Queen of Blood (1966)

Director: Curtis Harrington

Starring: John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Judi Meredith, Dennis Hopper, Florence Marly and Robert Boon

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: HIDEOUS BEYOND BELIEF... with an INHUMAN CRAVING

Plot: It's the year 1990 and scientists receive a distress call from an alien spaceship that has crash-landed on Mars. Dr Farraday (Rathbone) decides to send a team of astronauts, including Allan Brenner (Saxon) and Paul Grant (Hopper), on a rescue mission. On the planet, they discover just one survivor. This green-skinned alien is brought aboard, but when one man is attacked and drained of his blood, the survivors are soon racing home, before they too become victim to the bloodsucker.

My Rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? I kind of think I could

What a lovely surprise! Besides seeing Saxon and Hopper in early roles and the always great Rathbone, QUEEN OF BLOOD has FANTASTIC special effects courtesy of two Russian sci-fi films Roger Corman bought and lifted heavily from to make his own films. The special effects are outstanding.






Naturally the newly filmed stuff with the actors had to match the look of the Ruskie material so the rest of the film looks really neat, too. The color scheme, futuristic clothing, sets, music, etc are right up my ally. And the story? Pretty damn cool. It's got a STAR TREK TV, MARS ATTACKS and ALIEN vibe that works for me. Oh, and the ultra cool main title paintings are by John Cline. Combine those images with the slow, moody, theremin theme by Leon Smith. Except for a couple of WTF happy music moments, his score is right on.

Doesn't Saxon look like a Gerry Anderson marionette?

Florence Marly plays the silent but deadly alien queen. She's got that hot, creepy thing going on that works really well. The only thing that could have made her character better? That's right. Topless.


The problem? The middle 30 minutes (the picture's only 81 minutes long) drags but once you get to the first kill, it's all downhill from there and moves pretty quickly. It's really a lot of fun and the widescreen print I saw looks fantastic for such a grade-Z picture like this one.