Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and we have Oh, we have a fun one
Speaker 1: for you today. This one is going to be our
Speaker 1: episode from five twenty six, twenty twenty three on the
Speaker 1: excellent nineteen sixty six space horror movie Queen of Blood
Speaker 1: starring John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Dennis Hopper, and Florence Marley.
Speaker 1: This one is a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. So
Speaker 3: last week on Weird House Cinema, we were taking a
Speaker 3: look at the nineteen ninety three live action Super Mario
Speaker 3: Brothers movie. I still stand by my characterization, even with
Speaker 3: a little more time to process my characterization of it
Speaker 3: as one of the weirdest movies we've ever covered on
Speaker 3: the show, and one of the weirdest movies I have
Speaker 3: ever watched. It is still just it's bouncing like a
Speaker 3: pinball in my head. But one of the many truly
Speaker 3: bizarre aspects of that movie was that it had in
Speaker 3: the role of the villain King Koopa none other than
Speaker 3: the late great Dennis Hopper. Now, one of the other
Speaker 3: movies that came up when we were exploring sort of
Speaker 3: the back catalog of Dennis Hopper's work was a nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty six sci fi horror film called Queen of Blood.
Speaker 3: Now I immediately liked that title. I looked up the
Speaker 3: poster and I liked that too, So my attention was raised.
Speaker 3: I kept digging in and I was like, well, we've
Speaker 3: got to cover this movie. And so here we are today.
Speaker 3: We're talking about Queen of Blood nineteen sixty six, starring
Speaker 3: John Sacks and Dennis Hopper, Basil rath Bone and Florence Marley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it would be proper to position
Speaker 1: this film within a trilogy of space vampire movies that
Speaker 1: we'll probably get around to watching all of these at
Speaker 1: one point. Planet of Vampires from nineteen sixty five, which
Speaker 1: we have covered, the Mario Bava film Beautiful to Behold,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit qua lutic at times and its energy,
Speaker 1: but still great, this film which carries on the vampires
Speaker 1: of Space tradition, just one year later, and then eventually
Speaker 1: we're going to get to Life Force that being the
Speaker 1: modern version of this tale of you know, just female
Speaker 1: in the case of Planet of the Vapires, male vampires
Speaker 1: as well, vampires of all gender coming from space wanting
Speaker 1: to consume human blood.
Speaker 3: Now, in life force, I don't think it's exactly blood.
Speaker 3: They just kind of generally want to suck all your
Speaker 3: life force, basically your life energy out and leave you
Speaker 3: a very withered scale, little kind of artifact. Yeah, but yes,
Speaker 3: generally I agree with this arc. And I'm going to say,
Speaker 3: of the three movies, the one we're talking about today
Speaker 3: is by far the least of them, but not without
Speaker 3: its pleasures. So we can talk about the kind of
Speaker 3: weird jigsaw puzzle that is this film. But overall I
Speaker 3: did enjoy it. It raises a question, though, which is that,
Speaker 3: of all the movies we've ever done on Weird House,
Speaker 3: which one do you think is comprised to the largest
Speaker 3: extent of pre existing footage. It's got to be this one.
Speaker 1: Right, It's got to be this one by a long shot.
Speaker 1: So to explain this to anyone who's not familiar with
Speaker 1: this film, and I think most people are not familiar
Speaker 1: with this film, it includes a lot of footage, especially
Speaker 1: the effects footage from the nineteen fifty nine Soviet science
Speaker 1: fiction film Nebo Zovyacht, a film that the producer of
Speaker 1: this movie, Roger Korman, who of course you're familiar with
Speaker 1: from past episodes, had perch just the US distribution rights for.
Speaker 1: He even roped in a young Francis Ford Coppola, who
Speaker 1: worked on some re editing. They apparently added some monster
Speaker 1: scenes for US audiences and released it as Battle Beyond
Speaker 1: the Sun. This movie also reuses footage from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: threes Mitchta Nevstretchu A Dream Come True, another Soviet science
Speaker 1: fiction film. So these are both I've not seen either
Speaker 1: of these in their entirety, but they are essentially big budget,
Speaker 1: prestige sci fi films from the Soviet Union, and here
Speaker 1: footage from them is reused for a low budget Roger
Speaker 1: Korman produced sci fi spectacle. You know this part that's
Speaker 1: going to be released as part of a double feature.
Speaker 3: Now, I was trying to think of a name for
Speaker 3: what you would call this genre of movie genre, not
Speaker 3: in terms of the not in terms of the story content,
Speaker 3: but in terms of the way it came about, And
Speaker 3: to borrow a phrase from the at least the current
Speaker 3: edition and of Dungeons and Dragons. I'm going to call
Speaker 3: this an attack of opportunity film. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 3: film that comes about because you have some opportunity in
Speaker 3: terms of production capability. Maybe you suddenly own rights to
Speaker 3: a bunch of footage and you can try to figure
Speaker 3: out how to build a movie around that footage, like
Speaker 3: we have in the case of this movie today. But
Speaker 3: there are other such examples. There are cases where like,
Speaker 3: we have a very famous actor on hand for two
Speaker 3: more days, can we do something with them that we
Speaker 3: can build the rest of a movie around later. Or
Speaker 3: maybe we have access to sets that have been used
Speaker 3: in another movie or props that have been used in
Speaker 3: another movie, and can we quickly throw something together to
Speaker 3: make use of that. It's sort of an efficiency based
Speaker 3: approach to cinematic storytelling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I've heard director Robert Rodriguez speak to
Speaker 1: this as well. You know, like seeing what you have,
Speaker 1: what do you have at your disposal that you can
Speaker 1: utilize and using that kind of as the skeleton to
Speaker 1: build up what you're going to create, especially if you're
Speaker 1: dealing with limited budget.
Speaker 3: What is I feel like we talked about another movie
Speaker 3: recently where there was like a big star who was
Speaker 3: already on call having filmed another movie, and they had
Speaker 3: him for like a couple more days, and so they
Speaker 3: made something that we watched. Does that ring a bell
Speaker 3: for you?
Speaker 1: Oh? It does ring a bell. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: been the case with various actors, like, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm going to stay in Rome for another week. Love
Speaker 1: it here, you have a movie for me to work on,
Speaker 1: you know that sort of thing. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: the specific example has come up, But I don't recall
Speaker 1: which film and which star it was.
Speaker 3: This is how you get discount Boris Karloff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the case of Queen of Blood, it's not
Speaker 3: like an actor or some sets they had access to.
Speaker 3: It was pre existing footage. So we've got a bunch
Speaker 3: of shots that are already part of another movie. But
Speaker 3: fortunately most of our audience will not have seen that movie,
Speaker 3: and the footage looks pretty dang good. So what if
Speaker 3: we can just sort of like figure out how to
Speaker 3: build a narrative around these shots we have?
Speaker 1: Also, I think they have the same space helmets. I
Speaker 1: did some pausing of the film because I was really
Speaker 1: distracted by the differences between these two obvious lines of
Speaker 1: footage while watching the film, and I was like, are
Speaker 1: they even using the same space helmets or do they
Speaker 1: just get the color ride and it looks like they're
Speaker 1: the same helmets, or they are such an accurate recreation
Speaker 1: that it doesn't matter. So I'll give them credit for that,
Speaker 1: But there's so many other things that you just can't reproduce.
Speaker 3: I feel like I would have noticed it even if
Speaker 3: I did not read about the background of the film,
Speaker 3: because number one, like the art style is totally different,
Speaker 3: like all of the pre existing footage has a much
Speaker 3: more beautifully, lusciously realized kind of character to it the
Speaker 3: scenes that are actually shot directly for this film or
Speaker 3: much more bare bones in terms of sets and stuff.
Speaker 3: But also it's just totally different in terms of like
Speaker 3: the film grain and things like the shots just don't
Speaker 3: really match. But you know, it's okay. You slot them
Speaker 3: in there and you can make a movie.
Speaker 1: And I knew this was coming. I knew this was
Speaker 1: one of the notable things about this film, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't prepared for just how much they were going to
Speaker 1: dump in. Like my mind instantly turns to a single
Speaker 1: episode of Night Gallery from the early seventies. There's an
Speaker 1: episode called The Different Ones, or rather it's a segment
Speaker 1: from an episode called The Different Ones, and it's a
Speaker 1: science fiction story that involves characters traveling from one planet
Speaker 1: to the next, and in syndication they had to expand
Speaker 1: it's runtime a bit, so they inserted spaceship shots from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two Silent Running, Silent Running, Great Motion Picture.
Speaker 1: We have a I think we have a podcast episode
Speaker 1: pre Weird House dealing with it to some extent. But
Speaker 1: in that particular instance, you know, I was very forgivable
Speaker 1: and you can easily gloss over it because it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're exterior spaceship. Here's a shot from Silent Running. You
Speaker 1: just go with it. And I was expecting it to
Speaker 1: be more like that with this film, that like, Okay,
Speaker 1: whenever we see an exterior of a spaceship, it's going
Speaker 1: to be scenes from one of these Russian films. But
Speaker 1: that's not the case. It's all sorts of stuff. It's
Speaker 1: just so much stock or in this case, reused footage
Speaker 1: dropped into the first hour. It's like when you let
Speaker 1: out an eight year old put their own syrup on
Speaker 1: their pancakes.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, And there are a few things that you
Speaker 3: can actually catch, especially if you have a pause button
Speaker 3: available to you. One of which is there's a scene
Speaker 3: where Basil Rathbone is giving a speech to a big
Speaker 3: assembled crowd, and then it does a cutaway to show
Speaker 3: the whole room, and I guess it's still supposed to
Speaker 3: be him speaking, but it's not actually him in this shot.
Speaker 3: And then in this room there's a great statue of
Speaker 3: like a god or at least a muscled nude male figure,
Speaker 3: and he's holding something in his hand, and when he's
Speaker 3: holding is Sputnik, the the Russia, the Soviet spacecraft.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of details like that.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if they were like, look, the kids
Speaker 1: are just going to be making out for the first
Speaker 1: hour of this movie. We don't have to stress too
Speaker 1: much about it. And ultimately, like that's how it feels.
Speaker 1: It feels like the first hour of the film. Once
Speaker 1: you press through that, you have a kind of tight,
Speaker 1: little thirty minute story to enjoy and some nice acting
Speaker 1: and so forth. But at least for me, I really
Speaker 1: had to press through that first hour.
