Queen of Blood (1966)

... aka: Flight to a Far Planet
... aka: Green Woman, The
... aka: Planeta sangriento (Bloody Planet)
... aka: Planet of Blood
... aka: Space Vampires

Directed by:
Curtis Harrington
Mikhail Karzhukov (uncredited: Soviet footage)
Otar Koberidze (uncredited: Soviet footage)
Aleksandr Kozyr (uncredited: Soviet footage)

I originally had another movie planned for today but I've got to take a slight detour to pay tribute to John Saxon, who passed away yesterday at the age of 84. The Brooklyn-born former teen model was discovered on the cover of a magazine and immediately signed by a talent agent who got him into TV and film right away. After doing a number of bit parts, most famously in A Star is Born (1954), he advanced to playing juvenile delinquents and supporting roles in Hollywood films, even netting a 1958 Golden Globe Award for "Most Promising Newcomer - Male" in the process. However, 'A List' stardom didn't quite pan out and he ended up embarking on an international B movie career in the 1960s while also becoming a frequent guest star on various television shows. His first genre work was the male lead in Mario Bava's THE EVIL EYE (1963), which is considered by many to be the first giallo and led to him having a decades-long association with Italian films (Saxon himself was fluent in Italian). He would then go on to work for some of the biggest names in Italian horror, including Dario Argento (TENEBRAE), Sergio Martino (THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS), Antonio Margheriti (CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE), Umberto Lenzi (NIGHTMARE BEACH) and others. In addition, he made genre films in the UK (1965's NIGHT CALLER FROM OUTER SPACE (1965), Mexico (1978's The Bees), Canada (1974's extremely influential BLACK CHRISTMAS) and elsewhere.

Saxon is undoubtedly best known for appearing in the martial arts classic Enter the Dragon (1973) alongside Bruce Lee and for his role as police-lieutenant-with-a-secret Donald Thompson in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) and its second sequel, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 (1987). He would even show up playing both himself and Thompson in Wes Craven's self-referential New Nightmare (1994). His Elm Street association insured Saxon would be a frequent presence in horror films for the remainder of his career. That much was evident when he followed the third Elm Street entry with starring roles in six horror films in just a three year period lasting from 1988 to 1990. During that time he also made his directorial debut with ZOMBIE DEATH HOUSE (1988), which would end up being his only feature as director. Mostly retired since around 2010, Saxon had been living in a retirement community in Tennessee since 2017, along with his wife, Gloria. While standout roles for the actor were perhaps few and far between he always gave consistent, competent performances. The fact he also happened to appear in a number of classics along the way forever solidifies his place in horror history. So, hats off to you, Mr. Saxon.

Scanning over Saxon's horrorography, I realized there were very few of his genre films I hadn't yet seen. I didn't pick Queen of Blood because I suspected it would be one of his best films, or one his best roles, but because it'll be a first time view and Saxon has the top-billed lead role. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that his co-stars are Dennis Hopper and Basil Rathbone or that this was directed by Curtis Harrington, whose work I usually enjoy. Seemed like the makings of a good, lazy Sunday afternoon viewing. So it came as a pleasant surprise that this was better than what I was expecting.

The genesis for Queen came from uncredited executive producer Roger Corman's rights purchases of a number of older Soviet science fiction films that hadn't been given any significant release here in America. The first was Nebo zovyot (1959), which was re-edited, dubbed and had new reproductive organ alien monster (!!) footage added to it by one "Thomas Colchart" (Francis Ford Coppola!) for its 1962 U.S. debut under the title Battle Beyond the Sun. The second was Mechte navstrechu ("Dream Come True"), which Corman did not bother releasing as is, or at least close to as is. Instead, Harrington was tasked with shooting a brand new story around the special effects featured in both films, but to primarily use footage from the latter, which also incidentally included a space queen character. He'd previously made another film for Corman's company - VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET (1965) - which also utilized a lot of footage from yet another Soviet sci-fi flick called Planeta bur (1962).

