Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello spazio) was Mario Bava’s only real attempt at science fiction and the result is a classic of gothic horror science fiction.

It’s often been cited as an influence on Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron's Aliens but Bava’s 1965 effort is vasty superior to both.

Two spacecraft, the Argos and the Galliot, have been despatched to an unknown planet in response to mysterious radio signals. They encounter what seems to be a kind of gravity vortex and both craft crash-land on the planet’s surface. The members of the crew of the Argos turn violently on each other for no apparent reason, and contact is lost with the Galliot.

With some semblance of order restored the commander of the Argos sets off with several companions to investigate the fate of the Galliot. They find the crew dead, and it appears that they have slaughtered each other.

Strange lights are seen by night and the atmosphere becomes more and more fraught with tension. The terror increases when dead crew members are seen walking about. It becomes increasingly clear that there is certainly intelligent life on the planet, but not life as we know it. And the life forms seem to be decidedly vampiric.

The Argos had been damaged when it crash-landed and even after repairs are completed there are doubts as to whether they will be able to take off successfully. And how many of the crew will still be left alive by then?

The twist ending adds a very dark touch to proceedings.

Visually it has the spectacular use of colour you expect from Bava and it displays his genius for making a very small budget go a very long way. There’s lots and lots of fog - Bava lays on the gothic atmosphere very thick indeed.

The model effects are very well done and the sets and costumes are (as you expect in Italian science fiction movies of the 60s and 70s) great fun. The costumes are especially outrageous and manage to be both futuristic and gothic and extremely camp.

One thing I love about Italian sci-fi is that the spaceship interiors are absurdly spacious and this is a particularly outstanding example. The metal tombs for the dead crew members are a nice touch and having the dead wrapped in plastic adds to the creepiness.

The acting is perfectly adequate by space opera standards. Barry Sullivan plays things very very straight as the commander of the Argos. Norma Bengell and Evi Marandi provide the necessary glamour as the two female crew members.

It was released on DVD as part of MGM’s Midnite Movies range. Picture quality is very good. It’s It’s unfortunately dubbed in English but the dubbing is quite good by the standards of Italian genre movies of this era.

As with all of Bava’s movies it’s a triumph of style over substance, a movie that creates terror purely by visual means and does it superbly.

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Quatermass and the Pit (AKA Five Million Years to Earth) was the third of Hammer’s Quatermass movies, all based on BBC TV series. It came a decade after the first two but it’s certainly a worthy entry in the Quatermass cycle. And ideal viewing if you’re in the mood for the Apocalypse.

A tube station in London is being redeveloped. During the excavations some skulls are found. Rather odd skulls. Palaeontologist Dr Roney (James Donald) believes they’re the skulls of primitive ancestors of humanity but there are a couple of anomalous features about them - they’re much more ancient (possibly five million years old) than any known human ancestor and their brains seem much large than you’d expect.

An even more puzzling discovery follows. What at first appears to be an unexploded bomb dating from the Blitz is found nearby, but it turns out to be mostly hollow and there is another skull inside it. How could a skull five million years old be found inside something dating from just a quarter of a century earlier?

All attempts to cut inside a sealed chamber in the object fail. It resists a drill that can slice through armour plating with ease.

As it happens the eminent rocket scientist Dr Bernard Quatermass has just been assigned to work (much against his will) with a military weapons expert, Colonel Breen (Julian Glover). They both find themselves involved and Quatermass comes up with a startling theory - the object is a spacecraft. Further examination of the craft throws up even stranger possibilities - Quatermass believes it was crewed by a highly advanced insectoid race from Mars and that the mysterious skulls were the skulls of apes that had been genetically modified by the Martians.

This is all very fascinating to the scientists but events soon take a sinister turn. The ingenious plot manages to embrace human paranormal abilities, the nature of evil, race memories, poltergeist phenomena, religion, crowd behaviour, insect societies and the future of civilisation itself.

As with the earlier Quatermass films this one was scripted by Nigel Kneane and it displays the intelligence and dazzling imagination one expects from Kneale. And there are plenty of other Hammer luminaries on hand behind the camera - cinematographer Arthur Grant, production designer Bernard Robinson and director Roy Ward Baker. This is pretty much Hammer’s A Team.

The cast might be short on big names but it’s certainly not short on talent. Andrew Keir has the right mix of arrogance and visionary qualities to make a splendid Quatermass. Julia Glover is delightfully pompous as Colonel Breen. Barbara Shelley adds some glamour as the palaeontologist’s assistant.

There’s one major problem. Most of the special effects are pretty good but the insectoid aliens are unconvincing and look quite silly. I’m a great believe in the idea that great science fiction doesn’t need expensive gee-whizz special effects but even in 1967 I think the aliens could have been done more effectively.