Speaker 3: I agree. Yeah, there's a lot of padding, but there
Speaker 3: are some moments in that first hour that I think
Speaker 3: are actually extremely effective, and we can explain more about
Speaker 3: those when we get into the plot. But yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of gonna Bazzel rathbone talking and it's not
Speaker 3: that interesting or just like seeing rockets blast off or
Speaker 3: shoot through space, that's not that great either. But a
Speaker 3: lot of the footage from the Soviet films is beautiful
Speaker 3: and sometimes it is used to I think great effect.
Speaker 3: I would say of the original stuff in the movie,
Speaker 3: probably the best for me was all basically Florence Marley,
Speaker 3: who plays the main alien character in the film.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she doesn't say a single word, but she has.
Speaker 1: She emotes really well with her eyes and her eyebrows especially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, her eyes, her teeth in the corners of her
Speaker 3: mouth do more acting than most people do with one
Speaker 3: hundred lines of dialogue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nice space vampire smirk. All right. Well, the other
Speaker 1: fun thing about this is this is one of those
Speaker 1: movies that takes us into the future, the far future
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety. So that was pretty fun.
Speaker 3: It's what the narrator actually says it. It's the first
Speaker 3: thing you hear in the film is the year is
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: All Right, my elevator pitch for this is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: Space Vampire sixty six. That's all you need to know.
Speaker 1: It's just nineteen sixty six, and this is a Space
Speaker 1: the Empire movie coming out of sixty six. Though it's
Speaker 1: also interesting that in many respects it's kind of a
Speaker 1: it feels more old fashioned than sixty six. It feels
Speaker 1: a lot of the energy of this film is maybe
Speaker 1: more in line with what we might expect from the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. So yeah, it's yeah, interesting to think about that.
Speaker 1: We'll discuss that as we proceed. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: hear that trailer.
Speaker 4: Ween of Blood untangalizing, mystifying enigma. She's gorgeous, a fresh blood,
Speaker 4: she's a monster. Got a good supply of blood plasma
Speaker 4: with us juice actrofeder and if we run out of plasma.
Speaker 1: Commander, all right, if you want to watch Queen of Blood, well,
Speaker 1: it's currently streaming. I know it's streaming on Prime. We
Speaker 1: watched it there. I think it's streaming on some other sources.
Speaker 1: It's also available on DVD from m Limited Collection. There's
Speaker 1: also a Blu ray from Keno Laurber and Scorpion releasing,
Speaker 1: though it doesn't seem to be widely available right now,
Speaker 1: maybe out of print or something. But I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to get my hands on that one, but it looks
Speaker 1: like it has possibly some extras on it, all right,
Speaker 1: Getting into the people behind this film, because ultimately some
Speaker 1: of the cast and crew here are what like kind
Speaker 1: of pushed the movie over the edge for me, because
Speaker 1: you know, I'm already interested in the concept and the
Speaker 1: time period. But then I started reading about the director
Speaker 1: and writer of this, Curtis Harrington, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: six through two thousand and seven. I wasn't familiar with
Speaker 1: his work prior, but Curtis Harrington was a respected Hollywood director,
Speaker 1: a film critic, an experimental filmmaker who played an important
Speaker 1: role apparently in rediscovering James Whale during the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: James Whale, of course, the director of such pictures as
Speaker 1: Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: It's hard for me to imagine that James Whale ever
Speaker 3: would have been like a forgotten filmmaker as long as
Speaker 3: I've been aware of him. I was aware of him
Speaker 3: with kind of icon status.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought of it the same way. But I
Speaker 1: was reading about this in Harrington's oh bit in the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times. They're quoting Dennis Bartak, producer and screenwriter,
Speaker 1: who says that that whale had been quote pretty much
Speaker 1: forgotten by everybody at this time during the last decade
Speaker 1: or less of Wales's life. So fascinating detail there. So anyway,
Speaker 1: back to Harrington. Following a string of experimental short films,
Speaker 1: his first feature was nineteen sixty one's Night Tide, which
Speaker 1: also starred Dennis Hopper, apparently in his first leading role
Speaker 1: as a man who falls in love with a mysterious
Speaker 1: woman who performs as a mermaid at the local carnival.
Speaker 1: I've not seen it, but it's one of Harrington's best
Speaker 1: known films and is apparently apparently very well regarded for
Speaker 1: sort of darkly fantastic elements. It's supposed to be a
Speaker 1: rather rether nice film. It was a Corman production, and
Speaker 1: he followed that movie up with two features for Corman,
Speaker 1: utilizing big budget sci fi footage that Corman had gotten
Speaker 1: his hands on from the Soviet Union. Those films were
Speaker 1: Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet in sixty five and Queen
Speaker 1: of Blood in sixty six. Harrington's late sixties early seventies
Speaker 1: period contained several macabre films, including sixty seven's Games with
Speaker 1: James Kahn, seventy one's What's the Matter with Helen starring
Speaker 1: Debbie Reynolds, seventy two's Whoever Slew and He Grew? I
Speaker 1: guess this is the question title period of his work.
Speaker 1: This one starred Shelley Winters. There's seventy threes The Killing Kind,
Speaker 1: and then mostly TV episodes and TV movies after that,
Speaker 1: but with some intriguing titles like seventy threes The Cat
Speaker 1: Creature and seventy eight's Devil Dog the Hound of Hell,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with nineteen seventy seven's Draculus Dog.
Speaker 3: Is that like, they ran out of the son of Dracula,
Speaker 3: daughter of Dracula, cousin of Dracula, and they work all
Speaker 3: the way down to Dracula's.
Speaker 1: Dog, Dracula's Dog, And I mean, obviously they should have
Speaker 1: followed it up with Devil Dog versus Dracula's Dog, but
Speaker 1: they didn't. Anyway. They're also two theatrical films. In the
Speaker 1: later mix there there's seventy seven's Ruby, a supernatural thriller
Speaker 1: starring Piper Laurie, and nineteen eighty five's Matahari, a historical
Speaker 1: erotic melodrama starring Sylvia Crystal. Best known for the Emmanuel films,
Speaker 1: so Herrington's work is frequently explored in scholarship surrounding queer cinema,
Speaker 1: though I believe much of this is contextual, as I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that any of his films have expressly gay characters,
Speaker 1: though Harrington himself was openly gay and wrote about it
Speaker 1: in his autobiography. But Queen of Blood, well, I can
Speaker 1: only imagine this is not the best example of his work.
Speaker 1: But I do feel like when Herring actually has time
Speaker 1: to build something here, again, mostly in the last thirty
Speaker 1: minutes or so of the picture, it mostly works like
Speaker 1: he's able to make use of good actors and also
Speaker 1: effectively build a certain amount of tension.
Speaker 3: Oh, I fully agree. I would say, on one hand, yes,
Speaker 3: this is the least of the three Space Vampire films
Speaker 3: you mentioned, But also I mean, how could it be
Speaker 3: anything other than that given the circumstances, Like this is
Speaker 3: an attack of opportunity film, It is an efficiency project.
Speaker 3: You're trying to build something mostly on the basis of
Speaker 3: stock footage or not stock, you know, pre existing footage.
Speaker 3: So it is it's a difficult task, and I think
Speaker 3: this movie, given that, actually is much better than it
Speaker 3: has any right to be.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely all right. The cast of this Baby is
Speaker 1: also pretty interesting. We got John Saxon playing Alan Brynner,
Speaker 1: our lead astronaut. Saxon with nineteen thirty six through twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: He's a weird house cinema staple. We've profiled on the show,
Speaker 1: I want to say three or four times at this point,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go in into a lot
Speaker 1: of detail regarding Saxon, but it was a former tea.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember what were the others? We did
Speaker 3: the Cannibal movie, but what were the other John Saxon movies?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, there was the Cannibal movie. There was Hands
Speaker 1: of Steel, in which he's one of the villains.
Speaker 3: Yes, hands of Steel.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's something else.
Speaker 3: It's okay, okay, we can move on. Sorry, I just
Speaker 3: was troubled that I couldn't remember the others. Okay, at
Speaker 3: least two. That gets me there.
Speaker 1: Every few weeks there's at least one John Zaxon film.
Speaker 1: We were considering especially from his seventies period, you know,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, Saxon's definitely come up in the
Speaker 1: show before him just blinking on some of the other
Speaker 1: ones he may have we may have discussed him in.
Speaker 1: But Saxon was a former teen idol, and he'd been
Speaker 1: acting since the mid fifties at this point, and had
Speaker 1: already worked with Mario Bava on sixty three is the
Speaker 1: Girl who Knew Too Much and Auto Preminger on sixty
Speaker 1: three is the Cardinal. He'd appeared alongside a young Robert
Speaker 1: Redford in the nineteen sixty two war film War Hunt,
Speaker 1: which I've read is quite good. He plays a soldier
Speaker 1: in that who also happens to be like a serial murderer.
Speaker 1: But Saxon would really come into his own, like I say,
Speaker 1: and more in like the nineteen seventies. I think. I
Speaker 1: think most of the pictures one is drawn to for
Speaker 1: John Saxon are going to be from that period. So
Speaker 1: he's maybe a little young here, he's not completely green.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, he's also playing a character
Speaker 1: who feels like he's been extracted more or less from
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifties sci fi adventure. You know, He's still
Speaker 1: better in this sort of bland role than a lot
Speaker 1: of the square jaw leads that you find in those
Speaker 1: fifties sci fi films, but it still has a lot
Speaker 1: in common with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's not much to this role. He
Speaker 3: is the leading man, and he is, to use the
Speaker 3: term I often used to describe leading men from fifties
Speaker 3: genre movies, he's kind of a rectangle, like he's just
Speaker 3: there to be the masculine energy of rectitude according to
Speaker 3: the logic of the film.
Speaker 1: And yet it's still is subdued compared to some of
Speaker 1: the early example like he did I don't think he
Speaker 1: ever punches anybody, No.
Speaker 3: He doesn't. He does spend the last I don't know
Speaker 3: ten minutes of the movie arguing for the destruction of something,
Speaker 3: with everybody else being like, oh no, it's fine, we
Speaker 3: don't have to destroy it.
