A Nostalgic Review - Planet of the Vampires

My little foray into classic movie theater history stirred up a few old and curious memories.  Born in the late 1950s I was around in the era when TV had just started to overwhelm cinema.  I suspect I was trucked along to a few wholesome uplifting movies early on, but my first clear memory was from just a bit later....I was probably 8 or 9 years old.  The theater was The Capri.  The movie was "Planet of the Vampires".

Now you might well ask, why would my brother and I be off watching horrible stuff when under 10 years old?  Well, there's a tale for another day.

It certainly left a powerful impression on both of us, and had interesting ripple effects both on our future cinematic preferences and on one of the true classic films of a later decade.  First some basics.

As it says in the fine print, this was an American International production from 1965.  That means it was filmed on the cheap in Italy (budget $200,000) with an international cast.  Evidently they all spoke their native languages during filming, so part of the surreal quality of the film is that English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese were being tossed back and forth with quite variable levels of comprehension.  Italian productions always somehow manage to make cheap  look good.  This stands as a classic example of Spacemen - and Space Women - in leather outfits.

You  see a lot of mist in the background.  They did not skimp on the fog machine budget.  Indeed, they could not afford to.  It was the only way to cover up the fact that they filmed all of this in a couple of very small areas.   Oh, and they needed to make the rocks look good.

They had exactly two of these cool looking alien rocks left over from a previous movie.  Literally using smoke and mirrors they made entire unearthly landscapes from them!  Once or twice somebody bumped into them.  They wobbled.

I won't bother you much with the plot, beyond wondering what the actors and actresses thought they were making as opposed to how it emerged from editing.  But the set up is that an strange message is received from a supposedly uninhabited planet.  So naturally they have to investigate.  See if you can figure out any parallels with that later film...

They encounter a derelict spaceship:

Within they find the skeletal remains of a gigantic alien crewman:

Of course by now you have figured it out.  When Dan O'Bannon, writer of the movie Alien (1979) was first asked about the similarities between it and Planet of the Vampires he first demurred, but then later admitted he may have seen some of it and perhaps it had a few stylistic influences!

There are obviously many other parallels.  Both movies have strong male leads...who make the absolute worst possible command decisions.  Doors left open that should have been sealed.  Crew members who are not what they seem to be. Lone sentries left peering out into the mist saying "Uh....is somebody out there....?".   Catastrophic events that make destroying their ship necessary.   Many of these themes of course go much farther back than 1965.  Echos of cold war paranoia,  also every haunted house movie ever made.

On a final, happy note I discovered that the Capri Theater not only still stands, it is in fact being extensively renovated!  It is the last classic era movie house left in North Minneapolis although it is shut down for the duration of the Current Unpleasantness.  Looking at the pictures I could actually summon up a few images from 1965, although in general they were of eerie lighting and shadowy recesses.  No doubt with "something" waiting to leap out.