It's 1990 and “the problem of traveling to the moon has been solved for many years.” Man has already colonized Earth's satellite with space stations but, seeing how there's not much activity to study on the moon, The International Institute of Space Technology plans to expand their scope to Venus and Mars. Luckily for them a series of mishaps occur that allow them to do just that. Laura James (Judi Meredith) and her colleagues in the “astro communications” department successfully pick up signals of extraterrestrial life. Turns out, the aliens want to meet up with us mere Earthlings and, since we lack the technology to go to them, they plan to send a ship of representatives to us. Unfortunately, their ship doesn't make it and has to crash land on Mars instead. They manage to send out a video recording of what's occurred to the institute as a sort of S.O.S., prompting Dr. Farraday (Rathbone) to launch a shuttle to the Red Planet. A group of top astronauts can now explore the planet and get on good terms with the stranded aliens by rescuing them. Sounds like a win / win but you know how those pesky aliens always have to complicate matters!

Among those chosen for the trip aboard the spaceship Oceano are alien communicator Laura, Commander Anders Brockman (Robert Boon) and astronaut Paul Grant (Hopper). Just three people for such an important and dangerous mission, you say? And I say, yes, just three people. Their activities are monitored back on Earth by Farraday and astronaut / pilot Allan Brenner (Saxon), who also happens to be Laura's boyfriend. The trio travel 75 million miles (it's actually 62.8 million miles from the Earth to Mars so perhaps they took a more scenic route?) to their destination. Hitting a sunburst along the way, their ship and equipment are severely damaged, but they still manage to safely land. Allan and another astronaut - Tony Barrata (Don Eitner) - convince Farraday to allow them to take another, smaller ship to help them out. Because their ship only holds so much fuel, their only hope is to hop onto Phobos, one of Mars' moons, and then use an even smaller rescue ship to coast into the atmosphere of the planet.

While on Phobos, Allan and Tony spot something out of a porthole that requires further investigation. It turns out to be the alien spacecraft, which actually crashed there instead of the surface of Mars as they first suspected. They run across an unconscious alien female (Florence Marly) there but, seeing how their rescue ship can only transport two people, they have to make an important decision. One of them has to stay there for a week. They flip a coin and Tony loses so Allan takes the alien to the surface of Mars and meets up with the others. Tony will just have to wait for completion of the Oceano II ship back on Earth, which should take about a week. And that's all she wrote for Mr. Tony as we never see him again. I wonder if he ever made it off of Phobos?

The alien wears a tight red jumpsuit, has green skin (and blood), blue eyes, bright white teeth, a pointy white beehive hairdo sometimes encased in a metal contraption and is mute. She seems to share certain physiological characteristics with humans, though the crew can't be certain because she refuses to let them take any blood from her. She also refuses to eat and shows an extreme hatred for Laura right out of the gate ("It seems our alien visitor doesn't get along very well with her own sex!") Paul quickly becomes infatuated with the alien. In fact, too infatuated as he's easily seduced (she seems to prefer feeding in the nude!) and then found dead the very next day completely drained of blood.

Learning that the alien has vampiric tendencies and survives on the red stuff, the remaining crew try to sustain her by giving up their supply of blood plasma. However, when that runs out, she makes a quick snack out of the commander, leaving only Laura and Allan to try to decide what to do. They start by tying her up, but she's able to increase her body temperature so high the ropes burn right off. How can the two contain the menace so it can be studied back on Earth without getting themselves killed in the process? Or is that even possible?

Remarkably, Harrington and editor Leo H. Shreve somehow make the reused Soviet footage and the newly-shot scenes meld together reasonably well here, with the more expensive and elaborate Soviet special effects being used primarily as background to enhance the new story. Of course, this was obviously done on the cheap, but the film still manages to entertain and even generates a few effectively eerie and atmospheric moments along the way. The primary performances are all quite solid, with Saxon and Meredith making for likable leads, Hopper perking up in his scenes with the alien during his early "normal" career phase (which was about over as he had The Trip and Easy Rider right around the corner) and Rathbone doing what he was hired a day and a half to do; competently delivering lines while mostly sitting around on cheap sets. Character actor Virgil Frye (in his film debut) and Famous Monsters' Forrest J. Ackerman both show also up in small roles.