Aside from that the visuals are quite impressive and Roy Ward Baker keeps the tension ratcheted up.

This is essentially an ideas-based science fiction film, and it has an abundance of ideas and they’re developed with great skill and originality. Hammer’s contribution to the science fiction genre was arguably just as significant as its contribution to horror and this is one of the best of their science fiction films.

The Optimum Region 2 DVD has no extras apart from a trailer but its widescreen and the picture quality is excellent.

Hercules in the Haunted World (1961)

Mario Bava might be best known for his giallos and his gothic horror films but it could be argued that the genre for which his baroque visual style was most suited was the peplum. His 1961 outing in this genre, Hercules in the Haunted World (Ercole al centro della terra), is a case in point.

Without Bava’s distinctive visual signature this would have been a fairly routine peplum. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - I love this genre and even a pretty average example will generally provide plenty of entertainment. But the Bava touch gives this one the feel of a story that really does take place in a different world, a world of gods and magic and larger-than-life heroes.

Hercules returns from a quest to find that the Princess Deianira, his betrothed, has suffered a terrible affliction. She has become totally detached from reality, inhabiting a world of madness. Hercules is unaware that Lico (Christopher Lee), whose task it had been to protect Deianira and to ensure that she would succeed to the throne after her father’s death, is in fact plotting to gain the kingdom for himself.

To restore the princess to her right mind Hercules will need to descend into the underworld to find a magical stone. No-one has ever gone down into Hades alive and returned to tell the tale but Hercules and his buddy and fellow hero Theseus are undaunted.

Unfortunately, apart from the kinds of hazards you’d expect to encounter on such a dangerous quest, Theseus runs into an even graver danger. He falls in love with a woman he meets in Hades, and he bring her back to the upper world with him. The woman is Persephone, not just a goddess but the wife of the king of Hades. The king of the land of the dead is understandably not well pleased by this development and unleashes his vengeance on the world of the living. Hercules must persuade his friend to give her up but Theseus has made it clear he will die first. Hercules is formidable when he can rely on his immense strength but he’s not quite so impressive when he has to use his wits and that’s what he’s going to have to do in this case.

English bodybuilder Reg Park plays Hercules this time. Actors were cast in this role in peplums on the basis of their ability to look the part rather than on their acting ability but Park is adequate. Christopher Lee is suitably malevolent as Lico. Leonora Ruffo’s acting talents aren’t exactly stretched by her role as Deianira but she looks the way princesses are supposed to look in these kinds of movies.

It’s Bava who is the real star of course. He was responsible for the cinematography as well as directing and it has the classic Bava look. Amazing use of colour and an extraordinary ability to stretch a very limited budget to produce a movie with a genuinely epic feel to it.

Even if you’re not a particular fan of sword and sandal movies this one is a must-see just for the visuals, and it’s a fun little movie as well.

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

The first thing that has to be said about 20th Century-Fox’s 1966 science fiction epic Fantastic Voyage is that it’s an amazingly silly idea. But some of the most entertaining science fiction films are based on amazingly silly ideas.

Of all silly science fictional ideas few are sillier than the idea of miniaturisation. But if you’re going to make a movie centred on an absurd idea the important thing is to have the courage to pursue that idea regardless of where it might lead. And Fantastic Voyage certainly does that. Even more important, it’s necessary to treat the ludicrous central idea as if it makes perfect sense, and Fantastic Voyage does that as well.

Both the US and Soviet governments have been working on miniaturisation projects. They can shrink anything, or anyone, to a tiny fraction of its actual size. The drawback is that the process is only good for 60 minutes after which time the person or object reverts to its real size.

A leading scientist on the American side has however made a breakthrough that allows the miniaturisation process to work for an indefinite period. It goes without saying that the Russians are terrified of the prospect of facing whole armies of tiny tiny American soldiers equipped with tiny tiny tanks and tiny tiny guns. So they attempt to kill the scientist in question. They go within a hair’s breadth of success - the scientist is left with a bullet lodged in his brain in such a position that an operation would be impossible.

A daring scheme is hatched to save the situation. A new experimental submarine, with a crew that includes a top neurusurgeon and his assistant, will be shrunk to miscroscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of the stricken scientist.

To reach the brain they will have to brave many perils, including attacks by marauding antibodies and by the dreaded white corpuscles. This is all rendered with some delirious 1960s psychedelic-style special effects. Of course none of it seems to even remotely resemble the inside of the human body - it’s more like a combination acid trip and ann underwater caving vacation on an alien planet.

