My only personal experience with Adamson thus far has been 1971's Dracula vs. Frankenstein - a very cheap but fun mad scientist-slasher movie with a vampire and Frankenstein thrown in to sexy it up a little bit. It was most notable to me because the backstory is Adamson had parts of two films shot (I think a Dracula movie and a mad-scientist movie) but didn't have the financing to finish either. So he just shot a little connective tissue with Frankenstein and viola - now we have a movie. It is this same commitment to the craft of filmmaking that is on display in Vampire Men of the Lost Planet... although taking it a step further, a bunch of the footage here is recycled from other movies he didn't even shoot.
The introduction to this one is enjoyably lo-fi. An ultra Eastern European voiceover gives us a new backstory for the vampire: "The science of this planet cannot destroy me - the infected blood of the vampire was carried to earth millions of years ago by the Toopaton vampire men of a distant galaxy far beyond this solar system." They look like normal vampires, except their teeth look way more like tusks:
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| Not very good. But still, I'd rather watch this movie instead of the one we get. |
We see some modern day vampires attack a half-dozen or so people in alleys that are very obviously lit by one big spot light, and it closes with a bunch of them closing in on the camera. It's quite dramatic, and seems to be promising a fun ride.
Alas, it is not meant to be. We cut away, never to mention/see them again. In fact, other than the NASA control room (complete with the black sheet background that NASA is known for), we never again step foot on earth.
Our main story centers on 5 astronauts who are heading into outer space, because I don't know why. (Sorry, I just saw Interstellar and am getting my crappy space movies confused). Something goes awry with the ship and they are marooned on a distant, undiscovered planet. When they leave the ship, they encounter other movies you have probably seen before (lizards dressed up like dinosaurs) and some you maybe have not (cavemen tribes fighting). They sit back and observe the footage, but when a sexy young woman is being pursued by a couple of brutish cavemen, they intervene, killing her attackers. They implant a device into her neck so they can communicate with her. She explains that there are two tribes on their planet/the other movie - her peaceful tribe (The Tagoni) and the evil, violent, Toopaton - and they are constantly battling each other. The Toopaton are apparently the space vampires, although they do very few vampirish things other than have big stupid tusks that I guess are kind of like fangs. From this point on, buckle up. Because a legit third of the running time is padded with poorly choreographed fight scenes between the two tribes. The astronauts determine that if they help the Tagoni, they can get access to the "Fire Water" aka petroleum that could get them back to Earth.
If it wasn't for the TOTALLY UNRELATED vampire introduction, there would be nothing "horror" about this film. But I was lured in by the name - so it is what it is. Score one for Al Adamson and his title-trickery, I guess. But Sci-fi/"Action" is where this would belong.
What I Liked
John Carradine is funny as the mission leader. Due to a health concern, he just stays in the ship alone while the others explore the lost planet. I'm thinking they only paid him for a couple days of work, so they wrote his character so he could just sit around and shoot it all at once. He plays Dr. Rynning as sort of an exasperated, grumpy old man type, and he's pretty enjoyable to watch.
The spaceship interior is pretty classic. It looks more like a giant concrete ballroom - you don't often see so much headroom in a spacecraft. And they all smoke in there. Apparently oxygen is not a concern. Oddly enough, the exterior shots of the ship (when they are flying through space) really look quite good.
They encounter some cool/funny man-in-suit monsters during their exploration of the lost planet. There are some pretty awesomely cheesy crab monsters, and some legitimately excellent bat monsters. These guys are the best. They have a stoop high up in the cave and just dive off. You see them fall just enough to know that they just splatted on the ground, but through the magic of editing they swoop through the air. For some reason it just cracked me up. It doesn't sound that exciting, but after slogging through the rest of this thing, it's a breath of fresh air. It's also the only time this film ever comes to life. And yes, it's one of the parts that is just recycled from another movie. I'm re-watching parts of it and you can really tell when there are American actors and non-American actors - I believe most of this was lifted from a Japanese caveman flick?
Notice what I enjoyed was mostly ironically. There is very little to actually like here. The tribal conflict is boring and hard to follow. I think we're supposed to be concerned about individual tribespeople and double crosses and the like, but NOTHING is done to differentiate any of the characters. And, as I've mentioned - so much poorly choreographed fighting.
There is a really annoying color scheme on the lost planet too. Because science, the atmosphere changes at the drop of a hat. This is visualized in the film by Adamson using annoying filters over the action. It doesn't look good at all. The only reason they would do this is so they wouldn't have to worry about all of the recycled footage matching up with their own. Just throw a filter over it and make up some BS about the atmosphere! It does get hyped up in the credits as "Color Effects by Spectrum-X" with all kinds of flashing lights. But the film just does nothing with it.
And there's all the other bad stuff you expect - bad/hammy acting, poor FX (ship in space excluded - although the ship landing is awesomely bad), poor sets. Even if you love old B-movies, you could do a lot better than this. I suppose it is a tad bit charming to see how much they could do with so little - and it's pretty clear that they weren't too concerned with making anything of quality. I can hear it now - "just make something, put Blood or Vampire in it, and those stupid teenagers will check it out. Or at least make out while it's on in the background." The bat scene is kind of awesome, but other than that there just isn't anything here.
I would not recommend this film.
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