Queen Of Blood (1966)

Background: Queen Of Blood is a bit of an oddity. It was made in 1966 with almost no budget. Because of these monetary restrictions, many of the scenes in the movie are lifted from two Soviet movies, Mechte Navstrechu and Nebo Zovyot. The former got little attention stateside, but the latter was released stateside as Battle Beyond The Sun. Roger Corman picked up the rights to the American release (naturally) and tasked young up-and-coming film student Francis Ford Coppola (perhaps you've heard of him) with Americanizing it. Not only did he get rid of all the Anti-American propaganda, but he also added a few new scenes with two martians, intentionally created to look like genitalia. Because it was the '60s, and it was Roger Corman, that's why.

The American cast of Queen of Blood is actually fairly intriguing. First listed is John Saxon, who most people will know as the cocky white guy from Enter The Dragon. Joining him is Basil Rathbone, long time Sherlock Holmes from the series of movies from the '40s. Rounding out the big names is Dennis Hopper, probably best known as King Koopa from Super Mario Bros. Also other, better things.

Plot: This movie starts at the Space Institute (that's right, Space Institute) in the far flung future of 1990. Man has set up space stations on the moon by now and the Space Institue is picking up a mysterious signal. The scientists at the Space Institute (I can't stop saying it because it's so ridiculous) have picked up a mysterious signal. It sounds like mostly random noise, but they think it might be a message from an alien race. And they're right! Codebreakers figured out that it meant that they're going to send an ambassador to Earth.

Problems arise when the alien ship never makes it to Earth, but rather crash lands on Mars instead. The Space Institute sends a rescue team over, but that hits some problems too. They run into a massive sunburst and it jostles their ship around long enough to make one crew member pass out and burns more fuel than expected. They do find the ship that lands, but it only contains one dead passenger.

The fuel situation on the Earth ship means they have to send another crew to lend a hand. That ship lands on Phobos, a moon of Mars, where they find another ship that crashed there. This one has a living passenger, a green skinned girl with gold hair. Not like golden blonde, but actually shiny, metalic gold. They bring her over to Mars to help the first ship, where she kills a crew member and drinks his blood. Because she's the Queen Of Blood! Get it? They figure out that she drinks blood and they feed her from the ship's supply of plasma (You travel with buckets of blood in your car, don't you?). When that runs out, shit gets real.

Why Was It Forgotten? Because of the nature of the film, being culled from multiple sources with varying budgets, it is a tremendously uneven watch. The Soviet parts are typical of Soviet sci-fi of the time, reminiscent of Andrey Tarkovskly's films. Those scenes are deliberately paced and very moody, big sets and colored lighting. The american parts however, are filmed on crummy sound stages on cheap sets with a few flashing lights on control panels. Though they look way worse, the American scenes are filmed on much much better film stock than their soviet counterparts. This creates a very jarring shift when the film goes back and forth from Soviet to American. In the most egregious of these examples, a wide shot will be of the soviet footage and then it will go to a close up from America, on a set that only vaguely resembles the wide shot.

It's a shame the general crumminess of the visuals from America are in such stark contrast with the foreign scenes. Throwing a few extra dollars at some real sets would have gone a long way to making this movie a lot more watchable. There are also a few times where it's obvious that they had spare footage from the Soviet films and just wanted to use it to pad out the story.

What Went Right? Well, the story might be fairly generic, but the visuals from the Soviet films are striking and moody. I loved every moment they were on the screen. They were rich and varied with interesting lighting and a certain deliberateness to the pacing that the American parts of the movie are missing. It's just a shame that the entire movie couldn't have had the same production values as these parts.

That said, there is a certain campy charm to the local scenes. The budget sets and hammy acting may be an acquired taste, but I, like many others, grew up watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The messy but fun attitude is just another way the two sources of this movie are so disjointed, but on the whole, this movie is a pretty fun watch.

Verdict: Like watching two movies at the same time, what a value!

Score: 85%

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