So what could possibly make such a movie even more fun? How about Donald Pleasence as the delightfully bonkers scientist in charge of the submarine team. He delivers a classic Donald Pleasence performance. Edmond O’Brien does some glorious scenery-chewing as well as the stressed-out general in charge of the miniature warfare program. Arthur Kennedy as the neurosurgeon who must operate on the brain from the inside seems constantly on the point of imploding. Stephen Boyd provides the expected heroics while Raquel Welch is on hand to add some glamour as the surgeon’s faithful assistant. Miss Welch would go on to develop a considerable talent for scenery-chewing herself in movies like Myra Breckinridge but in 1966 that talent had not yet blossomed. There's nothing wrong with her performance, she simply isn't given enough to do.

This movie is included in the Raquel Welch Collection boxed set which I highly recommend if you can find a copy. It also includes the magnificently entertaining caper film Myra Breckinridge and the underrated crime thriller Lady in Cement (in which Miss Welch co-stars with Frank Sinatra) plus the offbeat western Bandolero - an eclectic but fascinating mix of films.

The DVD presentation preserves the Cinemascope aspect ratio and looks extremely good, but sadly there’s a distinct lack of extras.

Fantastic Voyage is a wonderfully entertaining piece of hokum and a superb example of the 60s high camp psychedelic style applied to science fiction.

The Scarlet Claw (1944)

The Scarlet Claw (AKA Sherlock Holmes and the Scarlet Claw) came somewhere about the middle of Universal’s Sherlock Holmes cycle of 12 films. It’s one of several to contain hints of horror, and it’s generally regarded as one of the best of the series.

In fact The Scarlet Claw is probably as close as this series came to a horror/mystery crossover film.

Holmes and Dr Watson are in Canada for a conference on the occult, chaired by Lord Penrose, when news is received that Lady Penrose has been found dead. Her throat has been slashed, but whether by a human, an animal or some supernatural beast is yet to be determined. The wounds are almost identical to those found recently on local livestock in the vicinity of the village of La Mort Rouge, and those attacks have been widely blamed on a supernatural creature. Local legend has it that this creature appears at lengthy and irregular intervals.

Lord Penrose being a firm believer in the supernatural is naturally inclined to attribute his wife’s death to this monster. While Sherlock Holmes is prepared to keep an open mind, he is much more inclined to suspect murder, and to suspect a very human murderer. Lord Penrose is not keen on having Holmes investigate the case, but when Holmes receives a letter written by Lady Penrose the day before her death, a letter in which she speaks of a threat to her life, there is no stopping him from becoming involved.

It is not long before Holmes has an encounter himself with the famous monster, and begins to unravel a mystery involving murders in a touring theatrical company and several people who are not the people they appear to be.

The Canadian setting makes very little difference to this film. I always think of Universal’s Sherlock Holmes films in much the same way I think of Hammer’s horror films - as taking place in a kind of imaginary world, in this case a blending of the 1940s with a dash of the 1890s and a setting that is not really Baker Street in London but Baker Street at Universal Studios. So having this film set in a Canada located on Universal’s back lot doesn’t disturb me.

The big problem with Universal’s genre films was always their conviction that such films needed to have comic relief. This comic relief ruined many of their horror films. The Sherlock Holmes movies also had to have comic relief, but they were more fortunate in that it was provided mostly by Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson. While this annoys Sherlock Holmes purists who dislike seeing Watson portrayed as a buffoon it does at least have several advantages - Nigel Bruce was a capable comic actor and his Dr Watson was basically likeable, so the comic relief is rarely annoying. At times it’s even actually amusing.

In this outing both Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are in good form. They have a competent if not overly exciting supporting cast.

Roy William Neill does his usual competent job as director. Being a Sherlock Holmes story you don’t really expect for one moment that the supernatural explanation is going to stand up to Holmes’s scrutiny, but Conan Doyle included suggestions of the supernatural and elements of horror in several of his original stories so it’s a perfectly valid plot device in a Holmes movie.

There’s an abundance of plot twists, Dr Watson gets to act the fool but he also gets to save Holmes’s life, and there’s plenty of entertainment to be had. The Scarlet Claw is a great deal of fun.

Spaceways (1953)

Spaceways has one main claim to fame. It was one of the first forays into science fiction for both Hammer Films and for director Terence Fisher.

Fisher made a series of excellent film noir-influenced crime thrillers for Hammer in the early 50s and Spaceways is in fact a murder mystery presented against a science fiction backdrop, with some elements of espionage thrown in as well.

The British government has a top-secret research facility working on plans to put the first spaceship into orbit and ultimately to build the first space stations. The scientists involved, and their families, are housed in a kind of concentration camp totally cut off from the world. This neatly provides one of the prime requirements for a classical murder mystery - all the suspects are confined together in one place without being able to escape and we know that one of them must be the killer.

