Excellent ALIEN precursor is yet another take on the PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES school of post Eisenhower sci-fi that always tells the tale of a humanoid space crew who follows an eerie, alien signal to a mysterious world shrouded in storms where they encounter an Alien life form that invariably tags along for a ride home. IT! TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE is the earliest example of the story I can think of, Antonio Margheriti had a go at the idea in his GAMMA ONE QUADROLIGY films (all of them have hintings of the story cycle in one form or another), then Mario Bava made his stunning 1965 film, a movie so ahead of it's time that even now it doesn't suffer from age.
QUEEN OF BLOOD does, but in a good old nostalgic kind of way, rather than just being klunky and old fashioned like IT! Like Margheriti's neato flicks with their model space ships and Captain Video space corps, QUEEN OF BLOOD has a visual appeal to it that is decidedly different than Bava's arty, swirling hallucination. John Saxon and Dennis Hopper play two of the crew of a human ship sent in the year 1990 (yep! just 24 years ahead of when it was made, an optimistic idea if ever) to look for survivors of an Alien mission to Earth which crashed on Mars. Basil Rathbone is sharp and enunciates with his usual flair as the lead scientist of the Earth Space Corps Interplanetary division, or whatever, who directs the mission from a control panel on an auxiliary stage. He also lends credibility and class to what is really a cobbled together production combining footage from at least TWO Russian made sci fi epics from the early 1960's with some low budget but strikingly effective film shot on real world locations or soundstages that re-define the Russian footage to tell this story.
And while it may sound confusing the end result is almost seamless, not so much padding out the American film so much as serving as the framework upon which the story is woven. The film has a very rich feel for color and texture, especially with how the planet side footage works during the big rescue scenes. It is ten times more effective than the modern day budgeted recent efforts like RED PLANET and MISSION TO MARS in making the viewer feel like they are on a different world and not just watching actors in suits in front of a blue screen. The crew find a survivor, it's a she, she has an amazing bod & interesting lips, and eventually she starts draining the blood of the crew during their trip home for reasons that are never really explained. By the time they get home though, she has died after apparently spawning a Jello Egg Mould Delight complete with gross, giggly little somethings that are promptly scooped up by the military scientists upon landing on Earth. Dan O'Bannon has never cited this film as one of his influences, but he must have seen it and drew upon what he saw for his ALIEN script, eventually.
The film also sets or reinforces some important story conventions that became staples of the ALIEN litany: The mixed gender crew, the importance of mealtimes (as always to be consumed off modular looking trays with oddly shaped utensils that look like dentistry tools), and the inhospitable nature of space as the crew don their pressure suits to conserve resources or suffocate. There is a burial at space, an emergency landing, a sequence involving a ship's log, specialized medical technology and a space ship that becomes a haunted house. Saxon and Hopper are excellent, Richard Boone comes off well as the captain of the ill fated mission, but the real star of the film is probably the combination of the Russian and American footage -- a bizarre sort of social accommodation for 1966 to say the least. It's also relatively short (83 minutes or so) and half over before you know it.
One curious link to later films involving the ALIEN litany are the green giggly Jello eggs -- Luigi Cozzi must have been thinking about them when he made his splatter extravaganza ALIEN CONTAMINATION, which also has nasty, viscous spewing green pod things that spit death. It's sort of nice to imagine one as the evolution of the other, though fans of model and costume 1960s sci-fi might find Cozzi's zest for slime a bit heady. You can find that QUEEN OF BLOOD DVD through amazon.co.uk, look for a seller who will ship to the US but make sure you have a machine that will run their DVDs. It's worth it, and you won't wear out the VHS wheels on a precious old rental tape by playing it over and over and over again.
7/10. Excellent, actually!!
QUEEN OF BLOOD does, but in a good old nostalgic kind of way, rather than just being klunky and old fashioned like IT! Like Margheriti's neato flicks with their model space ships and Captain Video space corps, QUEEN OF BLOOD has a visual appeal to it that is decidedly different than Bava's arty, swirling hallucination. John Saxon and Dennis Hopper play two of the crew of a human ship sent in the year 1990 (yep! just 24 years ahead of when it was made, an optimistic idea if ever) to look for survivors of an Alien mission to Earth which crashed on Mars. Basil Rathbone is sharp and enunciates with his usual flair as the lead scientist of the Earth Space Corps Interplanetary division, or whatever, who directs the mission from a control panel on an auxiliary stage. He also lends credibility and class to what is really a cobbled together production combining footage from at least TWO Russian made sci fi epics from the early 1960's with some low budget but strikingly effective film shot on real world locations or soundstages that re-define the Russian footage to tell this story.
And while it may sound confusing the end result is almost seamless, not so much padding out the American film so much as serving as the framework upon which the story is woven. The film has a very rich feel for color and texture, especially with how the planet side footage works during the big rescue scenes. It is ten times more effective than the modern day budgeted recent efforts like RED PLANET and MISSION TO MARS in making the viewer feel like they are on a different world and not just watching actors in suits in front of a blue screen. The crew find a survivor, it's a she, she has an amazing bod & interesting lips, and eventually she starts draining the blood of the crew during their trip home for reasons that are never really explained. By the time they get home though, she has died after apparently spawning a Jello Egg Mould Delight complete with gross, giggly little somethings that are promptly scooped up by the military scientists upon landing on Earth. Dan O'Bannon has never cited this film as one of his influences, but he must have seen it and drew upon what he saw for his ALIEN script, eventually.
The film also sets or reinforces some important story conventions that became staples of the ALIEN litany: The mixed gender crew, the importance of mealtimes (as always to be consumed off modular looking trays with oddly shaped utensils that look like dentistry tools), and the inhospitable nature of space as the crew don their pressure suits to conserve resources or suffocate. There is a burial at space, an emergency landing, a sequence involving a ship's log, specialized medical technology and a space ship that becomes a haunted house. Saxon and Hopper are excellent, Richard Boone comes off well as the captain of the ill fated mission, but the real star of the film is probably the combination of the Russian and American footage -- a bizarre sort of social accommodation for 1966 to say the least. It's also relatively short (83 minutes or so) and half over before you know it.
One curious link to later films involving the ALIEN litany are the green giggly Jello eggs -- Luigi Cozzi must have been thinking about them when he made his splatter extravaganza ALIEN CONTAMINATION, which also has nasty, viscous spewing green pod things that spit death. It's sort of nice to imagine one as the evolution of the other, though fans of model and costume 1960s sci-fi might find Cozzi's zest for slime a bit heady. You can find that QUEEN OF BLOOD DVD through amazon.co.uk, look for a seller who will ship to the US but make sure you have a machine that will run their DVDs. It's worth it, and you won't wear out the VHS wheels on a precious old rental tape by playing it over and over and over again.
7/10. Excellent, actually!!