Astral Zombies
Planet of the Vampires (1965)
directed by Mario Bava
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
With only a soundstage to film, Bava doesn't make as much of his low budget as he does with a location shoot in play. The spaceship where the movie begins is run like the switchboard at Sterling Cooper, with Brylcreemed men cracking jokes at the helm while a beautiful receptionist loses track of a mysterious communication. The travelers aren't human, but they look it, and when they reach the surface of the fog-shrouded planet, I hoped for an eerie atmosphere to save the day. I was disappointed; "strange behavior" besets the crew, but sometimes a plaster rock is just a set, and a primary color scheme is just a cluster of lights.
That said, Planet of the Vampires (there are no vampires, by the way) is an important movie for fans of Alien to see. Dan O'Bannon clearly did, and the half dozen credited screenwriters of Vampires cobbled together a surprisingly cohesive, indefinite sci-fi puzzle that includes, among other things, an enormous alien skeleton in the cockpit of a crashed alien ship. Did it respond to the same beacon as our hapless crew? Where did it come from? And can H. R. Giger design bones that look a little less human-like?
Remakes are tricky, and I, for one, don't advocate a blanket hold on the process. Where would Ripley be without them?
directed by Mario Bava
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
With only a soundstage to film, Bava doesn't make as much of his low budget as he does with a location shoot in play. The spaceship where the movie begins is run like the switchboard at Sterling Cooper, with Brylcreemed men cracking jokes at the helm while a beautiful receptionist loses track of a mysterious communication. The travelers aren't human, but they look it, and when they reach the surface of the fog-shrouded planet, I hoped for an eerie atmosphere to save the day. I was disappointed; "strange behavior" besets the crew, but sometimes a plaster rock is just a set, and a primary color scheme is just a cluster of lights.
That said, Planet of the Vampires (there are no vampires, by the way) is an important movie for fans of Alien to see. Dan O'Bannon clearly did, and the half dozen credited screenwriters of Vampires cobbled together a surprisingly cohesive, indefinite sci-fi puzzle that includes, among other things, an enormous alien skeleton in the cockpit of a crashed alien ship. Did it respond to the same beacon as our hapless crew? Where did it come from? And can H. R. Giger design bones that look a little less human-like?
Remakes are tricky, and I, for one, don't advocate a blanket hold on the process. Where would Ripley be without them?
posted by NPK at 5:20 AM
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