Speaker 1: All right. You mentioned him already, but Basil Rathbone is
Speaker 1: in this playing Doctor Faraday. Rathbone lived nineteen I mean sorry,
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety two through nineteen sixty seven. This was one
Speaker 1: of his final film performances, but he had a long
Speaker 1: career of stage and screen. He was a South African
Speaker 1: born English actor who served in the First World War
Speaker 1: and started appearing in films in the early twenties. He
Speaker 1: played Guy of Gisborne in nineteen thirty eight s The
Speaker 1: Adventures of Robin Hood. He played Sherlock Holmes in fourteen
Speaker 1: Hollywood films. Between thirty eight and forty six, he appeared
Speaker 1: in various swashbucklers. He stayed active on the stage, won
Speaker 1: a Tony Award in nineteen forty eight for The Heiress,
Speaker 1: and he was nominated for two Oscars for nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: nine If I Were King in nineteen thirty seven's Romeo
Speaker 1: and Juliet, in which he played Tibbalt opposite Leslie Howard
Speaker 1: as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet. He played Baron
Speaker 1: von Wolf in nineteen thirty nine's Son of Frankenstein. That
Speaker 1: was the third universal Frankenstein film, with Carloff and Lagosi
Speaker 1: in it. But I think there's kind of a drop
Speaker 1: off after the first. Yeah, this one was not James Whale,
Speaker 1: was it. No, No, no.
Speaker 3: I think Bride is definitely the peak for me.
Speaker 1: Bride is the peak now. Rathbone definitely made his mark
Speaker 1: in horror and noir stories, especially later in his career.
Speaker 1: Just to name a few films of note here at
Speaker 1: least US fifty six The Black Sleep co starring Lon Cheney,
Speaker 1: Junior Bell Lagosi and John Carradine. Sixty two is The
Speaker 1: Magic Sword. That's a fun fantasy film that was featured
Speaker 1: on MST three K back in the day. Roger Corman's
Speaker 1: Tales of Terror starring Vincent Price and Peter Lourie. Sixty
Speaker 1: three is the Comedy of Terror is starring Price, louri
Speaker 1: and Carloff. Then we have sixty five Voyage to the
Speaker 1: Prehistoric Planet. This movie. There's also sixty six is The
Speaker 1: Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and nineteen sixty seven's Hillbilly's
Speaker 1: in a Haunted House.
Speaker 3: I just had to check something real quick. But yes,
Speaker 3: The Magic Sword in sixty two was directed by bert
Speaker 3: I Gordon.
Speaker 1: That's a fun one. That's fun. I would come back
Speaker 1: for that one. It's got a fun cast. And now
Speaker 1: it's for the kids. It's a fairy tale movie. It's great. Yes.
Speaker 3: Now I will say of Basil Rathbone in this movie,
Speaker 3: I think he you know, he does what is asked
Speaker 3: of him, but this is certainly not his best work.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a monotonous exposition role. He makes a
Speaker 3: lot of bureaucratic statements on behalf of the space institution.
Speaker 3: Seems kind of underused to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's fun at the end. It's gonna be fun
Speaker 1: to discuss his final Yeah, all right. We also have
Speaker 1: a character named Laura James, played by Judy Meredith, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty six through twenty fourteen, best known for
Speaker 1: this movie, Shirley Temple's Storybook in fifty eight and Jack
Speaker 1: the Giant Killer in sixty two. Mostly a TV player,
Speaker 1: she was also the longtime wife of Gary Nelson, who
Speaker 1: lived thirty four through twenty twenty two, who directed nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine's The Black Hole. Now.
Speaker 3: I was looking at Judy Meredith's twenty fourteen obituary in
Speaker 3: The Oregonian, and this had an interesting story. It said
Speaker 3: that at the age of fifteen, she briefly became a
Speaker 3: professional ice skater, participating in the Ice Follies, which was
Speaker 3: some kind of touring ice show that would sometimes feature
Speaker 3: like Olympic ice skaters, but also had various performances such
Speaker 3: as the Swiss comedy ice skating duo Frick and Frack.
Speaker 3: Do you know Frick and frack Rup.
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe I've heard a usions to Frick
Speaker 1: and Frack, but I didn't know who they were. Like,
Speaker 1: maybe there's an old MST. Three K joke about freakin'
Speaker 1: frag but uh boy, look at them, there they are.
Speaker 3: I had no idea there was any such thing as
Speaker 3: a comedy ice skating duo.
Speaker 1: Which one has the mustache, which one looks like g
Speaker 1: Gordon Lyddy.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but that's got to be Frack. Huh No,
Speaker 3: maybe it's Frick. I really couldn't say, But so I
Speaker 3: wonder I haven't seen their routine. Is it like a
Speaker 3: three Stooges thing where they're poking each other in the
Speaker 3: eyes and bopping on the top of the head But
Speaker 3: they're ice skating.
Speaker 1: I mean, one assumes if you're in the middle of
Speaker 1: an ice skating rink and you're trying to portray comedy
Speaker 1: to the audience, it's got to be pretty broad, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta be kind of physical.
Speaker 1: You got to pad that butt for this act, I'm guessing.
Speaker 3: But anyway, sorry, Yes, Judy Meretith So she briefly participated
Speaker 3: in the ice Follies until she suffered a major skiing accident,
Speaker 3: and this put an end to her ice skating career.
Speaker 3: After this, she focused on acting in theater and was
Speaker 3: a parent discovered by the comedian George Burns when she
Speaker 3: was performing at the Pasadena Playhouse. This led to a
Speaker 3: role on the half hour TV comedy show He Presented
Speaker 3: with Gracie Allen, and then this in turn led to
Speaker 3: more TV and film roles, including Queen of Blood. But
Speaker 3: it looks like a lot of you know, the kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, the sixty stuff Western.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: Now, there was a line from the obit that struck
Speaker 3: me as interesting. It said that Judy Meredith sort of
Speaker 3: created the opportunity for her husband, Gary Neilson to have
Speaker 3: a directing career because she agreed to star in the
Speaker 3: TV show Have Gun, Will Travel for Free, but only
Speaker 3: if Gary would be allowed to direct. That's a move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so without her intervention, we might not have gotten
Speaker 1: to the point of the black Hole.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we may have to do black Hole at
Speaker 1: some point. I can't get my family to watch it
Speaker 1: with me, so I'm gonna have to revisit it on
Speaker 1: my own at some point, so you.
Speaker 3: Can make me watch it with you. Yes, well, I
Speaker 3: look forward to that, but yeah, to come back to
Speaker 3: I like shooting Meredith in this again kind of like
Speaker 3: Basil Rathbone here, I feel like she's a little bit
Speaker 3: kind of underused by the script, but she's she's got
Speaker 3: good spunk in her scenes. And also, like Basil Rathbone's character,
Speaker 3: it becomes fun in the last ten minutes or so,
Speaker 3: and she's kind of just like arguing with John Saxon
Speaker 3: about whether or not we should let these aliens completely
Speaker 3: drink all her blood.
Speaker 1: I agree, she doesn't have as much to do, but
Speaker 1: you see the charisma sparkling through the performance, which is nice.
Speaker 3: And you know what, Actually, so I've said that about
Speaker 3: the last two actors, I'll also say that about Dennis Hopper.
Speaker 3: He's good in this, but kind of underused. This is
Speaker 3: the most subdued I have ever seen Dennis Hopper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because, yeah, this is not Dennis Hopper
Speaker 1: as a villain or a wild man. I feel like
Speaker 1: he says daddy O or something at some point we
Speaker 1: felt like an ad lib and maybe, but aside from that,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of what you might expect from
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper. He plays this kind of kind and sensitive
Speaker 1: astronaut character that's like really you know, trying to connect
Speaker 1: with the They don't know it at the time, but
Speaker 1: this alien vampire who they brought on board.
Speaker 3: They make him a writer. So there's a part where
Speaker 3: I don't remember exactly what he says. We can explore
Speaker 3: that later, but he he's like giving an update on
Speaker 3: the ship's log and they're like, wow, Jack Kerouac.
Speaker 1: Nice work, all right. So, yeah, Dennis Hopper playing Paul
Speaker 1: Grant here he lived in nineteen thirty six to twenty ten.
Speaker 1: We profiled him last week on the Super Mario Brothers episodes,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to go into all that again,
Speaker 1: but just to put it in context, Queen of Blood
Speaker 1: hits just the year before sixty seven's Cool Hand Luke
Speaker 1: and The Trip, as well as of course sixty eight
Speaker 1: heads sixty nine's Easy Rider, So you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of big stuff was about to happen for Hopper,
Speaker 1: but he'd still had over a decade's TV and film
Speaker 1: experience at this point, though mostly in smaller roles. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, Harrington gave Hopper his first starring role
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one's Night Tide and Hopper apparently always
Speaker 1: spoke well of him due to that, you know, that
Speaker 1: break that film gave him, but also his experiences on
Speaker 1: that film. He felt like Harrington like gave him the
Speaker 1: room he needed to, you know, to to craft his performance,
Speaker 1: and it just overall spoke well of him as a director.
Speaker 3: Well that's nice, and it makes me want to see
Speaker 3: that other movie. But Dennis Hopper, I'm just gonna say
Speaker 3: he's on his best behavior in this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, But.
Speaker 3: So the last three actors I said, I've felt kind
Speaker 3: of underused. All talented, but maybe they weren't given enough attention,
Speaker 3: Maybe their roles weren't given enough oomph in the script.
Speaker 3: I don't think I would say that about Florence Marley.
Speaker 3: She gets some close up time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just straight up coming at the camera with
Speaker 1: glowing eyes and that face. She doesn't actually have any
Speaker 1: lines in the movie, but but it's a very physical
Speaker 1: performce yeah, Nita line, she speaks, She's doing everything psychically.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Florence Marley playing on IMDb, its credit is
Speaker 1: Alien Queen. In the post credits for the film, it's
Speaker 1: just Florence Marley as question Mark.
Speaker 3: Like she doesn't given a Name and the New Mysterians.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was, but she has lived nineteen nineteen through
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. Checkborn actress who made her mark in
Speaker 1: European film in the thirties and forties, in such movies
Speaker 1: as forty eight's Krakatt and forty seven's The Damned, before
Speaker 1: making the move to Hollywood after the Second World War.
Speaker 1: She appeared in such American movies as forty nine's Tokyo
Speaker 1: Joe opposite Humphrey Bogart, fifty seven's under Sea Girl. I
Speaker 1: know that was the title that got your attention, Like,
Speaker 1: what does that consist? Is she a mermaid? Is she
Speaker 1: like in a wetsuit?
