QUEEN OF BLOOD. Sci-Fi Film That Inspired “Alien”

Queen of Blood is not as good as its more famous successors, but it’s still worth watching. The year is 1990. Twenty years earlier, humans landed on the Moon and built manned space stations there, and now they’re preparing for the exploration of Venus and Mars. Laura James, an astronaut from the International Institute of Space Technology, has been receiving strange signals from space for some time. The message comes from an alien race planning to send an ambassador to Earth.

However, the alien ship crashes on Mars, so humanity dispatches a rescue mission composed of Laura, Brockman, and Grant. After landing on the Red Planet, they find the alien crew dead — but it seems someone may have escaped in a rescue capsule to Phobos, one of Mars’ moons. Two astronauts travel from Earth to Phobos and find an unconscious but still living alien; one of them brings her back to Mars. The astronauts receive orders to take the alien to Earth — but the extraterrestrial turns out to be lethally dangerous.

In the 1960s, American International Pictures and Roger Corman initiated a peculiar trend in cinema: they acquired the rights to Soviet science fiction films and used parts of them (especially those with special effects) in their own productions. This unique kind of cinematic sampling led to titles such as Battle Beyond the Sun (1962) by F.

F. Coppola [based on The Sky Calls (1959) by Mikhail Karyukov and Aleksandr Kozyr], Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) by Curtis Harrington, and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) by Peter Bogdanovich [both based on Planet of Storms (1962) by Pavel Klushantsev]. Queen of Blood is a kind of remake of A Dream Come True (1963) by Mikhail Karyukov and Otar Koberidze, with scenes “borrowed” from the aforementioned The Sky Calls. Harrington shot the film in a week on a $65,000 budget, with a cast that included John Saxon, Judi Meredith, Basil Rathbone, Florence Marly, Dennis Hopper, and Robert Boon. It’s astonishing how well Queen of Blood presents itself despite such a low budget: the Soviet footage is not only thoughtfully integrated but used quite sparingly (just a few sequences), and the rest, shot by the Americans, looks solid — never cheap.

Of course, it’s a B-movie, so don’t expect fireworks (or any remotely accurate science, especially concerning interplanetary travel), but there are a few elements that are genuinely impressive: the interiors of the spacecraft, the red of Mars set against the blackness of space, the rocket entering orbit and landing. Another major strength is Florence Marly’s performance as the green-skinned, mute alien: the Czech actress effectively conveyed the unearthly, enigmatic aura surrounding the character, and the scenes featuring her are among the best in the film. It’s also interesting how closely the alien resembles the Martian woman from Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! (1996). Even more surprising is how Queen of Blood brings to mind later science fiction films such as Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985). In fact, Harrington was convinced that the makers of Alien had to have been inspired by his film, because — as he noted himself — “Ridley’s movie is like a much better, more expensive, and more elaborate version of Queen of Blood.” The similarities are real [though not as striking as in the case of Planet of the Vampires (1965) by Mario Bava]: both films follow the crew of a spaceship lured by an SOS signal to a crashed alien vessel, where they bring aboard a deadly creature that begins picking them off one by one, ultimately laying eggs. That said, Queen of Blood isn’t entirely original either, as Harrington himself drew inspiration from earlier films — notably It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) by Edward L. Cahn.