The clear standout here though is Marly, who makes the most of her dialogue-free alien role. With her prominent cheekbones and strong facial bone structure, the Czech-born actress truly does seem creepy and otherworldly using only her eyes and facial expressions to convey the alien queen's two primary characteristics: alluring to ensnare male prey (helped along by her mesmeric glowing eyes) and barely-concealed anger when things don't go her way. It would have actually been cool to see an entire movie dedicated to this character as opposed to her only showing up in the second half here. Marly, whose career was derailed and essentially ruined when she was falsely branded a Communist during the Hollywood Blacklist, would only go on to appear in a few other roles after this before passing away in 1978.

George Edwards, Stephanie Rothman (The Velvet Vampire) and Samuel Z. Arkoff were all producers on this project, which was filmed in around a week. AIP released Queen to theaters on a double bill with BLOOD BATH (1966), which itself had cribbed footage from an obscure Yugoslavia crime-thriller called Operacija Ticijan. There was a 1987 VHS release through Star Classics (re-titled Planet of Blood and with fantastic box art!) and this was also distributed on VHS at one time by Something Weird. Even stranger was an ultra-obscure 1989 video release called Faces of Horror, which cobbled together footage from Queen, the Japanese Space Amoeba (1970) and The Thing with Two Heads (1972) and then released it in a plain box with a skull on it to trick viewers into thinking they were renting a Faces of Death / real-death-footage type of flick! In more recent years, Queen received a DVD burn-on-demand release through MGM and then, in 2015, was made available on Blu-ray for the first time by Kino Lorber.

★★1/2

Tenebrae (1982)

... aka: Der kalte Hauch des Todes (The Cold Breath of Death)
... aka: El placer del miedo (The Pleasure of Fear)
... aka: Pelkoa ei voi paeta (Fear Cannot be Escaped)
... aka: Shadow
... aka: Shadows
... aka: Sotto gli occhi dell'assassino (Under the Eyes of the Killer)
... aka: Tenebre
... aka: Unsane

Directed by:
Dario Argento

Having taken a break from the more traditionally-plotted murder mysteries he initially made his name with to concentrate on the supernatural-themed SUSPIRIA (1977) and INFERNO (1980), Argento makes a return here to the style he's now most associated with. The film was only moderately successful in Europe (it performed better than Inferno though not as well as many of Argento's previous films) but was very poorly-received here in America when it was given a limited theatrical release in 1984 under the new title Unsane. As was customary at the time, the U.S. distributor (Bedford Entertainment Film Gallery) decided to remove most of the violence / gore, neutering the murder scenes in the process, and even took it upon themselves to shorten some of the more elaborate camera shots (which is unconscionable for an Argento film!). Around ten minutes in total were removed. This same cut of the film was re-released in 1987 to theaters and issued on VHS (by Fox Hills Video) to little fanfare. It would take well over a decade for the film to start to repair its reputation when it was finally made available uncut on VHS and DVD by Anchor Bay (it has since been released on Blu-ray by Arrow, Synapse and other companies). But rebound it has! Out of the 20+ features Argento has directed since 1970, it's currently his fourth highest-rated on IMDb and his third highest-rated on Letterboxd.

Popular American mystery writer Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) arrives in Rome for a book signing / press tour for his best-selling latest release Tenebrae, leaving behind mentally imbalanced former lover Jane (Veronica Lario), who he's been avoiding for six weeks, in the process. Peter is greeted at the airport by his agent Bullmer (John Saxon), secretary Anne (Daria Nicolodi), young personal assistant Gianni (Christian Borromeo) and a slew of reporters / photographers. And then the trouble starts. First off, his formerly pleasant friend Tilde (Mirella D'Angelo) has turned into a (gasp!) angry lesbian feminist magazine writer who attacks Tenebrae as being "sexist" for featuring "women as victims" and "men with their hairy macho bullshit." Second, someone back at the airport in New York has destroyed all of his belongings in his carry-on bag. Third, once Peter arrives at the hotel suite he'll be staying while in Rome, he's greeted by Germani (Giuliano Gemma) and Altieri (Carola Stagnaro), a pair of police detectives who relay something even more startling...