Speaker 3: I don't know, Yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: She also had. She was on a number of TV
Speaker 1: series as well, including the original Twilight Zone. Now, like
Speaker 1: other actors of the mid twentieth century that we've discussed,
Speaker 1: she was impact did by the House on American Activities
Speaker 1: Committee's Blacklist, though it turns out that in her circumstances,
Speaker 1: it was due to a case of mistaken identity, and
Speaker 1: even though this was eventually cleared up, the damage to
Speaker 1: her career was done at that point. This was one
Speaker 1: of the last handful of films she worked on, though
Speaker 1: she later appeared in nineteen seventy three's Doctor Death, Seeker
Speaker 1: of Souls, and the nineteen seventy six film The Astrologer,
Speaker 1: which I've heard great things about. It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: kind of like a weird rediscovered classic. She also apparently,
Speaker 1: and I'm going off of various databases and so forth
Speaker 1: for this, she apparently wrote and starred in a short
Speaker 1: film sequel of sorts to this movie titled Space Boy
Speaker 1: Yes with an electronic score by BBA and Louis Baron
Speaker 1: of the Forbidden Plan of Forbidden Planet Fame. And this
Speaker 1: would have been in nineteen seventy three. I see various
Speaker 1: mentions of it. It's listed in the databases, but I
Speaker 1: find no actual footage of it anywhere. I don't see
Speaker 1: any indication that it was included as an extra on
Speaker 1: anything or compiled anywhere. It's it's almost like it's it's
Speaker 1: listed in error, or it's a lost film entirely. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what the story is here.
Speaker 3: If you have Spaceboy, send it to us upload now,
Speaker 3: give us a link. I've got to see this because
Speaker 3: I love Florence Marley in this movie. Of the original footage.
Speaker 3: She makes the film.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right. Another actor in this I wasn't even
Speaker 1: gonna mention them because before we watched it, I was thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the fourth crewman on the ship. He's just
Speaker 1: gonna die. He's not gonna be that interesting. But I
Speaker 1: actually found the performance kind of fun. This is Robert
Speaker 1: Boone as Anders Brockman. He's like the practical older guy
Speaker 1: on the vessel who says things like, well, how different
Speaker 1: is it drinking blood from just enjoying a nice, rare stake.
Speaker 1: It's not that different. We shouldn't be quick to judge
Speaker 1: that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: This is right after the alien has drained all of
Speaker 3: Denis Hopper's blood. Yeah, this guy gives a speech about like, well,
Speaker 3: hold on, now, let's not judge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's just murdered his crewmate at this point. But
Speaker 1: at any rate. This actor lived nineteen sixteen through twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Dutch born actor active from the late forties through the
Speaker 1: early eighties. And you look at this guy's credits. He
Speaker 1: started off playing a lot of German soldiers and so
Speaker 1: forth uncredited in war films, and I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of them. It's an impressive list. Of like German soldier
Speaker 1: uncredited and so forth, but he eventually starts getting better parts.
Speaker 1: He shows up on a couple episodes of the classic
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone. Same year, he's an uncredited player in Hitchcock's
Speaker 1: Torn Curtain. Mostly TV work follows, but I read that
Speaker 1: he served as a member of the Motion Picture Academy's
Speaker 1: Foreign Language Nominating Committee. So yeah, this is his most
Speaker 1: well known film. But he's also it's not just an
Speaker 1: invisible role in the movie, Like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: kind of like this character all right. Now. It's worth
Speaker 1: noting I didn't actually mark him in this because he
Speaker 1: would have been a bit younger. But Forrest j Ackerman
Speaker 1: plays Faraday's aid in this lived nineteen sixteen through two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. This is the father of sci fi fandom.
Speaker 1: An avid collector of sci fi memorabilia, He was also
Speaker 1: the founding editor and principal rider of the magazine Famous
Speaker 1: Monsters of Film Land, and was a literary agent for
Speaker 1: such authors as Ray Bradberry and l Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 3: I think this is the guy Basil Rathbone is talking
Speaker 3: to when he has just gotten a radio update, saying
Speaker 3: everybody on the ship is dead except for John Saxon
Speaker 3: and Judy Meredith. And then he turns to this guy
Speaker 3: and he's like, things are going very poorly on that ship.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I think that's probably him. This is also
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. Gary Kurtz was a production manager on
Speaker 1: this picture. This is, of course, the future producer of
Speaker 1: the first two Star Wars movies, The Dark Crystal and
Speaker 1: returned to OZ. He lived nineteen forty through twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: He's notable because if you've watched any documentaries about the
Speaker 1: making of the first two Star Wars movies or The
Speaker 1: Dark Crystal, he's the guy with the whaler's beard, the
Speaker 1: kind of Abraham Lincoln beard who talks in has a
Speaker 1: very serious tone to his voice and always has some
Speaker 1: interesting things to say about the production. That's him the
Speaker 1: production manager on this movie. Wow. And then finally, the
Speaker 1: music is by Ronald Stein, who of nineteen thirty through
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight composer who worked on a lot of
Speaker 1: low budget films, particularly for American international pictures. His credits
Speaker 1: in It Conquered The World, Not of This Earth, Attack,
Speaker 1: of the Crab Monsters, Dementia thirteen, and more, including The
Speaker 1: Rain People. Coppola's picture prior to the Godfather. Wow, he's
Speaker 1: writing her z own. Yeah, he's probably come up before,
Speaker 1: and if we just don't remember him, I mean, the
Speaker 1: music in this is not completely unforgettable. It has some nice,
Speaker 1: kind of haunting little bits that have a bit of
Speaker 1: a night gallery feel to the that I liked, but
Speaker 1: in other places it's just more traditional. All right, Joe,
Speaker 1: are you ready to jump into the plot here?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, oh yes. So one thing that I, as
Speaker 3: far as I know, was not imported from the Soviet films.
Speaker 3: I think this may be original is the beautiful art
Speaker 3: behind the opening credits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as I know, this is original. And
Speaker 1: this is definitely was The section of the film starts
Speaker 1: off strong for me, because it does feel very night
Speaker 1: Gallery eskit. This looks like the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: would be on one of the night Gallery paintings, and
Speaker 1: the music also has that kind of earie vibe to it,
Speaker 1: like firmly establishing that, yes, you're going to see a
Speaker 1: lot of space stuff, but this movie is going to
Speaker 1: at heart be spooky in one way or another.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So all of this stuff is attributed to an
Speaker 3: artist named John Klein, who I wasn't otherwise familiar with,
Speaker 3: but as the credits roll, we shuffle through kind of
Speaker 3: it's a lightly representative but mostly abstract illustrations with a
Speaker 3: psychedelic stained glass effect, and I thought it might be
Speaker 3: fun to try to describe some of these images. First,
Speaker 3: there is a kind of a psilocybin yule lad butterfly
Speaker 3: with beard made out of rainbow colored tumors. Then there
Speaker 3: is a two headed witch king of Agmar, but he
Speaker 3: is chained in the Jacob Marley fashion with sixteen dimensional
Speaker 3: Mardi Gras beads, and in the background there are some
Speaker 3: mountains and twin moons. After this, there is a giant
Speaker 3: pink root vegetable nostril with a wing that has bones
Speaker 3: for feathers. Then there is a scene of multicolored gravel
Speaker 3: eggs hatching into spoon plants at the base of a
Speaker 3: mountain made out of dog paws. This is when it
Speaker 3: says Dennis Hopper, by the way. After that it's blood
Speaker 3: volcano leaking more gravel eggs and mandl brought fissures into
Speaker 3: the air, while there are these white pale vines that
Speaker 3: reach up toward the black sun, more wings, more blood planets.
Speaker 3: There's one where there's sort of the top right corner
Speaker 3: of the screen kind of looks like the Punisher logo
Speaker 3: version of a bunny rabbit, but with terminator eyes, and
Speaker 3: then there's a bunch of circuit board components under the
Speaker 3: rabbit's jaw. Backgrounds for the title of the movie, I
Speaker 3: would describe as a DMT furbie with a city skyline
Speaker 3: inside its hairdoo. Maybe I'll stop there. There is more,
Speaker 3: but in general I think this is all good stuff.
Speaker 3: Puts one in an alien mood, goes well with theorem,
Speaker 3: and music suggests that we may be in for sights
Speaker 3: beyond our comprehension. And as much as I love Florence Marley,
Speaker 3: I don't think the movie will be quite as psychedelic
Speaker 3: as the credits imply. But after the credits we get
Speaker 3: a starfield eerie string's playing and the narrator says, what
Speaker 3: did we say it was going to be? The year
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety? It says the problem of traveling to the
Speaker 3: Moon has been solved for many years. Note that this
Speaker 3: movie was in sixty six. The first human moon landing
Speaker 3: was in sixty nine. You know this comes out at
Speaker 3: a time when humans had not yet walked on the Moon.
Speaker 3: Narrator says, space stations have been built there, and authorized
Speaker 3: personnel come and go as they wish.
Speaker 1: Of slight Note here two thousand and one, a space
Speaker 1: odyssey wouldn't come out for another couple of years, So
Speaker 1: I don't know's I think all science fiction depicting travel
Speaker 1: within our own Solar system, like near future space travel
Speaker 1: and our Solar system, you almost have to judge it
Speaker 1: in terms of before two thousand and one or post
Speaker 1: two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. But so in these shots, we of
Speaker 3: course see the Moon, we see tiny ships zooming past,
Speaker 3: and a shot of the surface with rockets posed upright
Speaker 3: in this kind of rocky, shadowy landscape, and the narrator
Speaker 3: goes on it says, but the Moon is a dead world,
Speaker 3: and the great question about space still remains. Does life
Speaker 3: exist on another planet? To seek an answer to this question,
Speaker 3: the major powers of the world have been preparing at
Speaker 3: the International Institute of Space Technology to explore the planets
Speaker 3: Venus and Mars. And here we cut to shots of
Speaker 3: a kind of hip institutional campus with a bit of
Speaker 3: modern architecture flair. People are walking along in the sidewalks
Speaker 3: and Rob, did you notice that they're all stepping in
Speaker 3: sync with each other. It kind of makes a point
Speaker 3: of showing this, and I wondered, why.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't know. It's just everyone's on the
Speaker 1: same page when it comes to space technology. I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, anyway, we cut inside, and why here's John Saxon.
Speaker 3: Look at his posture, it's really good. He enters a
Speaker 3: door labeled Astro Communications, which is in a very strange font.
Speaker 3: You remember the font on the door label. It's sort
Speaker 3: of the font one would find on the record sleeve
Speaker 3: of the band.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah, yeah, it was a little weird, but
Speaker 1: it's the future. It's ninety nine.
