Review of Planet of the Vampires (1965) by Ian B — 22 Nov 2008

Admit it, you're jealous I got to see "Planet of the Vampires.".

My first Bava film, and it's about what I'd expect. The cinematography, art direction, costuming, and set design were all gorgeous presentations of some neat speculative fiction tropes, but then it meets the plot and the writing and the acting for a middling affair. It's not as excitingly trashy as the title implies, and the action is relatively uninteresting, but the presentation is what should make you think about picking it up. That said, it isn't anything "Forbidden Planet" didn't equal nine years earlier or that a lot of television fiction hasn't surpassed in the last twenty years.

The best qualities are the foreground, lens-painted "sets," and the creative costuming and live-set choices.