Thoughts on rewatching Planet of the Vampires (1965), as part of Jim Groom's Festival of Mario Bava:

I always enjoy sf from countries other than the US and UK. Here we get manic, lush Italian design and narrative drive. The movie races from mood to mood, introspection to manic violence. We can easily believe characters being possessed or driven mad. The film shows off strange, energetically rounded hardware. There are relishes awesome uniforms, as in this animated gif:

The links to Alien (1979) are many and more than I recalled. The human ship looks like the Nostromo, and also like the downed, Gigerized alien vessel. There's the tricky descent of the human landing craft into a world "that's all fog!" Best of all is the space jockey scene:

As with Alien, the ship is a huge presence, a dark and sometimes antagonistic character. Bava loves to trawl his camera behind computer banks and along many bulkheads. Interior spaces are weirdly huge, often empty, spacing out characters and their machines in a stage-like way. This makes its inhabitation by mysterious monsters all the more threatening.
Then there are the vampires. Ah, Infocult confession time: this movie scared the hell out of me when I was around 6 years old. I feared for the stressed space travelers, but was terrified by the plastic sheeted vampires. Their Richard Powers-like statues weirded me out, as did their metal traps and hungry wrath. Or maybe they are zombies, spawned from the astronauts' friends (and family!) - creepy stuff for a young one.
The death toll advances rapidly, more like a war movie (Aliens) than a horror film (Alien). Bodies pile up quickly, which helps set up the zombie/vampire plot.
Overall, it's glorious fun.
(poster from Absolute Elsewhere; jockey from Alien Explorations)
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