Speaker 3: So John Saxon, I think his character's name is Alan Brenner,
Speaker 3: is here to pick up a lady to go to lunch.
Speaker 3: And this is Judy Meredith, playing an astronaut and communication
Speaker 3: specialist named Laura James. She's like, I don't know about
Speaker 3: I'm kind of busy. I'm picking up a radio broadcast
Speaker 3: from another planet unlike anything we've ever heard before. It
Speaker 3: may be our first confirmation of intelligent life anywhere else
Speaker 3: in the universe. But yeah, okay, let's go to lunch.
Speaker 3: She's just like Bill Will you record this alien broadcast
Speaker 3: for me. I'll check it out later.
Speaker 1: I mean a tinwheel day at a cafeteria, so you
Speaker 1: gotta go. But no, it's what do they actually say
Speaker 1: they're eating it? I mean it looks disgusting. It looks
Speaker 1: like a kind of burned waffle. But before we see
Speaker 1: them at lunch, so they leave, and we're seeing like
Speaker 1: the equipment in the Earth based communications lab, and we
Speaker 1: hear the droning of the signal from the other planet,
Speaker 1: and the droning of the signal becomes louder, and we
Speaker 1: cut into space and we zoom toward the surface of
Speaker 1: a pale green planet, and then we see the surface.
Speaker 3: We're on it. There are crashing waves in the foreground
Speaker 3: against a horizon with giant spires of rock that are
Speaker 3: taller than the top of a looming moon. And then
Speaker 3: and then we see a giant ball of wires that's
Speaker 3: maybe the thing that is sending out the signal. And
Speaker 3: inside that ball of wires, I guess it's a building.
Speaker 3: We see what must be aliens. There are humanoid bodies
Speaker 3: standing in the shadows. It's very dark inside, and they're
Speaker 3: manipulating machinery to guide a beam of turquoise light as
Speaker 3: it sweeps across space, like are they beaming a signal
Speaker 3: toward us? We see hands reaching out for a series
Speaker 3: of darkened orbs topped by prismatic triangles, and then cut
Speaker 3: to John Saxon and Laura having lunch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this, this whole segment, of course, on the alien
Speaker 1: Planet is all footage from the Soviet productions that are
Speaker 1: sampled here, and it was I don't know, I was
Speaker 1: distracted just thinking about like did we need to see
Speaker 1: any of this? Like the causation of filmmaking is kind
Speaker 1: of messed up here, because like would you create this
Speaker 1: footage for use in the film? You know, does it
Speaker 1: actually serve an important purpose in the narrative or is
Speaker 1: it really what we have here where it's just like,
Speaker 1: well we have it. We should show what this other
Speaker 1: planet is, even though we're never actually going to visit it,
Speaker 1: but we should just show it to them because we
Speaker 1: have minutes worth of footage.
Speaker 3: I agree, it is a tough question, like it removes
Speaker 3: any sense of mystery here and it doesn't really add
Speaker 3: anything narratively to the film, But particularly in one segment
Speaker 3: coming up in a few minutes, I think it does
Speaker 3: actually have a very good effect at achieving a mood.
Speaker 3: But we'll get to that. So first we're going to
Speaker 3: meet a few Earthling characters again. Alan and Laura are
Speaker 3: having lunch. Alan is complaining that the astronaut food tastes
Speaker 3: really bad. They're calling it exo biologic food, and he
Speaker 3: likes banana splits on Earth better. And then these two
Speaker 3: guys named Tony and Paul come to sit down with them.
Speaker 3: All the dudes, by the way, are dressed the same
Speaker 3: khaki pants, yellow shirt, slightly puffy jacket with a pattern
Speaker 3: that looks like a mattress cover. And then we have
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper here. He sits down on the left. His
Speaker 3: name is Paul. We learned from conversation that John Saxon
Speaker 3: is scheduled to travel to Mars. And then we get
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper's first line, which is what's the latest scuttle?
Speaker 3: But there Tony baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Dennis Hopper, Lads.
Speaker 3: And chum, I think this is the line where you
Speaker 3: said he may have been ad libbing. I would agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what were.
Speaker 3: We saying beforehand? It's imagining him doing the voice and
Speaker 3: the trailer saying like space man, it's a real bad trip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would have been That would have been a
Speaker 1: great tagline, especially if this movie had been made just
Speaker 1: like two years later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we should clarify nothing about Dennis Hopper's look
Speaker 3: or performance in this movie is shaggy, dangerous hippie. Instead,
Speaker 3: he comes off very He's very clean cut and conventionally handsome.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, And now I should also a couple
Speaker 1: other things you missed. The uniforms I do have to
Speaker 1: drive home. These are not the uniforms in this film
Speaker 1: are not on the same level at all with Planet
Speaker 1: of the Vampires. I mean, the colors match, everything has
Speaker 1: a certain uniformity to it, but high fashion is not
Speaker 1: in play. I also feel like this lunch scene that
Speaker 1: everyone was very animated for this sequence. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they just had a lot of fun setting around,
Speaker 1: if there's a lot of cutting up in between takes,
Speaker 1: but everyone seemed really happy to be on set for
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 3: I agree, Yeah, spirits are high. But their lunch is
Speaker 3: interrupted by an announcement on the loud speaker. It's calling
Speaker 3: everybody to gather in Area one for an important announcement.
Speaker 3: The dudes get up and they say that means us,
Speaker 3: but the announcement literally says all personnels. I don't know
Speaker 3: why they say that. But on the way, John Saxon
Speaker 3: he's asking Laura. He's like, hey, have you ever imagined
Speaker 3: you'd be getting married on a rocket ship to Mars?
Speaker 3: So apparently they're I guess they're engaged.
Speaker 1: Zero G wedding though sounds it sounds exciting.
Speaker 3: Oh, that'd be very cool. Yes, So the meeting place
Speaker 3: is outdoors and the background here is a gigantic sculpture.
Speaker 3: It's bigger than the Statue of Liberty. It's huge, and
Speaker 3: it's a goddess leaping into the air with arms outstretched,
Speaker 3: and there's a ringed planet at her feet. Kind of
Speaker 3: reminds me of the winged Victory of Samothrace. But here
Speaker 3: we get an announcement from Basil Rathbone. He's playing Doctor Faraday,
Speaker 3: kind of the big boss at this place, and he says,
Speaker 3: my friends and fellow workers in the Great Adventure of Space,
Speaker 3: I have the most important news to announce since our
Speaker 3: first successful landing on the Moon twenty years ago. As
Speaker 3: many of you know, for several weeks now, we've been
Speaker 3: receiving organized signals from a far galaxy. This morning our
Speaker 3: code experts finally deciphered the message these signals contained. It
Speaker 3: is a most extraordinary document. It's very long. And then
Speaker 3: he explains he's not going to read the whole thing,
Speaker 3: but that it means the Aliens dispatched a spaceship containing
Speaker 3: an ambassador who will come to Earth and live with
Speaker 3: us here, since our atmosphere will support their form of life.
Speaker 3: Faraday says that the entire world will await the arrival
Speaker 3: of the alien ambassador with the keenest anticipation, and everybody applauds.
Speaker 3: But as the applause dies out, we fade back to
Speaker 3: visions of the other world. So we see again the
Speaker 3: waves crashing on knights Plutonian shore, and we see the
Speaker 3: towers of rock and the beings moving about in the
Speaker 3: shadows of their weird castles filled with unrecognizable technology. There
Speaker 3: are pipes and hoses and big olds, spheres that themselves
Speaker 3: seem to contain stars. And there's no dialogue and no music,
Speaker 3: just the shrill droning of the radio signal that's beaming
Speaker 3: out to Earth. And I actually think that these scenes
Speaker 3: of the alien planet, especially the way that they are
Speaker 3: inner cut with the scenes of brightly lit noisy gatherings
Speaker 3: and social activity on Earth are extremely effective. It's very
Speaker 3: moody and disconcerting the way it goes from like the
Speaker 3: crowd at the institute to the planet and that nobody's
Speaker 3: saying anything. They're just moving around in the shadows, manipulating
Speaker 3: technology that we can't even understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right. It visually drives home this
Speaker 1: feeling that's later brought up in dialogue to some extent,
Speaker 1: like this idea of like we really don't know what
Speaker 1: these other beings consist of, like not only like their
Speaker 1: their their biology, but also their society, Like what what
Speaker 1: is it they value? What do they want? And what
Speaker 1: does it mean that they're sending an ambassador to us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything we see of them as silent, methodical, wordless,
Speaker 3: almost emotionless, just movements in the dark. So, despite the
Speaker 3: limitations imposed by relying so much on pre existing footage
Speaker 3: to construct this film, I think it is used to
Speaker 3: great effect in some sequences, and this is one of them.
Speaker 3: This part I thought was actually excellent.
Speaker 1: Agreed, Agreed.
Speaker 3: But then on the then we get some more kind
Speaker 3: of like launch footage, and that stuff is less interesting.
Speaker 3: But on the alien planet, we see this giant's vehicle
Speaker 3: ship rise up out of an underground bay and the
Speaker 3: crew rides a tram up to board it. We only
Speaker 3: see the crew members. We see the vaguely humanoid shapes,
Speaker 3: but only at the distance, so you never like get
Speaker 3: a close up. And in the distance they're kind of
Speaker 3: waving goodbye to a crowd again silently. There's no local sound,
Speaker 3: just the droning signal, and then they blast off into space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cool looking ship, the circuit, the spherical
Speaker 1: ship with the kind of halo around it. This is
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty three's Mitch to navs Stretch. Who so
Speaker 1: it looks good, but yeah, it's it's made by other hands.
Speaker 3: Then back on Earth, we see a giant television ball
Speaker 3: appearing in the sky over the Institute with a dude
Speaker 3: delivering the news. He's like wearing a suit and tie.
