Bezenby Basil Rathbone, Dennis Hopper and John Saxon star in this piecemeal sci-fi horror using a ton of great special effects from some Russian film, as far as I've read somewhere anyway. That doesn't detract from the fact that the special effects are great for their time, and really groovy to boot. In fact, things only slow down a bit when we get to the actual story line. Some aliens announce that they'll be dropping by Earth for a visit and perhaps a pint or too, but their ship crashes on Mars. Rathbone, being the head honcho, dispatches Hopper and a crew to go and find any survivors. They don't find any, but a follow up ship containing Saxon lands on Mars' moon Phobos and finds a female survivor. He leaves his buddy behind and takes a rescue ship over to Mars, where he joins up with the rest of the crew, who then set off home with their green skinned, creepy looking cargo. This alien, with her beehive hairdo, evil grin, and green skin, is rather creepy to begin with, but when her eyes start glowing and she chows down on a crew member things take off. It's scientific research (the Captain's wishes to keep feeding the alien blood so they can get her back to Earth to study) versus common sense (Saxon just wants to destroy the thing, and quite rightly too). What will prevail? And what will the survivors do with the surprises that the aliens left on the ship?Keep in mind: This film is PG, and made in the sixties, so don't go expecting Alien. The first half is full of those funky special effects from that other film, and the latter half, although not as fun, still has that creepy, silent alien prowling around. Dennis Hopper looks to be still in his teens and John Saxon gets to say lines like "I've only got paper moon money". What more do you want?Okay, gore and nudity, but what else?

Scott LeBrun "Queen of Blood", a.k.a. "Planet of Blood", is a reasonably enjoyable low budget science fiction picture, executive produced by Roger Corman, and written and directed by Curtis Harrington ("Night Tide", "The Killing Kind", "Ruby"), who uses a fair amount of footage from two big budget Soviet productions, "Mechte Navstrechu" and "Nebo Zovyot", and writes his own story around it.In 1990, mankind makes contact with aliens who crash land on one of Mars' moons. A sole survivor is brought on board the humans' spaceship, yet she's decidedly deadly: a seductive blood sucker with green skin, a nice tall head of hair, and frightening eyes and smile. Ever engaging John Saxon is young hero Allan Brenner, pretty Judi Meredith his love interest Laura James. Basil Rathbone, in one of his final movie roles, is great fun as the exuberant Dr. Farraday. Dennis Hopper, who'd acted for Harrington in "Night Tide", is well meaning astronaut Paul Grant. Robert Boon as Anders Brockman and Don Eitner as Tony Barrata offer fine support, with a small role for none other than Forrest J. Ackerman as Farraday's aide.While the movie is ultimately a little too slow and talky for its own good, Harrington and a capable crew give this amusing B picture a pretty good look, doing appreciable things in terms of colour. It gets off to a nice start, with the opening credits slowly playing out over paintings by John Cline, and accompanied by eerie stock music composed by Ronald Stein (who's billed as Leonard Morand).All things considered, there are some effectively creepy moments to appreciate in "Queen of Blood", especially in the second half. Among the crew are Stephanie Rothman, director of drive-in flicks like "The Velvet Vampire" and "Terminal Island", as the associate producer, and Gary Kurtz, future producer of "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back", as the production manager. Best of all is the performance of Czech born actress Florence Marly in the title role, who has an incredible presence and makes a Hell of an impact without having to utter a word. The ending is also an interesting combination of being both somewhat happy and yet full of doubt, with a wary attitude towards the ways of scientists. Fans of the genre should find this an acceptable diversion.Seven out of 10.

JoeB131 I remember this film as a kid, and thought it was kind of scary. the images that stuck in my mind were the alien babe, but she is introduced late in the movie and isn't actually all that interesting.The movie spends a lot of time like most conventional 50's and 60's Science Fiction, being too fixated on "Wow, we are in space". And while I'm sure people at the time were quite impressed, it had the usual fixtures of period Sci-Fi - Spaceships with office furniture, laughable technology like guages with needles and reel to reel tape recorders, female astronauts being treated like secretaries, and so on.The notion is that some astronauts go to Mars to meet up with an extraterrestrial spacecraft and find its lone survivor, a hot alien babe in a skin-tight suit. She also happens to be a vampire, and proceeds to suck the blood out of Dennis Hopper and some other guy who didn't go on to have a better career. Least intimidating movie monster ever, she gets killed by a scratch in a cat fight.

Johann This flick is pretty low budget and a rip off of most 1950s alien plots (you know, humans in the future go to Mars and encounter an evil alien presence). However, it seems to be an homage to the older low budget sci-fi thrillers. It doesn't get campy (this could be considered a fault if looking for something to crack jokes at), but is obviously cheap.Here's the plot gang, in the year 1990 humans receive an alien signal from Mars and send a crew to investigate. They experience difficulties and have to make an emergency landing (of course) leaving them stranded on Mars near an alien space craft. Brenner (John Saxon) and his buddy convince Dr. Farraday (Rathbone wondering what happened to his career) to send them in a rescue ship to an orbiting moon where they can get to their marooned colleagues. On this moon, Saxon and friend locate a living alien being. To make a long story short, Saxon leaves his buddy on the moon and links up with the marooned humans and brings alien queen with him. She ends up sucking the blood out of the captain (Brockman) and the young crewman (Dennis Hopper trying to break out of crappy roles) leaving Saxon and his love interest (Judi Meredith) to cope with the queen of the alien undead.I won't give the ending away, but you can probably figure it out.The film wasn't that good, but the actors and actresses do a good job. I'd definitely have to say it's good if you're in the mood for a low budget 60s sci-fi film.