Made at the height of the "Swinging Sixties," War of the Planets certainly looks its age when you consider the sets and wardrobe, but it's also relentlessly silly escapism. Here you have moving sidewalks (not unlike the ones in contemporary airports), glass-domed transportation vehicles which were obviously modeled on the cars in The Jetsons animated TV series, and rocket ships that are clearly toys on strings, blasting off from miniature sets. The film opens on December 31 in the distant future on a remote space station where the inhabitants are preparing to celebrate the new year. The festivities are abruptly terminated, however, by a distress signal which announces the flashing appearance of some weird extraterrestrial lights. Soon after, the space station is enveloped in a greenish fog and the partiers are transformed into instant mannequins, frozen in their last movement, whether it was pouring a cocktail or doing the frug on the dance floor. The culprits turn out to be the Diaphanois, a Martian race of incorporeal beings made of pure light. Not only do they have designs on the surviving astronauts at neighboring space stations but they also are committed to a master plan - world domination. The Earthlings, though, are a tough bunch and prove to be pretty unpredictable themselves. When laser guns fail, they use their fists!
Originally produced for Italian television as part of a quartet depicting the adventures of some outer space explorers aboard the Gamma I space station, War of the Planets is the second film in the series and not quite as delirious as its flamboyant predecessor, Wild, Wild Planet (1965). The original Italian title for War of the Planets was I Diafanoidi Vengono da Marte, and it's not to be confused with War Between the Planets, aka Il Pianeta Errante, which was also directed by Antonio Margheriti and was the third entry in the "Gamma I" series. In an interview conducted by Peter Blumenstock for Video Watchdog magazine, Margheriti recalled that the first two films in the quartet "went theatrical in the States through MGM....The intent was to do two for American TV and two for theatrical distribution in the States....It was a series called FANTASCIENZA. For everybody involved, it was a fun project, without any real stories or ideas, and the end results look exactly like that. It is strange to notice that so many fanzines all over the world are interested in them. I recently read in an American magazine some reviews and they liked them a lot. Maybe they are right; they were nice pictures for the science fiction films were not very common in those days and the audience appreciated a change. However, I think that's only true for real film buffs. The mainstream audience would only regard them as camp, at best." Indeed, Margheriti only had three months to shoot the entire series, including the postproduction, and it looks it. But that's part of its charm - the artificial backdrops, the cheap-looking control panels, the crummy special effects. It's also fun to see Franco Nero in one of his first films as a gung-ho astronaut. (The scene where the Martians serve him a lobster dinner is particularly goofy.) He would go on to become an international star after his performance as Sir Lancelot in Camelot(1967), Joshua Logan's film adaptation of the Broadway musical, and later earn a cult following for his spaghetti Westerns (Django, 1966; Keoma, 1976).
But unlike the spaghetti Western genre which flourished in Italy in the sixties and achieved international success, even influencing the look and style of such American Westerns as Hang 'Em High and High Plains Drifter, the Italian science fiction film remained a domestic phenomenon which had little impact outside Italy for obvious reasons; these films work better as retro fashion shows than fantasy adventures. Nevertheless, if you're not a science fiction film snob with little tolerance for low-budget space adventures, you just might succumb to the tacky allure of War of the Planets, which is crammed full of visual eye-candy and memorably bad English-dubbed dialogue. And here's a first - a space ballet performed by silver-suited astronauts and scored to an accordion version of "Auld Lang Syne." It ends with the "dancers" spelling out the words HAPPY NEW YEAR with their bodies. Busby Berkeley would be proud.
Producer: Joseph Fryd, Walter Manley, Antonio Margheriti
Director: Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony Dawson)
Cinematography: Riccardo Pallottini
Cast: Tony Russel, Lisa Gastoni, Massimo Serato, Franco Nero, Carlo Giustini, Michel Lemoine.
C-97m.
by Jeff Stafford
