Director:
Curtis Harrington
Writer:
Curtis Harrington
Cast:
John Saxon, Dennis Hopper, Florence Marly, Judi Meredith, Basil Rathbone
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Run Time: 81 minutes
Summary:
In 1990, an alien ship crash lands on Mars. A rescue ship is sent out to see if there are any survivors. There is only one: an unconscious woman whose skin has a strange green pallor. On the trip back to Earth, the woman awakens and starts killing the crew one by one by sucking their blood. She’s an alien vampire!
HIDEOUS BEYOND BELIEF… with an INHUMAN CRAVING
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGkLMDaEnNk[/youtube]
The 1966 B-Movie classic, Queen of Blood has recently been released on DVD as a part of MGM‘s Limited Edition Collection. The film stars Basil Rathbone as Dr. Faraday, John Saxon as Allen Brenner, a young Dennis Hopper as Paul Grant, Judi Meredith as Laura James, Robert Boon as Anders Brockman, Don Eitner as Tony Barrata and Florence Marly as the titular Alien Queen.
One of the interesting facts about Queen of Blood is that the low budget production was, much like fan trailers today, a mashup of special effects shots from already existing Soviet films and this new story was weaved throughout. Especially considering this was put together in 1966, it was done very well but, not surprisingly because it was done by American International Pictures and producer Roger Corman, who was a bit of a visionary in the days of creating this process.
Queen of Blood is set in the futuristic time of 1990, where we have colonized the Moon.While pondering whether or not we are alone in the universe, an alien planet contacts earth and announces that theya re sending an ambassador to Earth. During the Ambassador’s trip, his craft crash lands on Mars and sends an S.O.S. to Earth. Dr. Faraday (Rathbone) sends Paul Grant (Hopper), Anders Brockman (Boon) and Laura (Meredith) to investigate the crash. When the crew arrives, they find the alien spacecraft and a dead alien however, the escape pod is missing and there is no sign of the rest of the crew. Allen Brenner (Saxon) and Tony Barrata (Eitner) are then sent to the Martian Moon, Phobos with plans to launch a rescue ship from the red planet’s moon to Mars in order to search other parts of the planet for additional survivors.
Once they reach Phobos, Brenner and Barrata discover an additional alien ship which has crash landed. This ship contains a green-skinned female (Florence Marly) who turns out to be something of an alien vampire, as she ends up draining the blood from a crew member of the rescue shop that’s attempting to transport her to safety. The crew then decides to give her the plasma they have aboard the ship, in order to satisfy her blood-lust, but with days left to go in their return trip to Earth, the plasma supply is running out.
The video and audio quality are really about what you would expect for a move of this age and (ahem!) caliber, and quite frankly if it were in 1080p High-Def and looked “perfect”, it would likely take away from some of the charm of a classic B-Movie like this. There are no special features available on the disc, as it is a made-on-demand DVD. If you’ve never purchased a made-on-demand DVD, don’t let that moniker discourage you, it simply means that the film is put on disc when you order it, and allows the studios to offer less blockbuster-type movies to still be available to bring home on DVD.
Queen of Blood is a great sci-fi/horror B-Movie, chock-full of schlocky dialogue and preposterous situations, while still offering a bit of tension and great acting by a few cinema legends of yesteryear.
I give Queen of Blood Three out of Five Stars.
[AMAZONPRODUCT=B004RPQSVE]
