Science Fiction Double Feature: Planet of the Vampires (1965), It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)
Did these drive-in classics really inspire the 'Alien' franchise?
The first Alien movie brought axle-grease and body horror to sci-fi cinema back in 1979. Audiences were dazzled by Ridley’s Scott’s seemingly unprecedented vision. But there were fans and sci-fi savvy critics who scored plenty of nerd points by pointing out similarities to a couple of fondly remembered B pictures from previous decades.
Terrore nello spazio (Terror in Space, 1965) was released in the US by AIP as Planet of the Vampires.
‘Planet of the Body Snatchers’ would have been more accurate, if a lot less sexy.
Barry Sullivan (a senior lead in thrillers since the forties) captains one of two starships investigating a distress call from the fogbound planet of Aura. Coming in to land, the crew suffer weird gravitational headaches and start attacking each other. The Captain manages to slap some sense back into his crew, but the other ship isn’t so lucky. Having beaten each other to death, the other astronauts rise from their hastily dug graves, tear off their polythene shrouds and begin menacing the survivors.
It turns out they’ve been possessed by a dying race of astral spirits keen to hitch a ride in human bodies, and they’re not much fussed whether those bodies are still breathing or not…
