This was the day the universe trembled before the demon forces of the killer planet!

Advanced minds take over human bodies in this futuristic horror.

10,000 YEARS AGO, or 10,000 YEARS to COME, Are they beings of the Future or of the Past, these "men" who rule the DEMON PLANET?

Outlaw Planet on a Killer Orbit!


This classic blend of science-fiction and horror belies its extremely low budget with buckets of atmosphere and some genuinely creepy setpieces. The story concerns the crews of two spaceships, who land on a foggy, seemingly deserted planet. What they don't know is that the planet was home to a race of vampiric aliens, who possess their minds, eventually rising from their strange, misty graves to seek human blood. Legendary director Mario Bava once again proves himself a master at atmospheric composition, using color, sound, and minimalistic sets in original and unnerving ways. Barry Sullivan stars with Angel Aranda and Brazilian actress Norma Bengell. The American version, running several minutes shorter than the original, was put together by Ib Melchior (The Angry Red Planet). ~


Planet of the Vampires (Italian: Terrore nello spazio) is a 1965 Italian/Spanish science fiction horror film directed by Mario Bava. The film stars Barry Sullivan and Norma Bengell. The screenplay, by Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua, Callisto Cosulich, Antonio Roman and Rafael J. Salvia, was based on an Italian-language science fiction short story, Renato Pestriniero's "One Night of 21 Hours". The story follows the horrific experiences of the crew members of two giant spaceships that have crash landed on a forbidding, unexplored planet. The disembodied inhabitants of the world possess the bodies of the crew who died during the crash, and use the animated corpses to stalk and kill the remaining survivors.
The film was co-produced by American International Pictures and Italian International Film, with some financing provided by Spain's Castilla Cooperativa Cinematográfica. Ib Melchior and Louis M. Heyward are credited with the script for the AIP English-language release version. Years after its release, some critics suggested that the film's narrative details and visual design appeared to have been a major influence on Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).


AIP released the film as the supporting feature on a double bill with Daniel Haller's Die, Monster, Die! (1965).[5][6] Planet of the Vampires has accumulated a mixed critical response over the years. Castle of Frankenstein described the film as "Beautifully photographed Italian sfantasy with excellent sfx and superb color."[7] Variety's Dool opined, "Plot is punctuated with gore, shock, eerie music and wild optic and special effects...Color camera work and production values are smooth and first class...Flash Gordon type story...should keep the young on the edge of their seats and the older set from falling asleep."[8] Richard Davis, in Films & Filming, wrote that "Bava is tied to a grossly synthetic studio set which doesn't for a moment convince of its extraterrestrial reality...the piece on the whole is poor stuff."[9] Monthly Film Bulletin noted the film was, "a triumph of mind over matter, or of Bava over a shoestring budget and appalling dubbed dialogue...[Bava] does atmospheric wonders with pastel-shaded fog and cunning camerawork."[10] Joe Dante wrote that the "fabulous comic strip sci-fi shows director Mario Bava at his most visually inventive..."[11]Phil Hardy's The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction noted the film was "A gorgeous atmospheric confection from Bava...Bava's ever-moving camera creates a chilling sense of menace. The result is a triumph of the pulp imagination."[12] Glenn Erickson (aka "DVD Savant") wrote that "Bava's stunning gothic variation weaves a weird tale of flying saucers, ray guns and zombies that looks like no other space movie ever filmed."[3] In Fangoria magazine, Tim Lucas said "Planet of the Vampires is commonly regarded as the best SF film ever made in Italy, and among the most convincing depictions of an alien environment ever put on film."[4]
A survey of nine internet reviewers on the Rotten Tomatoes website resulted in 33% of the respondents reacting negatively to the film. Of the three who disliked it, Ken Hanke felt the film "looks great but [is] dramatically lacking", and a "Ozu's World Movie Reviews" writer noted that he "lost interest in wanting to know more about the supernatural manifestations.


Several critics have suggested that Bava's film was a major influence on Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012), in terms of both narrative details and visual design.[14] Derek Hill, in a review of the MGM Midnite Movies DVD release of Vampires written for Images Journal, noted, "Bava's film (along with It! The Terror from Beyond Space, 1958) was a direct influence on Ridley Scott's 1979 big budget B-movie Alien. But where Scott's film tried to mask its humble drive-in origins, Planet of the Vampires revels in its origins. The film literally feels like a pulp magazine cover come to garish life..."[15] Robert Monell, on the DVD Maniacs website, observed, "[M]uch of the conceptual design and some specific imagery in the 1979 Ridley Scott screamer undoubtedly owes a great debt to Mario Bava's no budget accomplishments."[16] Govindini Murty of The Atlantic, in a review of Prometheus, said, "The striking images Ridley Scott devises for Prometheus reference everything from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 to Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires."[17] In one scene of Prometheus, the crew dons dark suits with red piping that resemble the suits worn by the crew of the Argos in Planet of the Vampires.
One of Vampires' most celebrated sequences involves the astronauts performing an exploration of an alien, derelict ship discovered in a huge ruin on the surface of the planet. The crewmembers climb up into the depths of the eerie ship and discover the gigantic remains of long dead monstrous creatures. In 1979, Cinefantastique noted the remarkable similarities between this atmospheric sequence and a lengthy scene in the then-new Alien. The magazine also pointed out other minor parallels between the two films.[18] However, both Alien's director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Dan O'Bannon claimed at the time that they had never seen Planet of the Vampires.[19]
Tim Lucas has noted that the basic plot and ideas of the film not only inspired Alien but "continue to influence filmmakers and inspire the genre today, as witnessed by David Twohy's Pitch Black (2000) and Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars (2001)."[5]
In the late 1970s Atlas/Seaboard Comics published a short-lived comic book entitled Planet of Vampires, which combined plot elements from Bava's film with elements of Planet of the Apes and I Am Legend.

Release Date: October 27, 1965

Distrib: American International