Queen of Blood (1966)
A slave uprising on Stheno, the restoration of the royal family of the hated Hyadean Empire, countless minor infractions within the Bellatrixian Empire, and this spaceship captain, Nebuleena, is always involved somehow. Athena, the Amazon queen of Bellatrix, has developed a niggling dislike for Nebuleena. Her Victorious Majesty has been personally setting traps for the Silver Swift all over the colonised systems. Finally, she had her in her grasp on the opulent vacation planet Cornucopia, but now Nebuleena has her trapped in the hold of the Silver Swift, screaming curses and swearing oaths of punishment.
Nebuleena could hardly care less about the Amazon's comically crude attempts to capture her. She sits at the console, activates the stardrive, and the Silver Swift leaves the Capella system behind.
Premise
'The year; 1990. The problem of travelling to the Moon has been solved for many years,' says the optimistic opening narration of Queen of Blood. And here we are, thirty-five years after this movie is set, and we still haven't set a human boot on the Moon since 1972.Queen of Blood begins with Laura James, an astro communications technician, receiving signals from another planetary system. Dr Farraday interrupts everyone's lunch break to announce that the aliens are sending an ambassador to Earth. Meanwhile, on a distant world on which the occupants have an aesthetic primarily inspired by spheres, they launch a sphere-shaped spaceship full of sphere-shaped instruments from a sphere-shaped habitat. Anyone not doing their job will be spherely punished. (Sorry!) A spherical mechanical probe arrives on Earth, which turns out to be a kind of black box, containing a video log showing that the alien vessel crashed on Mars, suggesting they could use a hand not dying, if you've got a moment.
The ship passes through a 'sunburst', a phenomenon that I can find no real-world equivalent of, but which manifests as a bit of a light show and a stock sound effect you'll have heard a dozen times before, usually as spaceship laser cannons. The Oceano detects the alien vessel and lands on Mars, during which procedure it becomes a different rocketship. More on that later. Brockman and Grant investigate the crashed starship. One dead alien crewman is discovered.
Luckily, on Phobos, the Meteor's crew glance out of a porthole and see the alien rescue ship right there, on Phobos, so looking for it on Mars with the observation satellite is a bit pointless. Within the ship, they find an alien woman, who passes out soon after seeing them. They take her back to the Meteor.
To quote a Disney princess, 'Some rescue! When you came in here you never planned for getting out.'
Barrata loses the coin toss using his own lucky coin, so Brenner and the still unconscious alien lady leave for Mars, and eventually get to the Oceano.
The green alien woman refuses food and does not speak, and apparently has a phobia of needles, and will not allow a blood sample to be taken.
While the others sleep, Paul Grant wanders the ship, and the mysterious alien hypnotises him with glowing eyes and drinks his blood.
I won't spoil who survives, but, if you know the rules of cinema, you'll probably already have placed your bets by this point. The way the alien queen is overcome is so mundane it betrays how small a threat she was. I will spoil the shock ending, though. So, if you want the full impact, read the next paragraph with your eyes closed.
The alien queen has hidden her eggs in the spacecraft! They're not presented to us as undetected, waiting to unleash the alien's vampiric brood upon an unsuspecting humanity. They're found, and knowingly taken to Earth. Then we see them being carried from the Oceano, wobbling on a tray like little jellys. Had we earlier been introduced to the young of this alien species, and if they'd been fast, deadly leech-like monsters, perhaps we'd care. But because we know the adult of the species is fairly vulnerable and unthreatening, it's only the knowledge of how inept the humans of this vision of 1990 are that makes this ending at all ominous.
Cast and Crew
Writer and director Curtis Harrington had found recognition for supernatural fantasy Night Tide (1961), and it's due to this that budget filmmaker Roger Corman chose to give him this movie. Corman financed the movie, but is not credited. Harrington does a great job, creating a brooding atmosphere when needed. However, much of the credit can't go to Harrington, specifically for the special effects, which we'll discuss later. He directed many horror films and episodes of television shows after this.Czech-born French actress Florence Marly has no dialogue as the vampiric alien, but she does much with a malevolent grin and feline movements. She had a variety of roles in film from the thirties to the seventies. She penned a sequel to this movie called Space Boy, released in 1973.
