'Terror in Space'; released in the UK as The Demon Planet) is a 1965 science fiction horror film directed and co-written by Mario Bava, produced by Fulvio Lucisano, and starring Barry Sullivan and Norma Bengell.

[3] The film follows the horrific experiences of the crew members of two giant spaceships that have crash landed on a forbidding, unexplored planet.

The disembodied inhabitants of the world possess the bodies of the crew who died during the crash, and use the animated corpses to stalk and kill the remaining survivors.

[1] Years after its release, some critics have suggested that Bava's film was a major influence on Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012), in both narrative details and visual design.

[4] Two huge interplanetary ships on an expedition into deep uncharted space receive a distress signal emanating from Aura, an unexplored planet.

Inside the ship, they discover large skeletal remains of the long dead crew and thus realize that they are not the first ones to have been drawn to the planet by the distress beacon.

Eventually, AIP heads Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson decided to coproduce some of these films, rather than just pay for the rights to distribute them, in order to have more control over their content.

Planet of the Vampires was one such coproduction, financed by AIP and Italy's Fulvio Lucisano for Italian International Film, along with some Spanish production money provided by Castilla Cooperativa Cinematográfica.

AIP provided the services of writer Ib Melchior, whose previous movies had included such modest hits as The Angry Red Planet (1959) and Reptilicus (1961), as well as the relatively big budget Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964).

"[7] Sullivan's lines were spoken in English, Bengell's in Portuguese, Evi Marandi's in Italian and Ángel Aranda's in Spanish.

Restricted by a low budget, Bava was unable to utilize many opticals, so nearly all of the film's extensive visual effects work were done "in camera".

The planet's exterior sequences were filmed on an empty stage obscured by mists, table top miniatures and Schüfftan process shots.

[11] Variety's Dool opined, "Plot is punctuated with gore, shock, eerie music and wild optic and special effects...Color camera work and production values are smooth and first class...Flash Gordon type story...should keep the young on the edge of their seats and the older set from falling asleep".

[16] Glenn Erickson (aka "DVD Savant") wrote in 2001 that "Bava's stunning gothic variation weaves a weird tale of flying saucers, ray guns and zombies that looks like no other space movie ever filmed".

[19] Several critics have suggested that Bava's film was a major influence on Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012), in both narrative details and visual design.

[4] Derek Hill, in a review of the MGM Midnite Movies DVD release of Vampires written for Images Journal, noted, "Bava's film (along with It!

The film literally feels like a pulp magazine cover come to garish life..."[20] Robert Monell, on the DVD Maniacs website, observed, "[M]uch of the conceptual design and some specific imagery in the 1979 Ridley Scott screamer undoubtedly owes a great debt to Mario Bava's no budget accomplishments.

"[22] One of the film's most celebrated sequences involves the astronauts performing an exploration of an alien, derelict ship discovered in a huge ruin on the surface of the planet.

The crewmembers climb up into the depths of the eerie ship and discover the gigantic remains of long dead monstrous creatures.