It's the year 1990 and scientific receive a distress call , a SOS , from an alien spaceship . As a ball contains a videolog of the events that caused their ship to crashland on Mars . After the crash-landed on Mars , Dr Farraday (Basil Rathbone) decides to send out a team of astronauts , including Allan Brenner (John Saxon) , Paul Grant (Dennis Hopper), Laura James (Judi Meredith) , among others, on a rescue mission. On the planet, they discover just one survivor , this is a green-skinned alien woman that is brought aboard, a peculiar vampire whom they call 'the Queen' and they decide to keep her under observation . The spaceship is ordered to bring back the alien creature . As the crew takes special care of her on the trip back to Earth but she is brought back with disastrous results , as at the end an astronaut is holding some alien eggs . New highs in blood chilling horror ! Hideous beyond belief...with an inhuman craving ¡
It's a formula terror space film with tension , thrills , chills, including some elaborate scares , twists , and results to be entertaining enough . This nifty sci-fi/horror has a thrilling plot , if simple and ordinary , similar to subsequent Sci-Fi- movies , as alien species makes contact with Earth through radio transmission, notifying of an imminent visit , a rescue team goes Mars and discover a strange extraterrestrial , 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 . At the beginning shows up some colorful paintings belonging to the artistry of John Douglas Cline, a popular artist in the 1960, forerunner of the Phoenix Art Group, and he founded the John Douglas Cline Gallery in Los Angeles. If you've ever seen the soviet film Niebo Zowiet don't be surprised if some scenes look familiar , the script was written around segments cut from that film . This was an ultra low budget production with decent special effects taken from two big budget Soviet productions , Encounter in space (1963), and Battle Beyond the Sun (1959), though Harrington estimated that most of the film was his. Producers Roger Corman and his brother Gene Corman made a similar operation, as economic as rip-off from a Russian film , with ¨Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet¨also starred by Basil Rathbone . And being released on a double-bill by AIP along with other B-Science Fiction pictures . Acceptable main and support cast , such as : the recently deceased John Saxon , the beautiful Judi Meredith , the great Sherlock's Basil Rathbone and the Czech actress Florence Marly as the beguiling green-skinned woman who was a personal friend of filmmaker Harrington. In the final shot, a cameo by Forrest J. Ackerman, at the time, Ackerman was the editor of the magazine "Famous Monsters¨. Queen of Blood has most often been compared to ¨Lifeforce¨ (1985) by Tobe Hooper and many films have received some inspiration from his feature ¨Queen of Blood¨, as the expensive ¨Alien¨ (1979) by Ridley Scott . Other movies that have been likened to Queen of Blood include ¨The Thing from Another World¨ (1951) by Christian Niby , ¨It! The Terror from Beyond Space¨(1958) by Edward L. Cahn , ¨Terrore nello spazio or Planet of vampires¨ (1965) by Mario Bava and other quickies or sequels as ¨Forbidden world¨(1981) by Allan Holzman or ¨Galaxy of Terror¨(1985) by Bruce Clark . The picture was regular but professionally directed by Curtis Harrington , and it was shot in seven to eight days . Harrington was a good craftsman in B-territory . In 1961 he made a strong and impressive feature-film debut with the nicely moody and quirky Night tide (1961) with Dennis Hooper. His follow-up features were a pleasingly diverse , idiosyncratic and often entertaining bunch , and included the delightfully campy Shelley Winters vehicles as Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972) , What's the Matter with Helen? (1971) ,the perverse The Killing Kind (1973) and the immensely fun Ruby (1977). Moreover , Harrington directed a handful of solid and satisfying made-for-TV offerings: The cat (1973), Killer bees (1974), The Dead Don't Die (1975) and the terror animal Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978) , as well as TV episodes from The Twilight Zone, The Colby , Dynasty , Wonder woman , Hotel , among others .
