Mario Bava’s PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES Midnights This Weekend at The Moolah – ‘Late Night Grindhouse’

“I’ll tell you this, if there ‘are’ any intelligent creatures on this planet… they’re our enemies.”

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES screens Midnights this weekend (May 19th and 20th) at The Moolah Theater and Lounge (3821 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63108) as part of  Destroy the Brain’s monthly Late Night Grindhouse film series.

In PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1963), two ships of humans are answering a distress signal they picked up from the planetoid Aura. After suffering through a crushing rise in gravity (were the actors indulge in some chuckle-tastic ‘gravity struggling’), both ships land. Problem arise almost immediately as those who fell unconscious during the descent suddenly attack their fellow shipmates.

The other immediate problem is that the planet is creepy as hell and full of strange lights, fog, floating lights, and bad forced perspective shots. Captain Mark, our hero, grabs some of his crew and seeks out the other ship, where he finds that they weren’t so lucky over there as they all managed to murder each other. Slightly perturbed, Mark sets up a guard and buries the bodies of the other ship’s crew (that’ll be the ones that didn’t mysteriously disappear when he went off to find a spade). At this point we get clued in on what’s happening (kind of) when the three dead astronauts rise up from the grave in slow motion!

Italian director Mario Bava’s reputation as an innovative and original genre movie maker seems to grow with every year that passes. Much of his output has been unfairly overlooked, but now that all of his work has become available, it’s become increasingly obvious that he was an important and influential director. PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES is a case in point. It’s flaws are obvious (so-so acting, poor dubbing, a handful of silly lines in the script), but these are easily overlooked by the amazing atmospheric look of the film. Bava managed to achieve some astonishingly effective visuals on an obviously small budget. Stylish, creepy, cool and fascinating. Others have pointed out the similarities to Ridley Scott’s ALIEN and while I also agree with credit where credit’s due, don’t just watch this movie for that reason alone. Only a small part of it is related. Every science fiction and Mario Bava fan should take advantage of this opportunity to see PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES on the big screen.

A Facebook invite for the Friday show can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/1631983203509295/

A Facebook invite for the Saturday show can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/245703092571877/

TICKETS ARE $7 AND YOU CAN BUY THEM ONLINE VIA MOOLAH’S WEBSITE.

THE PSYCHOTRONIC PRE-SHOW STARTS AROUND 11:30P WITH THE FILM STARTING AT MIDNIGHT.

The Moolah Theatre & Lounge serves alcohol until 2:30AM! Feel free to show up early and stay late to have some drinks and get friendly with the amazing Moolah staff.