The key figure in the project is an American scientist, Dr Stephen Mitchell (Howard Duff). He’s very unhappily married. His wife Vanessa despises him for not getting a high-paid job in private industry and she’s carrying on an affair with the team’s chief biologist Dr Philip Crenshaw. Mitchell meanwhile is falling for Dr Lisa Frank (Eva Bartok). She’s the daughter of the head of the rocket project. When both Crenshaw and Mitchell’s wife disappear it is assumed they have been murdered since they could not have left the base. And Stephen Mitchell is the prime suspect.

An outside investigator from one of the Intelligence services is called in to solve the mystery. He comes up with a ingenious theory - that Mitchell murdered Crenshaw and Vanessa and stuffed their bodies into the AS1 rocket’s fuel tanks just before its first test flight.

The rocket is not yet ready for a manned flight but Dr Mitchell decides he can only prove his innocence by undertaking the first manned spaceflight in the second rocket, the AS2. He will rendezvous with the AS1 in orbit and prove that there are no bodies in the fuel tanks. Lisa is horrified - she can’t let the man she loves undertake such a mission alone but she knows that no-one will allow her to accompany him.

The mixture of science fiction and murder mystery elements is a little uneasy but despite the film’s generally poor reputation I think it works quite well. Like the other sci-fi movie Fisher directed for Hammer in the same year, Four Sided Triangle, it avoids the more obvious science fiction clichés of its era.

The budget was too limited to allow any extended spaceflight sequences but making the core of the story the murder mystery means that’s not a major problem. The special effects are ultra-cheap but the spaceship interior looks rather nifty with its classy walnut control panel.

Fisher was never less than very competent and he had a real flair for crime thrillers so he was a sound choice to direct.

Howard Duff is adequate if unexciting. Eva Bartok is by far the most impressive member of the cast.

The Image Entertainment DVD looks reasonably good. There are no extras apart from a trailer.

Not as good as the Quatermass films that brought Hammer its first big successes in the mid-50s but still worth a look if you’re a fan of 1950s sci-fi movies. Certainly nowhere near as bad as its reputation suggests.

The Coming of Sin (1978)

Spanish director José Larraz cemented his place in the pantheon of eurohorror/eurosleaze greats with his 1974 British film Vampyres. Which is a great movie, but the word most frequently used to describe Larraz’s career is erratic. His 1978 Spanish production The Coming of Sin (also released as Violation of the Bitch) encapsulates his strengths and weaknesses pretty well.

He sold the idea to a producer as a kind of Spanish Emmanuelle with gypsies and horses but in fact the resemblances to Emmanuelle are almost non-existent. The Coming of Sin is an erotic fever dream psychological thriller.

Lorna, a wealthy female Spanish painter, is asked by a friend to look after her gypsy servant girl for a while while she’s travelling abroad. The girl, Triana, has been troubled by nightmares. Lorna doesn’t worry too much about this until the next morning when she finds Triana taking a pot shot at an intruder with a shotgun. The intruder is a naked young man on a horse who is trampling Lorna’s flower beds. Triana informs Lorna that this is the young man from her dreams.

Lorna sees the man as well, raising the question as to whether he’s really a figure from a nightmare, or whether Lorna and Triana are sharing a dream. They’re definitely sharing a bed. Triana regards the young man (whose name is Chico) with a mixture of fear and desire - she is convinced that if they become lovers someone will die. Lorna regards him with pure desire. She likes the idea of a nice little ménage à trois. She paints her two objects of desire, enjoying the sexual frisson of seeing Triana and Chico naked together. Triana however is still certain that disaster is approaching.

Made on a budget of virtually nothing it has some interesting dream sequences (including the notorious girl-in-a-horse scene) and a fairly effective atmosphere of dangerous sexual passions. There’s enough sexual symbolism to keep a Freudian happy for a very long time. The symbolism is obvious and heavy-handed but then sexual symbolism in dreams is rarely subtle and Larraz has enough style to just about get away with it.

The big problem is the acting. Even by European exploitation movie standards it’s truly terrible, and this is compounded by the atrocious and bizarre English dubbing. And Unfortunately, being a psycho-thriller, this is a rare example of an exploitation movie that actually requires some real acting.

The ending is not exactly going to come as much of a shock.

Not a great movie by any standards but still a reasonable example of that characteristic 70s mix of art and eroticism.

The image quality on Pagan’s Region 2 DVD release is dismal which I suspect is a problem with the source materials rather than anything else. It’s very soft and very grainy and very washed-out. The extended interview with the director almost makes up for this though - Larraz is amusing, playful and revealing.

Worth a look if you enjoy this sort of thing and if you can find a copy.