Speaker 3: He's explaining how scientists have detected a ship approaching Earth
Speaker 3: bringing aliens from quote a distant galaxy. I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 3: As I've said before, I can always suspend disp and
Speaker 3: this is fine. But note to sci fi writers, if
Speaker 3: you care about being realistic at all, the space between
Speaker 3: galaxies is immense. I think if if you want to
Speaker 3: have aliens, they should be from another star in our galaxy,
Speaker 3: now from another galaxy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you're dealing with a far future interstellar empire
Speaker 1: sort of scenario, then you can maybe get into these
Speaker 1: distant galaxy ideas. But even then, like the galaxy is
Speaker 1: big enough, there's still room for discoveries and surprises and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: Yes. Also, the guy in the TV ball his lips
Speaker 3: are not matching the words he's saying, which makes me
Speaker 3: think this is also part of the Soviet film package. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he says, astronomers have determined that an unknown object
Speaker 3: has passed the orbit of the Moon and is rapidly
Speaker 3: approaching Earth. It is not the ship itself, but a
Speaker 3: mechanical device sent ahead for reasons unknown. And then we
Speaker 3: see a metal ball bobbing in the waves, so scientists
Speaker 3: investigate this. We see Basil Rathbone and Judy Meredith like
Speaker 3: watching a video. It seems that maybe what was sent
Speaker 3: to Earth was like a video tape from the security
Speaker 3: cameras on the alien ship, and so what happens on
Speaker 3: the video they watch, Well, in the alien ship, there
Speaker 3: is the worrying of a great machine sort of tuning up,
Speaker 3: and we see two aliens again, silent in the shadows.
Speaker 3: One of them produces, in a an almost ritualistic fashion,
Speaker 3: a helmet and then places it on the other one's head,
Speaker 3: and then the ship accelerates toward a red planet. And
Speaker 3: then Basil Rathbone looks away from the screen and he says, remarkable,
Speaker 3: crash landing on Mars, and this is their sos. We're
Speaker 3: obviously in touch with beings that have a very advanced technology.
Speaker 3: So there's a big meeting in a kind of auditorium.
Speaker 3: This is the one with the giant statue holding Sputnik
Speaker 3: in his hand like oric skull, and Basil Rathbone says, basically,
Speaker 3: the aliens need our help. They have crash landed on Mars.
Speaker 3: They are stranded there. We are obliged to go help
Speaker 3: them out.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good setup. Actually, yeah, more in retrospect
Speaker 1: than I think in my actual experience of watching this
Speaker 1: portion of the film. I feel like there's a there's
Speaker 1: a bit of padding getting to this point, but once
Speaker 1: we get there, it's like, Okay, we've got a mission here.
Speaker 1: This sounds good. It was going to be like we
Speaker 1: meet the Space Ambassador, but the Ambassador's ship is crashed
Speaker 1: or something, and we got to go check it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a lot more padding to come, but
Speaker 3: in a way it like the premise makes sense. So
Speaker 3: they say, there's the the spaceship Oceano, which was originally
Speaker 3: planned to go to Mars on an exploratory mission. Rathbone's like, okay,
Speaker 3: we're gonna move forward the schedule. We're going to turn
Speaker 3: this into a rescue operation. And the time is now,
Speaker 3: and obviously John Saxon must be thinking, I was not
Speaker 3: ready to eat all of this exobiologic food. I want
Speaker 3: my Earth meat loaf, I want my Earth waffles. But
Speaker 3: they blast off, so the rescue mission is on the way.
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of footage here of rockets, you know,
Speaker 3: zooming around and landing and being sent on the Moon.
Speaker 3: Once we actually see the surface of the Moon, the
Speaker 3: footage is cooler again because I love the little model
Speaker 3: set they have this from the original films. And once
Speaker 3: they're on the Moon, Laura talks to Basil Rathbone. She says,
Speaker 3: you know, I was hoping Alan would be on my flight,
Speaker 3: but he's like, nope, no, can't do We put you
Speaker 3: on different flights. So Laura is going to be on
Speaker 3: the first mission Oceano one that is going now Alan's
Speaker 3: going to be on Oceano two, which goes later. And
Speaker 3: so there's a sad conversation about how they won't be
Speaker 3: traveling together and they embrace and then yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: they leave. So there's a launch and the crew of
Speaker 3: the first ship is Laura and then Paul. That's Dennis Hopper,
Speaker 3: and then Anders who is the commander, and that does.
Speaker 1: Rhyme Commander Andrews reporting for duty.
Speaker 3: I think it's Commander Alexander Anders. So they have some
Speaker 3: kind of relaxed cutting up time on the ship. We
Speaker 3: talked about the scene where Dennis Hoppers like narrating his
Speaker 3: space stuff and then Laura is saying, Wow, you know,
Speaker 3: your logs of this journey are so interesting. Maybe when
Speaker 3: you get back to Earth you can have them published.
Speaker 3: You'll be that famous writer slash astronaut fella. But I
Speaker 3: think the scene could have used some punch up in
Speaker 3: the dialoguecause I wrote down exactly what Dennis Hopper says
Speaker 3: that impresses them so much. This is it, he says,
Speaker 3: Mars is giving off a red coloring, and it is
Speaker 3: becoming more vivid as we approach. It suggests that there
Speaker 3: is a really deep oxidation of the planet's major substance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, and Hopper's characters has some
Speaker 1: better lines coming up, but this is not one of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds more like they're impressed at his scientific vocabulary.
Speaker 3: They're like, wow, he knows the word oxidation. Folks, that's
Speaker 3: not what makes good writing. But come on, Okay, so
Speaker 3: we're just well accepted to move on. Okay, except the
Speaker 3: premise Dennis Hopper's character has a way with words. But
Speaker 3: on the way to Mars, they get hit by a
Speaker 3: quote sunburst, which I think is supposed to be like
Speaker 3: a solar flare or something.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: There is a burst of activity off the surface of
Speaker 3: the Sun and their ship is damaged and they I
Speaker 3: don't know if this really changes anything. It's damaged. But
Speaker 3: then they get to Mars. They enter the orbit of Mars. Oh,
Speaker 3: they do have Dennis Hopper take quote oxygenator tablets, and
Speaker 3: when he takes them, he's like, oh, there's a symphony
Speaker 3: playing in my skull and it's not Brahms. The ship lands,
Speaker 3: there are some beautiful and eerie shots of the rocky
Speaker 3: red landscape, and Anders and Paul put on their spacesuits
Speaker 3: and they go out to explore the crash landed alien ship. Now,
Speaker 3: at this point there is a powerful resemblance to the
Speaker 3: later sequence in Alien of exploring the stranded ship on
Speaker 3: LV four twenty six, And I think I would not
Speaker 3: be at all the first person to notice this. People
Speaker 3: have pointed out that in some ways aspects of alien
Speaker 3: might have come from Planet of the Vampires, but aspects
Speaker 3: of alien may also have come from this.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think I saw that that. Harrington also
Speaker 1: commented on it at one point. I mean not in
Speaker 1: a mean way or a spiteful way or anything, but
Speaker 1: I mean it's part of the legacy of sci fi horror.
Speaker 1: The threads that connect these films are stronger than in
Speaker 1: other subgenres, I think, yes.
Speaker 3: And there's good sound design in the scene, like the
Speaker 3: scene kind of warbles and hums while Anders explores the
Speaker 3: ship and Dennis Hopper looks on from outside. Now, first
Speaker 3: of all, Anders finds a dead humanoid alien in the
Speaker 3: pilot's chair, and then we cut to a newspaper headline
Speaker 3: which was jarring to me. I thought it was funny.
Speaker 3: It's like, single dead astronaut found on spacecraft, mystery deepens.
Speaker 1: Well, you want to read the rest of the story, right,
Speaker 1: The headline served its purpose.
Speaker 3: Yes, if a newspaper said that, I would want to
Speaker 3: read it, assuming it was not like the weekly World News.
Speaker 3: But they figure out what's going on, Basil Rathbone did
Speaker 3: is that the other alien astronauts must have boarded a
Speaker 3: quote rescue rocket, and so they ejected from this ship
Speaker 3: before it crashed and killed the one alien astronaut that
Speaker 3: remained on board. So Alan, that's John Sackson and Tony,
Speaker 3: remember Tony from the meal earlier. They make a case,
Speaker 3: let's go on a supplemental mission to find the rescue
Speaker 3: rocket and they're going to land on the Martian moon Phobos.
Speaker 3: Bezil says, you are either fools or very brave men,
Speaker 3: but he in the end approves and they go. So
Speaker 3: they arrive in orbit, they make contact with Dennis Hopper
Speaker 3: on the radio, and there's a lot of Oh, Alan
Speaker 3: wants to talk to Laura. Oh, she can't talk right now.
Speaker 3: Oh now she can talk. Okay, he's calling. So again
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of patting in this.
Speaker 1: But around this part of the film, we're getting to
Speaker 1: the point where the movie really begins. There's about an
Speaker 1: hour in Yes, I feel like everything says coming together
Speaker 1: and it becomes becomes very watchable and and pretty good
Speaker 1: in places.
Speaker 3: I agree. So they're on the moon Phobos, and they
Speaker 3: were supposed to be just using this moon as like
Speaker 3: a sort of a launching pad to get to the planet.
Speaker 3: But out of the window of their ship, Alan and
Speaker 3: Tony see something in the distance and it is the
Speaker 3: rescue ship, the other ship from the alien ship. So
Speaker 3: they go to investigate. Inside, they see a silhouette illuminated
Speaker 3: in the light from a door. It's a humanoid figure,
Speaker 3: but then she collapses, so they carry her back to
Speaker 3: their ship and it's a woman. She's dressed in a
Speaker 3: red jumpsuit. She has green skin, and she's wearing a
Speaker 3: helmet that looks kind of like a cathedral cupola or
Speaker 3: kind of like a Zultar machine.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, it's a well designed spacesuit, like it feel
Speaker 1: it's obviously a space suit, but it feels a little
Speaker 1: bit alien. It feels it has a good visual flare
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 3: So there is a moment where they have to decide
Speaker 3: what to do because now it's the two of them
Speaker 3: and this and this alien rescuee and their ship can
Speaker 3: only carry two people. They need to launch and go
Speaker 3: meet the other earthship, but they can only go with
Speaker 3: two people, so they flip a coin to determine who
Speaker 3: goes with the alien astronaut and who stays behind. John
Speaker 3: Saxon says, all I have is paper moon money, and
Speaker 3: the movie keeps you in suspense for a while, But
Speaker 3: who's bringing the astronaut to the other ship. We see
Speaker 3: them walking through a dust storm on the surface of Mars,
Speaker 3: hunting down the main ship's beacon, and eventually they collapse,
Speaker 3: but finally they are found. Dennis Hopper brings the alien
Speaker 3: inside and they look at her and Laura remarks, Wow,
Speaker 3: she seems so human yet not human at all, and
Speaker 3: Paul says, I know, it's uncanny. It's like what would
Speaker 3: have happened to us if we'd been in another atmosphere.
