NOTE: The below 4K UHD and Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the respective discs.

ADDITION: Radiance 4K UHD (November 2026): Radiance have transferred Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires to 4K UHD. This uses the same 2015 restoration from the original 35mm negative that sourced their 2024 Blu-ray, reviewed HERE. It is now in 2160P with HDR10 and Dolby Vision on a dual-layered disc. Both the Italian and English versions are seamlessly branched and share nearly all the same footage, so each runs at a consistent video bitrate almost 2 1/2 times that of the Blu-ray. The image is film-like throughout, with a tight, well-resolved grain structure that never becomes noisy, even in the fog-drenched exteriors. Close-ups are where the 4K shines. You can see every crease and pore in the faces, beads of sweat on foreheads, individual strands of the women’s hair, and the stitching and sheen of the black leather uniforms with their gold piping. Bava’s palette is gorgeous. The blue-lit fog surrounding the two women, the crimson-suited explorers moving through the green-and-violet alien landscape, and the red rock walls behind the helmeted close-up all look vivid without seeming pushed. The ship interiors have a cool steel-grey cast, and the console lights glow like jewels. Black levels are deep and true, which gives the frame real depth, and the textures of the miniatures and props, such as the sand-crusted giant skull, look more tangible than ever. Compared with the Blu-ray, the 4K UHD is crisper, cooler and better balanced (I could have taken captures all day,) without the slight purple/magenta lean of the 1080P. This is a superb presentation, and it surpasses the already excellent Blu-ray.

It is likely that the monitor you are seeing this review on is not an HDR-compatible display (High Dynamic Range) or Dolby Vision, where each pixel can be assigned with a wider and notably granular range of color and light. Our capture software is simulating the HDR (in a uniform manner) for standard monitors. This should make it easier for us to review more 4K UHD titles in the future and give you a decent idea of its attributes on your system. So our captures may not support the exact same colors (coolness of skin tones, brighter or darker hues etc.) as the 4K system at your home. But the framing, detail, grain texture support etc. are, generally, not affected by this simulation representation

NOTE: We have added 56 more large resolution 4K UHD captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

The audio on the 4K UHD is identical to Radiance’s 2024 Blu-ray. There are DTS-HD Master dual-mono tracks (24-bit) in the original Italian or the English DUB. The third option is the English version with Kendall Schmidt’s alternate synthesizer score, also in DTS-HD Master 2.0 but at 16-bit. Gino Marinuzzi Jr.’s eerie, electronic-tinged score sounds wonderfully atmospheric in lossless, and the space-ship and ray-gun effects come through with clarity. Radiance include two optional English subtitle tracks, a translation of the Italian dialogue and English SDH, on their Region FREE 4K UHD.

Radiance's 4K UHD includes one supplement: the archival commentary by Tim Lucas (Throat Sprockets, Pause. Rewind. Obsess. One Man’s One Year Escape into Cinema) recorded on July 30th, 2014, which would have been Mario Bava’s 100th birthday. Lucas covers the roughly $200,000 budget, Bava’s in-camera effects created with his father Eugenio and Carlo Rambaldi, the differences between versions, the multilingual cast and the dubbing, and much more. It is still essential listening. The included Blu-ray is the same disc as Radiance’s 2024 release; its M2TS files carry the April 2024 date. It retains the commentary, Transmissions from a Haunted World, the 41-minute 2024 documentary by Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger, and the archival interview with Lamberto Bava (a dozen minutes). It also has the 17-minute Super 8 reconstruction of Planet der Vampire in Italian and English, the Joe Dante and Josh Olson trailer commentaries (just over 6 minutes combined), a trailer, and a press and image gallery from the Tim Lucas / Alan Y. Upchurch collection. The limited edition of 3,000 copies comes in a rigid box with full-height Scanavo cases and a removable OBI strip. It adds a 20-page booklet with a new translation of Renato Pestriniero’s original short story, alongside the 80-page book (Kyle Anderson, Martyn Conterio, Barry Forshaw, George Daniel Lea and Jerome Reuter), six postcards, and a reversible sleeve with Time Tomorrow artwork.

Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires was co-financed by AIP and Fulvio Lucisano's Italian International Film, with Ib Melchior (The Time Travelers, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Journey to the Seventh Planet, Reptilicus, The Angry Red Planet, Live Fast, Die Young,) adapting Renato Pestriniero's short story. The crews of the Argos and the Galliott answer a distress signal from the fog-shrouded planet Aura, only to be hypnotically possessed and driven to murder by an unseen alien force, and the dead do not stay buried. Barry Sullivan (Cry of the Hunted, Forty Guns, Queen Bee, Strategic Air Command, The Miami Story, The Bad and the Beautiful, Cause for Alarm!, Framed, The Great Gatsby, Payment on Demand, Jeopardy, Tension,) brings his Hollywood noir gravitas to Captain Markary, the only English-speaking performer in a multilingual cast. Brazilian star Norma Bengell (The Hellbenders,) played Sanya, speaking her lines in Portuguese, and Evi Marandi (Paris When It Sizzles,) played Tiona in Italian. The film's influence on Ridley Scott's Alien is often cited, but it remains very much Bava's own: Gothic horror in black leather spacesuits, conjured almost entirely in-camera on a budget of about $200,000 with miniatures, mirrors, colored gels and dry-ice fog. It seems as if he could make an effective genre film with a broken lava-lamp. Bava (Rabid Dogs, Lisa and the Devil, Baron Blood, A Bay of Blood, Roy Colt & Winchester Jack, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Five Dolls for an August Moon, Danger: Diabolik, Kill, Baby... Kill!, Blood and Black Lace, The Whip and the Body, Black Sabbath, Erik the Conqueror, Hercules in the Haunted World, Black Sunday, Caltiki, the Immortal Monster,) was a cinematographer first, and every frame shows it. The film has a desirable pulpy feel that would be hard to duplicate on purpose. Radiance's 4K UHD presents the 2015 restoration in HDR/Dolby Vision. Both the Italian and English versions are seamlessly branched at a bitrate almost 2 1/2 times that of their Blu-ray, with tighter grain, crisper detail, deeper blacks and a more balanced palette. The Tim Lucas commentary is still essential listening. The included 2024 Blu-ray carries over the Transmissions from a Haunted World documentary, the Lamberto Bava interview, the Super 8 reconstruction and more. The limited edition of 3,000 adds a booklet with a new translation of Renato Pestriniero's original story, all in a handsome rigid box. This is the definitive presentation of one of the most influential science-fiction / horror films ever made, and this 4K UHD is a keeper!

NOTE: While not totally related - I do intend to get a copy of the Planet of Vampires comic book HERE.

Gary Tooze