- Directed by: Mario Bava
- Written by: Renato Pestriniero, Ib Melchior, Alberto Bevilacqua
- Stars: Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell, Angel Aranda
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJvcqfC8u3Y
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
After a crash landing on an alien planet, fixing their ship and taking off again is only one of the problems a crew has to deal with. It’s not quite vampirism despite the title, but the dead rise and there are alien issues. There are some horror elements for sure, but it’s mostly science fiction. The retro-futurism is dialed up to 11 and it’s got a decent story. All in all, we’d call it entertaining fun.
Spoilery Synopsis
We zoom in on a spaceship and then see what’s inside. The bridge crew is all decked out in high-necked black leather uniforms that are a cross between the X-Men and Leather Daddies. They’re picking up strange signals from a point on a nearby planet. Captain Mark Markary calls the other ship, and Mark’s brother starts to say something when the ship loses contact.
Suddenly the gravity goes crazy and everyone experiences 20g as they approach the nearby planet. Somehow, they regain control enough to land on the desolate planet. When they recover, Mark’s crew wakes up and attacks each other.
The ship’s doctor staggers outside, and the atmosphere clears his mind. He doesn’t know why he behaved that way. Mark and Wess inspect their ship outside, and everything looks normal; it was an excellent landing, even if they can’t remember doing it. They find the other ship on their sensors, but can’t tell how badly it’s damaged.
Mark and several of the men go outside and explore the alien, rocky terrain. They get to the other ship, the Galliott, and immediately find a couple of corpses outside; they fought and killed each other. Mark comes to the conclusion that this was all planned… by someone. When they look in through the windows, it appears that they’re all dead inside.
Mark and the others go back to their own ship, the Argos, for tools, and leave Eldon at the other ship to guard the bodies. As soon as they leave he starts hearing voices.
When Mark and the others return, all the bodies are gone, as is Eldon. Also, whatever happened to the signal the ship had been receiving for the past two years? The signal is gone now. The Argos’s solar batteries are drained, so they may not even be able to take off again when the time comes.
Outside, the dead crawl out of their graves and rip off their plastic shrouds. Mark dictates a “captain’s log” but stops when he sees Wess stagger into the ship. Wess tries to disconnect the meteor rejector, but he doesn’t know why when he comes to his senses again. The meteor rejector on the other ship was destroyed– why?
One of their own men, Bert, is killed, and with his dying breath, he accuses Captain Sallis, one of the dead men from the other ship. As everyone discusses the situation, dead Bert opens his eyes and starts to listen. Tiona sees him moving and faints; then the crew buries Bert.
The crew finds the wreckage of another ship, and this one’s been here a long time. They find the skeletal remains of some kind of huge alien. Mark and Sanya go inside, and some of the machinery is still active. They start randomly pushing buttons and hear a recording of what the aliens sounded like. Then the doors close, and they’re trapped inside. They eventually figure out how to open the door again, but when they do, the guard outside, Carter, is gone.
On their return, Tiona reports seeing more of the dead up and walking around. Mark sees Sallis and Keir, two of the men assumed to be dead from the Galliott. Captain Sallis tells his story, and it’s all believable.
Tiona, on the other hand, insists that they are really dead. She insists they open up the graves and check, and they are, in fact, empty.
Meanwhile, Sallis and Keir head straight to the meteor rejector and disable it. When Mark and the others catch Sallis, he admits that he’s not Sallis. Sallis is possessed by another being just using the body. They’re the ones who forced the crew to fight and kill each other so they would have bodies to inhabit. They also sent the signal that brought the humans here. Mark calls them a “breed of parasites,” and Sallis doesn’t like that comparison. They want to go to a more inhabited planet, and they’re holding the meteor rejector hostage. The alien inside Sallis says they can willingly let them in while they are still alive, and it would be a symbiotic relationship, but the humans don’t like that idea.
Mark decides to blow up the Galliott and take off anyway. He and Sonya go over there and find all the dead working on the ship, getting it ready to blast off. With the meteor rejector, they just might be able to do it. They run into Toby, Marks’s brother, and he’s one of the aliens as well now. Mark shoots him dead again.
The living and the possessed have a battle over the Galliot and snatch their meteor rejector while Wess is finishing up repairs on the Argos.
Mark and Sonya run back to their ship and take off immediately. They reinstall the meteor rejector. Wess points out that out of eighteen people, only three are left. Not long afterward, Wess notices that Mark is acting strangely and comes to the conclusion that the captain is possessed as well. He tells Sonya, who picks up a gun on the way to confront Mark. Turns out, both Mark and Sonya are possessed.
Wess runs to the control room and smashes the meteor rejector, dying in the process. Mark says they’ll never be able to reach home now, but they can make it to Earth…
The final twist being that the heroes we were rooting for were aliens too.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s no “Forbidden Planet,” but the sets and costumes are on the same par. It’s said to be one of the original influences for “Alien” as well, and several shots and ideas are very similar.
The spaceships are miniatures filmed way too close up, and they don’t look good at all. The planet, while colorfully lit like an episode of “Star Trek,” is hazy, smoky, and effectively creepy and alien. The creatures are more possessed-zombies than actual vampires, but they’re still “undead.”
It’s dated in a 1960’s sci-fi way, being too colorful and sharp, but otherwise, it’s really very good.
Kevin’s Commentary
The space effects aren’t great, but the retro-futurism of the sets, props, and costumes is awesome. I’d barely call it horror, heavily science fiction. Science fiction done the way it was in the 1960s. The story is decent, the cast does a convincing job, and I can see where it might have planted the seeds of “Alien” and some other films that came after this one.
I’m surprised I’ve never seen it before, and I’m glad that I did. I was entertained.
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