If there's a main protagonist, it's surely Laura, played by Judi Meredith. The story is really hers, as she receives the alien signal, is part of the original crew of the Oceano, and is pivotal in defeating the alien queen. She plays her character as calm, intelligent and capable. Meredith had one further film role and several appearances on television after this, but retired from acting in 1973.
John Saxon plays Laura's fiancé, Allan. Saxon is probably best known for co-starring alongside Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon (1973), but he would be a familiar face on the big and small screens throughout the seventies and eighties.
Dennis Hopper plays Paul Grant, the first victim of the alien queen. Hopper had worked with James Dean in the fifties and his first starring role was in another Curtis Harrington movie, the aforementioned Night Tide. He was a common feature in westerns, but Easy Rider (1969), which he co-wrote, directed, and in which he co-starred, earned him acclaim. Hopper does here what's required of him, but his part doesn't call for the manic energy or deep reflection we know he can deliver.
The great star of stage and screen, Basil Rathbone, plays Dr Farraday. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and was the Sherlock Holmes for a generation of cinema-goers, having appeared as the character fourteen times from 1939 to 1946. He had a long career in film, mostly in historical movies. He's always great, even in films as trashy as this.
Robert Boon and Don Eitner both bring self-assuredness to their respective roles as Anders Brockman and Tony Barrata. They had long careers in film and television.
Music is from frequent Roger Corman collaborator and B movie favourite Ronald Stein, albeit credited under the pseudonym Leonard Morand, and he does solid work.
Design
For all the problems I have with Queen of Blood, I think it looks great. All the internal sets look mostly fine. Perhaps a bit flimsy, but that's the era. For the most impressive work, we have to look at craftsmen farther east, and answer the question of why a rocket flying through space looks completely different on the surface of Mars.Roger Corman, cinema's master recycler, had acquired the US distribution rights to soviet films Nebo Zovyot (1959) and Mechte Navstrechu (1963), of which the latter roughly follows the plot of the first half of Queen of Blood, the rescue of an alien from Mars. Curtis Harrington was tasked with structuring a movie around the special effects shots from those two soviet films. The haunting extraterrestrial spaceships and Martian landscapes, as well as the cool rescue ship from the Meteor, all come from Mechte Navstrechu. The beautiful, sleek silver Oceano is from Nebo Zovyot. When the Oceano lands on Mars near the alien spacecraft, well that couldn't be the same as the Oceano we'd seen previously, because the shot was from a different movie.
They all look great, though. The spherical themes of the aliens' vessels and technology are truly otherworldly. I'm a sucker for a rocketship, and the Oceano design from Nebo Zovyot is among my favourites. Not as fine as the Kosmoskrator from The Silent Star/First Spaceship on Venus, but very good. Everything taken from those soviet films is stunning.
Conclusion
There's much to like about Queen of Blood. The acting and style are all good. But it has issues. One, certainly, is that it feels like two different narratives welded together, because, essentially, it is. And each half has its own problems.The first half, the rescue from Mars, feels needlessly complicated, and contrived to be so. The goals are vague, and I never felt any tension or threat. It's like an excuse to use as many as possible of the effects shots from the soviet films used to construct it. If the rescue mission is to take off from the Moon, have the signal picked up on the Moon, or at least have the important characters already there, to save time. Passing through the so-called 'sunburst' has no impact on anything. The hijinks with the second alien ship being on Phobos just prolongs the story.
The second half is hardly tension building. The vampiric alien is certainly enigmatic, but ultimately not threatening. The characters' attitude to the discovery that their passenger is a ruthless parasite is too casually matter-of-fact, and she proves unusually vulnerable. The eggs discovered near the end of the film don't fill one with dread. They look as though there'd be good with cream.
The movie is soaked in atmosphere, and that makes it reasonable entertainment. Curtis Harrington is on record as having said it may have been part of the inspiration for Alien (1979), and perhaps, but I doubt it had more than a passing influence. Alien screenplay writer Dan O'Bannon may have seen it and said, 'This, but with an actually frightening alien threat.'
Nebuleena's Thoughts
'The Queen of Blood wouldn't stand a chance against the Devil Girl from Mars. It's like having Dracula aboard your ship if he were a stoner who just wanted to lounge around with a supply of dumb humans for when the munchies kick in. Now, I've got some trash in the hold to eject over the Garbage Mountains of Skat.'All screenshots of Queen of Blood taken by me for purposes of review. If you dispute the fair use of these images, contact me at ptbyrdie@gmail.com.
Interesting
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