, like the leather jumpsuit comes open, and you see his torso and it's just like gouged out and rotting. Yeah, and he quickly
covers back up. And somehow that felt like it was on the same frequency as the clear plastic.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Now, oh, some other shot. I mean, this is a film that's just filled with beautiful shots. So we can't give, you know, due diligence to all of them, but some of the ones I loved. I loved how there are scenes where characters are talking to each other through essentially little screens. But at least some of these, not all of them, but I think some of these were created by simply having the character stand on the other side of a of a like a
plastic bubble, which works really well. I don't know, I just again, it's something coming back to Bava, Like Bava excels at having characters look through windows at each other or at the camera, and so here we have the technological version of that.
You remember the face through the window in the Verdilac.
Yeah, yeah, So it's definitely something to look for anytime you watch Upava film. Now, how about that alien spaceship though, Oh, once we get to board that, oh, there's all sorts of wonderful stuff.
So this is the scene where Barry Sullivan and Norma Bengal are wearing the gray and orange jumpsuits instead of the black and yellow ones, and they or I think it is.
I'm pretty sure I believe that is right.
Yeah, yeah, And so they go to investigate the Stereolic ship and inside there are these gigantic skeletons and there's purple lighting everywhere. Things appear to be draped in I don't even know what it is. It looks again, I guess, like clear plastic, but it doesn't read that way in the scene. It reads more like some kind of organic
film that has been deposited there. And they're trying to understand the like the tools and the technology of the Stereolic spaceship, and they don't actually figure it all out. I mean, they do get locked inside for a moment and they think they're going to suffocate, and they have to figure out how to operate one of the one of the keys, the electronic keys that'll open the door. But the problem is that you can't. Their puny bodies can't handle these keys that they like get shocked by them.
Yeah, and there's this wonderful sequence where they're moving through I guess it's like several portholes. It's like concentric circles. It has a spiral feel to it the way that it's framed. This is one of the more beautiful shots in the whole picture. That's their entrance into the space the alien spaceship, and then of course they have to exit that way as well. And like I think I said earlier, anytime a door is opening in this movie,
it's just in I'm just enraptured. Like the doors on the on the main spaceships, but also the doors on the alien spaceships, like they have a real weight to them. They feel like clunky and thick. I just was totally I totally bought in on all the sets in this film.
This movie makes me want to compose a list. I think I need to consult consult with the audience here. Op Ten, all time planet surface sets in sci fi movies? What are your favorites?
Oh? Wow, Like clearly sets in not actual environments, not all locations.
Yeah, that does complicate it. I mean I do like a planet surface set that's more stagy in the way that this is as opposed to just like finding a weird landscape actually outdoors on Earth and using that that can be cool too in a more realistic movie.
Yeah, both both work or can work.
Like I know, I've talked about this on the show before. Oh, what's it called? The sequel to Prometheus, The Alien Covenant Alien Covenant a great example of a terrible movie that I just really like for some reason despite it being bad. I recognize it's bad, but it just it just works for me and the I mean, the planet surface sets in that movie are great though they're all I think outdoor sets.
Well, I would not say that Alien Covenant is terrible. I would say that Alien Covenant is a buffet, and you don't have to load your plate up with everything from the buffet. Just focus on the tasty dessert treats.
It is a buffet if a buffet included nachos, pizza, sushi, beef, tartar, and savice all in the same place, so.
You don't have to load your plate up with all those things. But where are you going with that? Something about locations?
Oh no, I was just talking about how it's a great example of I mean, beautiful planet surface sets, but they're just like I think, mostly shot actually on Earth's surface. They're just cool looking locations outdoors on Earth.
Oh yeah, And of course Star Wars. The Star Wars franchise has long been graded this like find a unique environment and it feels totally believable. As an alien deser heerd or a Forest Moon. Right, all right, well we're gonna go ahead and call it there. I will say real quick, if you want to watch this movie for yourself, is widely available as of this recording. You can stream it on Prime is just part of your Prime membership.
That's how I watched it. It's widely available on DVD, and Keno Lorber put out a very nice blu ray of this movie. Is that is that what you watched it on?
Joe?
Do you have the blue Yeah?
I have the Blue ray?
Yeah, So so yeah, check those out. Definitely worth seeing in the the highest visual quality you can you can do. And I also have to say, yeah, the first time I watched it, I watched it on my iPhone on a on an airplane and that was fine, But I enjoyed it much more on the big screen. Like some some films you can you can watch in your iPhone and you're not losing a lot like but but this, this is this is one that I think you need a nice big screen presentation.
And hey, if you fall asleep while watching it, don't be ashamed. That's that's part of the vibe.
That's just the movie doing its work. Oh, speaking of rubbing the fur. We we've said it enough. It's going to take on a physical reality. Keep an eye on our merch store. We're working on some rub the Fur emerge ice. Well, we'll see how it comes together. Let's see what else to mention. Oh yeah, if you like the website letterboxed, you can check out the profile for Weird House Cinema. There. It's just weird House. So sign up there, follow us there if that's your thing. Let
us know what you think I can. Right now, it's just a list of the films that we've covered, but if people are interesting and interested enough in it, we could do a little more there. We'll see And yeah, this is Weird House Cinema every Friday. In the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed we're primarily a science podcast, but one day a weekly we like to set all that aside and just focus in on a weird and wonderful film such as this one.
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