Planet of the Vampires (1965)

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

Curiosity: SPACE VAMPIRES!

Plot: In a future where everyone wears the leather suits from X-Men­ and audio never synchs up with mouth movements, the crews of the ships the Argos and the Galliott respond to a distress call on a distant planet. After a disastrous landing, the crew of the Galliot, led by Captian Markary (Barry Sullivan), finds no survivors, either on the planet or the Argos. They explore the planet while their ship gets repaired, and discover a wrecked space ship of alien origin. Meanwhile, something sinister and unseen is taking over the crew members…

Thoughts: I thought I was going crazy at the time, but I’m not the only one who thought Planet of the Vampires had a lot in common with Alien. While director Ridley Scott denies having ever seen the film, it’s kind of hard not to see the similarities – distress call on a barren planet, mysterious attacks on the crew, claustrophobic locations, and technology that doesn’t do shit to save anybody. Of course, Alien was awesome and delivered on its title, two things that Planet of the Vampires does not do.

I’m calling shenanigans. I was promised vampires. In fact, I was promised a whole gosh dang planet of ’em. The creatures in this film are an invisible mind-controlling lot with parasitic qualities (like in Alien!). That’s not vampiric enough, clam flammit!

Also, this movie is thoroughly not awesome. It’s slow, the script keeps needlessly making up stupid sci-fi bullshit¸ and honestly not a whole lot happens until the big double twist ending, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, honestly. I’m not going to say Alien plagiarized Planet of the Vampires; it just made it better.

Reflection: No seriously, look at these suits: