Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: 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: And now I immediately liked that title. I looked up
Speaker 3: the poster and I liked that too, So my attention
Speaker 3: was raised. I kept digging in and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: we've got to cover this movie, and so here we
Speaker 3: are today, we're talking about Queen of Blood nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 3: starring John Saxon, Dennis Hopper, Basil Rathbone, and Florence Marley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it would be proper to position
Speaker 2: this film within a trilogy of space vampire movies that
Speaker 2: we'll probably get around to watching all of these at
Speaker 2: one point. Planet a Vampire from nineteen sixty five, which
Speaker 2: we have covered, the Mario Bava film Beautiful to Behold,
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit qua lutic at times and its energy,
Speaker 2: but still great, this film, which carries on the vampires
Speaker 2: space tradition, just one year later, and then eventually we're
Speaker 2: going to get to Life Force, that being the modern
Speaker 2: version of this tale of you know, just female and
Speaker 2: in the case of Planet of the Vapires, male vampires
Speaker 2: as well, vampires of all gender coming from space wanting
Speaker 2: 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, skeletal 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 2: Right, It's got to be this one by a long shot.
Speaker 2: So to explain this to anyone who's not familiar with
Speaker 2: this film, and I think most people are not familiar
Speaker 2: with this film, it includes a lot of footage, especially
Speaker 2: the effects footage from the nineteen fifty nine Soviet science
Speaker 2: fiction film Nebo Zovyacht, a film that the producer of
Speaker 2: this movie, Roger Korman, who of course you're familiar with
Speaker 2: from past episodes, had purchased the US distribution rights for.
Speaker 2: He even roped in a young Francis Ford Coppola, who
Speaker 2: worked on some re editing. They apparently added some monster
Speaker 2: scenes for US audiences and released it as Battle Beyond
Speaker 2: the Sun. This movie also reuses footage from nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: threes Mitchta Nevstretchu A Dream Come True, another Soviet science
Speaker 2: fiction film. So these are both I've not seen either
Speaker 2: of these in their entirety, but they are essentially big budget,
Speaker 2: prestige sci fi films from the Soviet Union, and here
Speaker 2: footed from them is reused for a low budget Roger
Speaker 2: Korman produced sci fi spectacle you know that's going to
Speaker 2: 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 of Dungeons and Dragons, I'm going to call this
Speaker 3: an attack of opportunity film. Yeah, it is a film
Speaker 3: that comes about because you have some opportunity in terms
Speaker 3: of production capability. Maybe you suddenly own rights to a
Speaker 3: bunch of footage and you can try to figure out
Speaker 3: how to build a movie around that footage, like we
Speaker 3: have in the case of this movie today. But there
Speaker 3: are other such examples. There are cases where like we
Speaker 3: have a very famous actor on hand and for you know,
Speaker 3: two more days, can we do something with them that
Speaker 3: we can build the rest of a movie around later,
Speaker 3: Or maybe we have access to sets that have been
Speaker 3: used in another movie or props that have been used
Speaker 3: in another movie, and can we quickly throw something together
Speaker 3: to make use of that. It's sort of an efficiency
Speaker 3: based approach to cinematic storytelling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've heard director Robert Rodriguez speak to
Speaker 2: this as well. You know, like seeing what you have,
Speaker 2: what do you have at your disposal that you can utilize,
Speaker 2: and using that kind of as the skeleton to build
Speaker 2: up what you're going to create, especially if you're dealing
Speaker 2: 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 2: Oh? It does ring a bell? I feel like that's
Speaker 2: been the case with various actors like, well, I guess
Speaker 2: I'm going to stay in Rome for another week. Love
Speaker 2: it here, you have a movie for me to work on,
Speaker 2: you know, that sort of thing I feel like that's
Speaker 2: the specific example has come up, but I don't recall
Speaker 2: which film and which star it was.
Speaker 3: This is how you get discount, Boris Karloff.
Speaker 2: 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 2: Also, I think they have the same space helmets. I
Speaker 2: did some pausing of the film because I was really
Speaker 2: distracted by the differences between these two obvious lines of
Speaker 2: footage while watching the film, and I was like, are
Speaker 2: they even using the same space helmets? Or do they
Speaker 2: just get the color ride and it looks like they're
Speaker 2: the same helmets, or they are such an accurate recreation
Speaker 2: that it does matter. So I'll give them credit for that,
Speaker 2: 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 are
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 2: And I knew this was coming. I knew this was
Speaker 2: one of the notable things about this film, but I
Speaker 2: wasn't prepared for just how much they were going to
Speaker 2: dump in. Like my mind instantly turns to a single
Speaker 2: episode of Night Gallery from the early seventies. There's an
Speaker 2: episode called The Different Ones, or rather it's a segment
Speaker 2: from an episode called The Different Ones, and it's a
Speaker 2: science fiction story that involves characters traveling from one planet
Speaker 2: to the next, and in syndication, they had to expand
Speaker 2: its runtime a bit, so they inserted spaceship shots from
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two Silent Running, Silent Running, Great Motion Picture.
Speaker 2: I think we have a podcast episode pre Weird House
Speaker 2: dealing with it to some extent, but in that particular instance,
Speaker 2: you know, it was very forgivable, and you can easily
Speaker 2: gloss over it because it's like, Okay, we're exterior spaceship.
Speaker 2: Here's a shot from Silent Running. You just go with it.
Speaker 2: And I was expecting it to be more like that
Speaker 2: with this film, that like, Okay, whenever we see an
Speaker 2: exterior of a spaceship, it's going to be scenes from
Speaker 2: one of these Russian films. But that's not the case.
Speaker 2: It's all sorts of stuff. It's just so much stock
Speaker 2: or in this case, reused footage dropped into the first hour.
Speaker 2: It's like when you let an eight year old put
Speaker 2: their own syrup on their pancakes.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, And there are a few things that you
Speaker 3: can actually especially if you have a pause button available
Speaker 3: to you. One of which is there's a scene where
Speaker 3: Basil Rathbone is giving a speech to a big assembled crowd,
Speaker 3: and then it does a cutaway to show the whole room,
Speaker 3: and I guess it's still supposed to be him speaking,
Speaker 3: but it's not actually him in the shot. And then
Speaker 3: in this room there's a great statue of like a
Speaker 3: god or at least a muscled, nude male figure and
Speaker 3: he's holding something in his hand, and when he's holding
Speaker 3: is Sputnik the Russia the Soviet spacecraft.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of details like that.
Speaker 2: It's almost as if they were like, look, the kids
Speaker 2: are just going to be making out for the first
Speaker 2: hour of this movie. We don't have to stress too
Speaker 2: much about it, and ultimately, like that's how it feels.
Speaker 2: It feels like the first hour of the film. Once
Speaker 2: you press through that, you have a kind of tight,
Speaker 2: little thirty minute story to enjoy and some nice acting
Speaker 2: and so forth. But you but at least for me,
Speaker 2: I really had to press through that first hour.
Speaker 3: I agree, yeah, that there's a lot of padding, but
Speaker 3: there are some moments in that first hour that I
Speaker 3: think are actually extremely effective, and we can explain more
Speaker 3: about those when we get into the plot. But yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of Basil 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 2: Oh yeah, she doesn't say a single word, but she
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, nice space vampire smirk. All right. Well, the other
Speaker 2: fun thing about this is this is one of those
Speaker 2: movies that takes us into the future, the far future
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety, So that 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 that the year
Speaker 3: is nineteen ninety. All right.
Speaker 2: My elevator pitch for this is pretty simple. Space Vampire
Speaker 2: sixty six. That's all you need to know. It's just
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six, and this is a space vampire movie
Speaker 2: coming out of sixty six. Though it's also interesting that
Speaker 2: in many respects it's kind of a it feels more
Speaker 2: old fashioned than sixty six. It feels a lot of
Speaker 2: the energy of this film is maybe more in line
Speaker 2: with what we might expect from the nineteen fifties. So
Speaker 2: it's interesting to think about that. We'll discuss that as
Speaker 2: we proceed. Let's go ahead and hear that trailer. Ween
Speaker 2: of Blood.
Speaker 4: A tantalizing, mystifying enigma.
Speaker 2: She's gorgeous, all her fresh blood.
Speaker 4: She's a monster. You had a good supply of blood
Speaker 4: plasma with us. Use that defeeder and if we run
Speaker 4: out of plasma, commander.
Speaker 2: All right, if you want to watch Queen of Blood, well,
Speaker 2: it's currently streaming. I know it's streaming on Prime. We
Speaker 2: watched it there. I think it's streaming on some other sources.
Speaker 2: It's also available on DVD from MGM's limited collection. There's
Speaker 2: also a blu ray from Kino Lurber and Scorpion Releasing,
Speaker 2: though it doesn't seem to be widely available right now,
Speaker 2: maybe out of print or something. But I wasn't able
Speaker 2: to get my hands on that one, but it looks
Speaker 2: like it has possibly some extras on it. All right,
Speaker 2: Getting into the people behind this film, because ultimately some
Speaker 2: of the cast and crew here are what like kind
Speaker 2: of pushed the movie over the edge for me, because
Speaker 2: you know, I'm already interested in the concept and you
Speaker 2: know the time period. But then I started reading about
Speaker 2: the director and writer of this Curtis Harrington, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty six through two thousand and seven. I wasn't
Speaker 2: familiar with it with his work prior, but Curtis Harrington
Speaker 2: was a respected Hollywood director, a film critic, an experimental
Speaker 2: filmmaker who played an important role apparently in rediscovering James
Speaker 2: Whale during the nineteen fifties. James Whale, of course, the
Speaker 2: director of such pictures as 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 2: Yeah, I thought of it the same way. But I
Speaker 2: was reading about this in Harrington's oh bit in the
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Times. They're quoting Dennis Bartak, producer and screenwriter,
Speaker 2: who says that that Whale had been quote pretty much
Speaker 2: forgotten by everybody at this time during the last you know,
Speaker 2: decade or less of Wales's life, so fastened detail there.