Speaker 3: And then suddenly Laura remembers to ask, wait, Paul, who
Speaker 3: brought her, but there's no time to answer. In walks
Speaker 3: John Saxon, her space fiance. He was the one who came,
Speaker 3: so he's okay now. There's a whole thing. This kind
Speaker 3: of a side story about confirming that Oceano two, the
Speaker 3: other ship, will be able to come back to Mars
Speaker 3: to rescue Tony, the guy who is left behind on Phobos.
Speaker 3: So actually Tony really gets the better deal here considering
Speaker 3: what happens on the main ship. So let's see. Yeah,
Speaker 3: now it's Alan, Laura, Paul Anders and the Alien Lady
Speaker 3: and they're all on the ship together and they're gonna
Speaker 3: blast off. Now what comes next is I would argue
Speaker 3: the best scene in the film. It's the scene where
Speaker 3: the Alien Ambassador wakes up. She wakes up in the chair,
Speaker 3: and then she makes eye contact with the crew members
Speaker 3: one at a time, starting with Dennis Hopper. She looks
Speaker 3: at him and her face goes through these subtle changes,
Speaker 3: and she smiles, and she has these little flares of
Speaker 3: expression in her eyes and this gradually inflating grin as
Speaker 3: she looks from astronaut to astronaut, Except she doesn't smile
Speaker 3: when she sees Laura. She looks at Laura and then
Speaker 3: suddenly exhales kind of sharply, leaving a blast of fog
Speaker 3: on the inside of the glass of her helmet, and Ooh,
Speaker 3: this scene was chilling and very interesting, and Florence Marley
Speaker 3: is wonderful with the little tiny expressions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, Like this is the point in the film where, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're really off to the races here. We have a
Speaker 1: strong cast, we have a limited and understandable set. We
Speaker 1: know where we are and what the immediate stakes are. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Here it kind of turns into a different movie. Where
Speaker 3: before it was like all about blasting off and landing
Speaker 3: and blasting off and discussing what to do and then
Speaker 3: blasting off and blasting off again. Now it's basically a
Speaker 3: bottle episode. It's just some character stuck in a ship
Speaker 3: with something that is acting a little strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, at this point it could be like a
Speaker 1: really interesting episode of the old Twilight Zone or Outer
Speaker 1: Limits or something.
Speaker 3: So first they put Dennis Hopper in charge of taking
Speaker 3: care of the alien lady, and he shows her how
Speaker 3: to water through a straw. She has some water through
Speaker 3: the straw, but she is not interested in food. Like
Speaker 3: she turns her face away from the exobiologics and anders
Speaker 3: wonders if perhaps she is used to some sort of
Speaker 3: liquid nourishment the whole time. By the way she is
Speaker 3: just making eyes at the earth dudes. And oh and
Speaker 3: also we see that when her helmet is off, she
Speaker 3: has a sort of onion shaped troll doll hairdoo.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but wonder if this is a nod
Speaker 1: to Bride of Frankenstein. You know, certainly given Harrington's appreciation
Speaker 1: for the work of James Whale, that she has tall hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah I didn't put that together.
Speaker 3: But so also well, that's another performance that is wordless
Speaker 3: but relies on powerful facial expressions. Elsa Lanchester as the
Speaker 3: Bride of Frankenstein. But so after this, they try to
Speaker 3: take a blood sample. Anders also wants to do this
Speaker 3: to run some tests, but she will not allow it.
Speaker 3: She smacks the needle out of the dude's hand, and
Speaker 3: then we got to Later that night, Dennis Hopper is
Speaker 3: making some notes in his audio log and he says
Speaker 3: he thinks he's noticed something about the alien that the
Speaker 3: others haven't yet. He says she has, but then he
Speaker 3: trails off and he doesn't finish the sentence. And I
Speaker 3: want to know what was Dennis Hopper going to say?
Speaker 1: I know this, I thought this was one of my
Speaker 1: favorite acting moments in the entire movie. It was just
Speaker 1: just the fact that he trails off and he doesn't
Speaker 1: finish the thought, like it's just it works so perfectly
Speaker 1: for this character and for what's about to come.
Speaker 3: Now, He's sitting there by himself while everybody else is asleep,
Speaker 3: and he notices an open doorway and he goes to investigate,
Speaker 3: and the alien ambassador is not in her seat anymore,
Speaker 3: so he goes wandering around alone looking for her. This
Speaker 3: kind of reminded me of the scene an Alien where
Speaker 3: like Brett is looking for the cat and Dennis Hopper
Speaker 3: stumbles into the engine room and there suddenly she appears.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure about this. I think, is she in
Speaker 3: her alien way supposed to be nude? Like you see
Speaker 3: her back and it is green. She's not wearing her
Speaker 3: red jumpsuit, but maybe she was wearing Maybe she had
Speaker 3: like green clothes on under that, and that's what it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be. She's obviously actually wearing something in the scene,
Speaker 3: but it's the same color as her skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't sure. On there's another scene where it
Speaker 1: makes it seem like maybe the back of her costume
Speaker 1: is more exposed in the front. I'm not sure on that.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, there she is. Something has changed about her.
Speaker 3: Now she has lights glowing in her eyes, and she
Speaker 3: seems to hypnotize Dennis Hopper, and she walks up to him.
Speaker 3: She lays a hand on his chest, and her skin
Speaker 3: appears to have a shiny, almost polymerized texture, and she
Speaker 3: leans in and we see only from like the perspective,
Speaker 3: like from behind her, and it's like, is she kissing him?
Speaker 3: Or is she biting his neck? Next morning, people wake up.
Speaker 3: They discover Paul dead. Dennis Hopper has left the building.
Speaker 1: What a shame? What is shame? Is such a nice character?
Speaker 3: Yes, So his wrist has a bloody, ragged wound, and
Speaker 3: he appears to have been drained of blood. And they
Speaker 3: find the alien ambassador sleeping with blood dripping out of
Speaker 3: the sides of her mouth. So there's no mystery about
Speaker 3: what happened. It's just like, oh, okay, here she is.
Speaker 3: She drank all his blood. Anders says, do you see
Speaker 3: how heavy she's breathing. She has gorged herself on blood
Speaker 3: and now she's digesting like a boa constrictor that swallowed
Speaker 3: a whole animal. It's fascinating and then John Sackson goes fascinating,
Speaker 3: it's horrible. We ought to destroy her right now and.
Speaker 1: Come on ou and come on out. And he's just
Speaker 1: admiring her purity. That's all that's going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like Ian Holme. Yeah, so it's a conflict.
Speaker 3: Anders thinks, you know, she's much too precious to destroy.
Speaker 3: In fact, he does go somewhere interesting. He says, she's
Speaker 3: not even necessarily aware that she's done anything wrong. To
Speaker 3: like an argument about whether or not they because they
Speaker 3: can't converse with her, that she never talks. So they
Speaker 3: argue about whether they should assume that the alien knows
Speaker 3: it has done something wrong by killing a human or not.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great question for a sci fi story.
Speaker 3: I can't recall if I've ever heard that being discussed before,
Speaker 3: Like should we hold the alien morally accountable?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a movie where the mission statement does
Speaker 1: not call for a lot of philosophical pondering. And yet
Speaker 1: there's just a little it dips its toes in a
Speaker 1: little bit right here, and it's nice.
Speaker 3: Andrews makes some kind of interesting arguments. He says, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe this alien comes from a planet where it feeds
Speaker 3: on the blood of other organisms, and it doesn't think
Speaker 3: there's anything wrong with that, much the same way that
Speaker 3: we eat the flesh of other organisms. So is her
Speaker 3: Might she understand having drank Dennis Hopper's blood the same
Speaker 3: way we would understand eating a steak? And then Alan,
Speaker 3: so that's an interesting point, and Alan responds by saying,
Speaker 3: but we don't feed on blood. I think the philosophical
Speaker 3: dispute is going a bit over John Saxon's head, like
Speaker 3: he doesn't understand that it's not literally what the substance
Speaker 3: is that matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone's pissed, but everyone seems to agree thus far.
Speaker 1: They need to check back in with headquarters and not
Speaker 1: do anything drastic.
Speaker 3: Right, So they come up with a workaround. Anders says, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're going to feed her from our medical supply of
Speaker 3: blood plasma, and we keep her drinking that so that
Speaker 3: she doesn't drink the blood from our bodies and that
Speaker 3: works for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the basic understanding it is like she's not hungry,
Speaker 1: she's not a threat.
Speaker 3: They make a report to Basil Rathbone about the blood
Speaker 3: drinking and it shows Basil Rathbone back at Mission control
Speaker 3: and he just like puts his head in his hands,
Speaker 3: which made me laugh. Then I think he walks over
Speaker 3: to the wall and he says he looks at a
Speaker 3: map of the stars, and he says, one should not
Speaker 3: be shocked by anything we find out there. And I'm like, man,
Speaker 3: you could imagine so much weirder forms of life than
Speaker 3: something that drinks blood. That's like something that a lot
Speaker 3: of Earth life does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it shouldn't be really that shocking, But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I do kind of like it as this
Speaker 1: little flourish that you know, puts you in the space
Speaker 1: of this you know, really kind of like an old
Speaker 1: fashioned pulpse sci fi where like the rest of the
Speaker 1: Solar System is wild. Baby, you don't know what's out
Speaker 1: there right, could be teeming with all sorts of weird
Speaker 1: life life forms.
Speaker 3: You can't possibly imagine. This one drinks blood, this next
Speaker 3: one has three eyes. So they hold a funeral for
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper. They blast his body out the air lock.
Speaker 3: The funeral includes readings from the Bible, and there is
Speaker 3: a discussion between John Saxon and Anders. John Saxon says,
Speaker 3: should we tie her up? Andrew says no, no, we'll
Speaker 3: be safe as long as we never all fall asleep
Speaker 3: at the same time. And John Saxon's like, well, but
Speaker 3: there there's no sign of struggle, and Andre says, well,
Speaker 3: she must have gotten to him in his sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They bring up the vampire bad as an.
Speaker 3: Example, right, They say, yeah, okay, so vampire back can
Speaker 3: feed on animals without them necessarily detecting. Maybe she has
Speaker 3: something in her saliva that dulls the pain of the bite,
Speaker 3: and thus you don't know when you get bitten. So
Speaker 3: they feed her a bunch of blood plasma. She drinks
Speaker 3: it through a straw until ooh, they run out of
Speaker 3: blood plasma. That's a problem. So next thing, there is
Speaker 3: a very creepy scene. Again I thought this one was
Speaker 3: really effective. Anders is alone in the control room, awake
Speaker 3: while everybody else is asleep, and he clearly is tired.