Just three hours before Peter arrived in Italy, shoplifter Elsa Manni (Ania Pieroni) was attacked by a black-gloved assailant who stuffed pages of Tenebrae in her mouth before slashing her to death with an old-fashioned open razor... the same murder weapon of choice for Tenebrae's fictional killer. The killer has also somehow managed to locate Peter's suite before his arrival to slip a note under his door quoting a passage from his book. And if that's not enough for one day, the killer makes a creepy, threatening phone call from a pay phone right outside the window. Time for new accommodations? Nope! For better or worse (read: worse), Peter and his entourage decide to just stay put where they are despite the fact a psycho killer knows their exact location!

The stalking and string of grisly murders continues as the suspect list, also including Peter's ex Jane (who comes all the way to Rome just to spy on him) and Cristiano (John Steiner), a TV reporter a little too into the psycho-sexual content of Tenebrae (the killer is also obsessed with the "degenerates" and "filthy, slimy perverts" in Neal's book), is trimmed down. During the film's most memorable (and celebrated) sequence, Tilde and her promiscuous bisexual girlfriend are killed by the psycho, which not only features Argento's trademark woman's-head-goes-through-glass bit but also includes an unbroken 2 ½ minute shot prowling outside the home, which goes from the window, up the side of the house, over the roof and around to the other side. This impressive shot was achieved with a special Louma Crane that had to be imported in from France.

Many of the other horror set pieces are also very well-done and photographed by Luciano Tovoli, especially one involving the hotel porter's teenage daughter (Lara Wendel) being pursued by a rabid, fence-scaling Doberman Pinscher before (whatta coincidence!) running afoul of the murderer. On a side note, Wendel deserves special credit for running around the woods, repeatedly falling down, wrestling with the dog and scaling (and jumping off of!) numerous high fences all while barefoot and wearing a miniskirt! The hectic ending, featuring several axe murders, an amazingly bloody (and oddly beautiful) bit where a severed arm stump paints a white wall red and an impalement with a piece of abstract sculpture is pretty memorable, too.

On the down side, the scenes where people aren't being slaughtered are far less successful. The plot is contrived, frequently silly and filled with implausible cheat scenes to try to throw you off, much of the dialogue is poor and unintentionally funny and most of the supporting performances suffer from poor English dubbing. There's a self-reflective element to the proceedings when it comes to contrasting Tenebrae's fictional author with the real-life Argento (both are criticized for essentially making careers out of depictions of violently killing beautiful women) that provides slight additional interest. It's also worth noting that while the film is stylish in its own way, it has more of a consistent steely / stone / cold / blue-grey color pallet than the eye-catching full color spectrum used on Argento's previous two films. It's also much brighter, with well-lit night scenes and even a number of the horror scenes taking place in broad daylight. Not that the visual presentation necessarily means everything. While Inferno is one of Argento's best-looking and most colorful films, it is also, narratively-speaking, perhaps his weakest up until the 90s.

Transgender actress Eva Robins (born Roberto Coatti) was interestingly cast in a small role as a red shoed temptress in some brief, though evocative, beach flashbacks. Marino Masé (ALIEN CONTAMINATION) and Fulvio Mingozzi (who had small roles in every Argento film up until 1985's Phenomena) also show up briefly and Lamberto Bava and Michele Soavi (both assistant directors) appear in uncredited bit parts. The score, which is more polarizing than in most of the director's other films (personally I really like it), is from Massimo Morante, Fabio Pignatelli and Claudio Simonetti.

I haven't seen this one in well over a decade but it was interesting on a re-watch, especially in regards to how my rankings for Argento films have changed over time and how well some of them have held up over the years and through repeat viewings. When I was a teenage horror fan obsessed with Argento films and collecting everything Argento I could get my hands on, this was among my Top 3 favorites. Now, not so much, though I do still like this one.

★★★