Queen of Blood

I watched this originally as my plan as another film I'd remake. But I change my mind. This film stars John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, and Dennis Hopper. I can't think of three modern stars that would have the same qualities as these three. If you dear reader can, please illuminate it to me!

The film starts with credits that look like the covers of sixties scifi books. Bright colors and the suggestion of tentacles and such without any real definition. Then we get into the story proper, it is the year 1990! The Future! And we have bases on the moon and are planning trips to Venus and Mars cause we can by george!

John Saxon is all John Saxony as a space pioneering astronaut in training who has a girl friend who does important girl work for the great scientist Basil Rathbone. Things are going apace but then there's a new snag; we receive signals from another intelligence outside our solar system and guess what they are coming for a visit.

We cut to frankly confusing pictures of aliens in ship. They might be doing something important, or they might be playing with model trains. Who knows, those crazy aliens. Of course the earth folks don't know this and they prepare to greet their new alien overlords with glee.

Well things don't go as plan. Somehow this advanced intelligence didn't see the planet in their way and crashes on Mars. Hot Damn! All that Mars training won't go to waste, except for some reason the powers that be don't recognize saxonness and instead take his girl friend and dennis hopper and some gasbag scientist douche and launch them on a rescue mission.

Oh no, they get into trouble and now there needs to be a rescue mission of a rescue mission so our boys have just enough fuel to reach one of the moons of Mars and then use the emergency rocket to reach the surface. On the moon they find the aliens escape rocket and the one lone survivor, a green chick with a beehive doo. Saxon takes the space babe down to the main ship on Mars and they get things fixed and are ready to go.

Unfortunately, space chicks need blood. She does the glowing eye bit and then sucks down Dennis Hopper like he's a juice box. The find her swollen like a tick asleep. Saxon of course votes to out her through the airlock. Douche scientist guy though points out she's the reason for the mission and they could tick off a whole civilization of blood suckers. He suggests there's enough blood onboard the ship to keep her happy.

He's wrong and people die. And they find her secret weakness and she dies. So now there's just Saxon and girlfriend and they are landing and then they discover the ship is riddled with space eggs. Saxon tells Rathbone when they land they all need to be destroyed and Rathbone is like "You've had a long trip so no wonder you are so bitchy, begone wench." So Saxon is like, "Well I told you so, so now I'll go bang my girlfriend before the world is over run with space vampires." The end.

The one thing I'll say about this film is it is ambitious. I'd never attempt a film set on earth, the moon, mars and a martian moon on thier budget. For the most part they are oddly successful. I think it is the moody lighting that covers a lot of the weaknesses in the scenary. Saxon, Rathbone, and Hopper all act well enough and they cover the woodeness around them rather well. This is simply a decent b movie sf chiller and certainly I think "Alien" was inspired by it to some extent.