Speaker 2: So anyway back to Harrington. Following a string of experimental
Speaker 2: short films, his first feature was nineteen sixty one's Night Tide,
Speaker 2: which also starred Dennis Hopper, apparently in his first leading role,
Speaker 2: as a man who falls in love with a mysterious
Speaker 2: woman who performs as a mermaid at the local carnival.
Speaker 2: I've not seen it, but it's one of Harrington's best
Speaker 2: known films and is apparently apparently very well regarded for
Speaker 2: its sort of darkly fantastic elements. It's supposed to be
Speaker 2: a rather retheranized film. It was a Corman production, and
Speaker 2: he followed that movie up with two features for Corman,
Speaker 2: utilizing big budget sci fi footage that Corman had gotten
Speaker 2: his hands on from the Soviet Union. Those films were
Speaker 2: Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet in sixty five and Queen
Speaker 2: of Blood in sixty six. Harrington's late sixties early seventies
Speaker 2: period contained several macabre films, including sixty seven Games with
Speaker 2: James Kahn, seventy one's What's the Matter with Helen starring
Speaker 2: Debbie Reynolds, seventy two's Whoever Slew? Anti? Crew? I guess
Speaker 2: this is the question title period of his work. This
Speaker 2: one starred Shelley Winters. There's seventy threes The Killing Kind,
Speaker 2: and then mostly TV episodes and TV movies after that,
Speaker 2: but with some intriguing titles like seventy threes The Cat
Speaker 2: Creature and seventy eight's Devil Dog the Hound of Hell,
Speaker 2: not to be confused with nineteen seventy seven's Dracula's 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 2: Dog, Dracula's Dog. And I mean, obviously they should have
Speaker 2: followed it up with Devil Dog versus Dracula's Dog, but
Speaker 2: they didn't anyway. They're also two theatrical films. In the
Speaker 2: later mix. There there's seventy seven's Ruby, a supernatural thriller
Speaker 2: starring Piper Laurie, and nineteen eighty five's Matahari, a historical
Speaker 2: erotic melodrama starring Sylvia Crystal. Best known for the Emmanuel films,
Speaker 2: so Harrington's work is frequently explored in scholarship surrounding queer cinema,
Speaker 2: though I believe much of this is contextual, as I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that any of his films have expressly gay characters,
Speaker 2: though Harrington himself was openly gay and wrote about it.
Speaker 2: In his autobiography. But Queen of Blood, well, I can
Speaker 2: only imagine this is not the best example of his work.
Speaker 2: But I do feel like when Harrington actually has time
Speaker 2: to build something here, again mostly in the last thirty
Speaker 2: minutes or so of the picture, it mostly works. Like
Speaker 2: he's able to make use of good actors and also
Speaker 2: 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 start, 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 2: Oh, absolutely all right. The cast of this Baby is
Speaker 2: also pretty interesting. We got John Saxon playing Alan Brynner,
Speaker 2: our lead astronaut. Saxon with nineteen thirty six through twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: He's a weird house cinema staple we've profiled on the show.
Speaker 2: I want to say, three or four times at this point.
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to go in into a lot
Speaker 2: of detail regarding Saxon, but it was a former team.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember what were the other We did
Speaker 3: the Cannibal movie, but what were the other John Saxon movies?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, there was the Cannibal movie. There was Hands
Speaker 2: of Steel, in which he's one of the villains.
Speaker 3: Yes, hands of Steel.
Speaker 2: 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 2: Every few weeks there's at least one John Saxon film
Speaker 2: we were considering, especially from his seventies period, you know.
Speaker 2: But in any rate, Saxon's definitely come up in the
Speaker 2: show before him just blinking on some of the other
Speaker 2: ones we may have discussed him in. But Saxon was
Speaker 2: a former teen idol, and he'd been acting since the
Speaker 2: mid fifties at this point, and had already worked with
Speaker 2: Mario Bava on sixty three's The Girl who Knew Too
Speaker 2: Much and Auto Preminger on sixty three Is the Cardinal.