Speaker 3: But he starts looking at the door of the room
Speaker 3: and was that a silhouette there? Although it's not there anymore. Oh,
Speaker 3: but there it is again, and it's back lit, but
Speaker 3: it's like it's a female silhouette and she's approaching. The
Speaker 3: eyes are glowing. He drops his ray gun and then
Speaker 3: there's another blood feast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good seat, quin say, a nice build
Speaker 1: up of tension, and you know, and especially I thought
Speaker 1: it worked well because you know that this guy is
Speaker 1: toast like, he's not John Saxon's, he's not Alan, he's
Speaker 1: not Laura. He's going to get killed by the space
Speaker 1: vampire at some point, and yet it still feels it's
Speaker 1: still a tense sequence when it occurs.
Speaker 3: Agree, I really like that, like is he seeing her
Speaker 3: or is he not? A thing that makes it tense.
Speaker 3: So now only Alan and Laura are left, and so
Speaker 3: they tie up the alien while she is asleep and digesting.
Speaker 3: They conclude that she must work by some kind of
Speaker 3: deadly hypnosis. And here is the scene I mentioned earlier
Speaker 3: where they call Basil Rathbone to be like, hey, everybody's dead,
Speaker 3: and he turns to the guy next to him and
Speaker 3: says things are going very badly on that ship, very badly.
Speaker 1: Indeed, they are not having a good day up there.
Speaker 3: So the alien lady wakes up, discovering she is restrained.
Speaker 3: They've tied her up, and her eyes light up and
Speaker 3: she somehow turns her hot enough to burn through the ropes.
Speaker 1: That was cool, yeah, yeah, or yeah, some sort of
Speaker 1: like laser vision or her skin's heating up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: she burns through the bonds and now she's free to
Speaker 1: move around the ship and finds more of that sweet
Speaker 1: human blood.
Speaker 3: That's right, but I think it's implied that she is
Speaker 3: only interested in man blood because we see her shadow
Speaker 3: pass over the body of sleeping Laura, but she doesn't
Speaker 3: go for it. She just walks right past. And then
Speaker 3: Laura wakes up and she looks around and the room
Speaker 3: is very still, and she doesn't hear anything, so she
Speaker 3: gets up, she walks around, and then she suddenly catches
Speaker 3: the alien in the act of drinking John Saxon's blood.
Speaker 3: I guess he got hypnotized off screen. There's a brief
Speaker 3: fight and Laura injures the alien. She like scratches her
Speaker 3: in the fight, and the alien begins bleeding green fluid,
Speaker 3: and she screams and runs away. John Saxon wakes up,
Speaker 3: he's all right, And then they go to look for
Speaker 3: the alien and she has collapsed on her bed and
Speaker 3: bled to death from only a tiny scratch. John Sackson
Speaker 3: concludes that she suffered from hemophilia. He says perhaps she
Speaker 3: was some sort of royalty, a queen maybe.
Speaker 1: And this is.
Speaker 3: Referring to royal hemophilia on Earth that I think was
Speaker 3: a heritable trait that in many ways was related to
Speaker 3: I think Queen Victoria and her husband.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean there's also some examples in the you know,
Speaker 1: the Russian royal family as well, if memory serves.
Speaker 3: They may have been related to Queen Victoria somehow.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I think you're right.
Speaker 3: I just looked it up. I think Czar Nicholas's wife
Speaker 3: Alexandra was Queen Victoria's granddaughter. There's a lot of oh,
Speaker 3: there you go. They're all, you know, mixing and match
Speaker 3: in European royalty.
Speaker 1: At any rate, the end result is that our Queen
Speaker 1: of Blood here is a glass cannon. She the slightest
Speaker 1: little scratch is enough to cause her to bleed to death.
Speaker 1: And there she is on the ship seemingly like that
Speaker 1: was kind of a freezing. Now we're done with the
Speaker 1: alien menace has been defeated.
Speaker 3: Right, so they land back on Earth and John Saxon
Speaker 3: and Laura are waiting, I guess, to be retrieved from
Speaker 3: the capsule they're in and whoops, oh, we just discovered
Speaker 3: that the alien here left a bunch of eggs in
Speaker 3: a cabinet, pulsing slime covered eggs, very cool looking, and
Speaker 3: John Saxon concludes she was a queen, a queen bee.
Speaker 3: She came here to deposit all of her eggs so
Speaker 3: they could hatch and take over Earth. And John Saxon
Speaker 3: wants to destroy the eggs. Laura says, we can't do that.
Speaker 3: Scientists will need to study them. She's arguing for their preservation.
Speaker 3: And then when Basil Rathbone runs in the door with
Speaker 3: all of the science dudes, John Saxon takes him aside
Speaker 3: and it is like, hey, listen, I've got something secret
Speaker 3: to tell you. We've got alien eggs all over the ship.
Speaker 3: We've got to destroy them before people find out about them.
Speaker 3: And Basil Rathbone is like, oh my dear boy, no,
Speaker 3: we must study them, not destroy them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He suddenly has just all the vim and vigor
Speaker 1: in the world just just scampering unto the space ship
Speaker 1: here to check out those alien eggs. Nobody's wearing a
Speaker 1: contamination suit or anything like, let's just go get them,
Speaker 1: get big handfuls of these things.
Speaker 3: He really perks up here at the end with the
Speaker 3: eggs I have to say that the eggs.
Speaker 1: When we first see the eggs, I thought they looked hokey.
Speaker 1: They looked like they looked like little pulsating red balloons.
Speaker 1: But then eventually we do get a close up off
Speaker 1: them as they're being taken off the ship on a tray,
Speaker 1: and in the close up they do look really cool.
Speaker 1: They look gross and pulsating and it looks like there's
Speaker 1: something inside them, you know, implied there's some sort of
Speaker 1: form there that is developing. So ultimately, great job. In
Speaker 1: these eggs.
Speaker 3: They are in a tray, they're on like a quarter
Speaker 3: sheet baking pan, like there's gonna be some cookies or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's pretty much the close of the film,
Speaker 1: that close up on the eggs, the end ominous music,
Speaker 1: because you know, ultimately this is I mean, it's ultimately
Speaker 1: a darker ending than Alien because oh, you've brought them back,
Speaker 1: and now who knows what's going to occur.
Speaker 3: Well, I think we do get Alan and Laura. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're back on Earth. I love you, you know, it's
Speaker 3: we can feel the sunshine on our faces again.
Speaker 1: I think they say, well, that is true. They do
Speaker 1: like having the sunshine back. But I don't know how
Speaker 1: long they're going to get to enjoy it. I don't
Speaker 1: know how long it takes these eggs to develop into
Speaker 1: whatever they're going to grow into.
Speaker 3: I'd say I give earth like twenty to thirty years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: or they're just the blood bags are all drained.
Speaker 1: So there you have it, Queen of Blood. Like I say,
Speaker 1: I feel like the last thirty minutes or so of
Speaker 1: the picture is pretty solid and pretty fun. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I would have gotten to those last thirty minutes
Speaker 1: had I not been on a mission to watch this,
Speaker 1: you know, And I guess you have to think about
Speaker 1: the original context of the release, right, I mean, this
Speaker 1: was something that was going to be shown theatrically, the
Speaker 1: shown is part of a double feature, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not something we had to worry about
Speaker 1: keeping somebody on the same TV channel or keeping them
Speaker 1: you know, watching a film on a streaming service or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So it's a different a different mission
Speaker 1: statement for this film, for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder if this was mostly destined for drive in
Speaker 3: theaters or not.
Speaker 1: I imagine, so, yeah, very much a double I forget
Speaker 1: what the film it was released with as a double feature,
Speaker 1: but it was part of the double feature. I also wondered, like,
Speaker 1: to what extent did they study, like how people watch
Speaker 1: these films of those double features? Did they did they
Speaker 1: think about things like when will the teenagers be making out?
Speaker 1: And yeah, and what should be going on in the
Speaker 1: screen at that time. I've never read anything on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wasn't a calculated decision to take an hour
Speaker 3: to get to Florence Marley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at any rate, I will, you know, coming
Speaker 1: back to Curtis Harrington, you know, I feel like he
Speaker 1: did given the weird limitations of this film, you know,
Speaker 1: having to use all of this footage from from from
Speaker 1: so at cinema and so forth, obviously not having a
Speaker 1: huge budget, I feel like like the end results work
Speaker 1: amazingly well given those constraints. I feel like the cast
Speaker 1: does a great job given what they're they're given to
Speaker 1: work with. So it is kind of an interesting exercise
Speaker 1: in in overachieving for for you know, a B picture
Speaker 1: like this. Totally agree.
Speaker 3: Yes, And despite the fact that it is overused and
Speaker 3: there's too much padding, I will emphasize yet again, most
Speaker 3: of the Russian footage does look pretty beautiful. I like
Speaker 3: the aesthetic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be interesting to come back and what
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know if we would watch one of these,
Speaker 1: but they are a number of these Soviet sci fi
Speaker 1: films that I would be interesting to look at more.
Speaker 1: I think everyone called Planet a burr that that may
Speaker 1: have been utilized in Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet. I
Speaker 1: think I've seen that one in full. There's a there's
Speaker 1: like a whole box set of these. I think they
Speaker 1: have a video here in Atlanta, and I've rented one
Speaker 1: or two of them in the past, but I don't
Speaker 1: recall them much. I think I just kind of had
Speaker 1: them on in the background. Well, let's rind them again. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll go ahead and close it out there.
Speaker 1: But hey, we'd love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts on Queen of Blood, on space,
Speaker 1: vampire films, and media in general. Yeah, right in, let's
Speaker 1: talk about it. We have our listener Mail episodes on
Speaker 1: Mondays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 1: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifactor Monster Factor. On Fridays. We set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird
Speaker 1: film on Weird House Cinema if you want to see
Speaker 1: a complete rundown of the movies we've covered over the
Speaker 1: years here for Weird House Cinema. Going over to letterbox
Speaker 1: dot com, it's l E T T E R box
Speaker 1: d dot com. We have a profile there. Our profile
Speaker 1: is weird House and we have a list of all
Speaker 1: the movies we've covered so far, and sometimes there's a
Speaker 1: peek ahead to what's coming up.
Speaker 3: Here's thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.