I’m surprised Hollywood has never tried to remake this – maybe they’ve been content to rip it off. You could easily imagine the plot today: two ships are exploring in outer space when they hear a distressed beacon on a planet. They go to investigate and soon find themselves being possessed by weird spirits that make them kill.
Some people have criticised the screenplay but I thought it was reasonably solid and imaginative (co written by some Americans, who were provided at the behest of AIP, including Louis Heyward). There’s a famous sequence where astronauts investigate a crashed ship belonging to aliens that is very similar to the one in Alien (also like that movie, the space crews have several females). But then again this film rips off The Thing, so they can’t get too snotty about plagiarism.
Most of the cast is Italian except for the lead, Hollywood C-lister Barry Sullivan. Like most Mario Bava films it looks wonderful, with this stunning colour photography, and imaginative design – someone described it as a pulp magazine coming to life and that’s spot on. Few science fiction films are so uniquely atmospheric. The planet is creepy, exotic, scary – volcanic and fumy. The astronaut costumes – leather with hoods – are kind of laughable in one respect, but work in a groovy 60s way.
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