Speaker 2: He'd appeared alongside a young Robert Redford in the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two war film War Hunt, which I've read is
Speaker 2: quite good. He plays a soldier in that who also
Speaker 2: happens to be like a serial murderer. But Saxon would
Speaker 2: really come into his own, like I say, and more
Speaker 2: than like the nineteen seventies, I think. I think most
Speaker 2: of the pictures one is drawn to for John Saxon
Speaker 2: are going to be from that period. So he's maybe
Speaker 2: a little young here, he's not completely green. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, he's also playing a character who feels
Speaker 2: like he's been extracted more or less from a nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty sci fi adventure. You know, he's still better in
Speaker 2: this sort of bland role than a lot of the
Speaker 2: square jaw leads that you find in those fifty sci
Speaker 2: fi films, but it still has a lot in common
Speaker 2: 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 2: And yet it's still is subdued compared to some of
Speaker 2: the early example like he did I don't think he
Speaker 2: ever punches anybody.
Speaker 3: No, he doesn't. He does spend the last I don't
Speaker 3: know ten minutes of the movie arguing for the destruction
Speaker 3: of something, with everybody else being like, oh no, it's fine,
Speaker 3: we don't have to destroy it.
Speaker 2: All right, you mentioned him already, But Basil Rathbone is
Speaker 2: in this place, Doctor Faraday. Rathbone lived I mean sorry
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety two through nineteen sixty seven. This was one
Speaker 2: of his final film performances, but he had a long
Speaker 2: career of stage and screen. He was a South African
Speaker 2: born English actor who served in the First World War
Speaker 2: and started appearing in films in the early twenties. He
Speaker 2: played Guy of Gisborne in nineteen thirty eight s The
Speaker 2: Adventures of Robin Hood. He played Sherlock Holmes in fourteen
Speaker 2: Hollywood films. Between thirty eight and forty six. He appeared
Speaker 2: in various swashbucklers. He stayed active on the stage, won
Speaker 2: a Tony Award in nineteen forty eight for The Heiress,
Speaker 2: and he was nominated for two Oscars for nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2: If I were King in nineteen thirty seven's Romeo and Juliet,
Speaker 2: in which he played Tibolt opposite Leslie Howard as Romeo
Speaker 2: and Norma Shearer as Juliet. He played Baron von Wolf
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty nine's Son of Frankenstein. That was the
Speaker 2: third universal Frankenstein film, with Carloff and Legosi in it.
Speaker 2: But I think there's kind of a drop off after
Speaker 2: the first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one was not James Whale, was it.
Speaker 2: No, No, no.
Speaker 3: I think Bride is definitely the peak for me.
Speaker 2: Bride is the peak now. Rathbone definitely made his mark
Speaker 2: in horror and noir stories, especially later in his career.
Speaker 2: Just to name a few films of note here, at
Speaker 2: least fifty six The Black Sleep co starring Laun Cheney,
Speaker 2: Junior Bell, Lagosi and John Carradine. Sixty two is The
Speaker 2: Magic Sword. That's a fun fantasy film that was featured
Speaker 2: on MST three K back in the day. Roger Corman's
Speaker 2: Tales of Terror starring Vincent Price and Peter Lourie. Sixty
Speaker 2: three is the comedy of terror is starring Price, Lourie
Speaker 2: and Carloff. Then we have sixty five Voyage to the
Speaker 2: Prehistoric Planet. This movie. There's also sixty six is the
Speaker 2: Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and nineteen sixty seven's Hillbilly's
Speaker 2: 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 Burt I.
Speaker 2: Gordon. That's a fun one. That's fun. I would come
Speaker 2: back for that. One's got a fun cast. And now
Speaker 2: it's for the kids. It's a fairy tale movie. It's great.
Speaker 3: Yes. 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 2: Yeah, he's fun at the end. It's gonna be fun
Speaker 2: to discuss his final Yes, all right. We also have
Speaker 2: a character named Laura James played by Judy Meredith, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty six through twenty fourteen, best known for
Speaker 2: this movie, Shirley Temple's Storybook in fifty eight and Jack
Speaker 2: the Giant Killer in sixty two. Mostly a TV player,
Speaker 2: she was also the longtime wife of Gary Nelson, who
Speaker 2: lived thirty four through twenty twenty two, who directed nineteen
Speaker 2: 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 2: I feel like maybe I've heard allusions to Frick and Frack,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know who they were. Like, maybe there's
Speaker 2: an old Mst. Three K joke about Frick and frag,
Speaker 2: But 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 2: Which one has the mustache, which one looks like g
Speaker 2: Gordon Lyddy.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but that's gotta 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 2: I mean one as soon. If you're in the middle
Speaker 2: of an ice skating rink and you're trying to portray
Speaker 2: comedy to the audience, it's got to be pretty broad, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to be kind of physical.
Speaker 2: You got to pad that butt for this act, I'm guessing.
Speaker 3: But anyway, sorry, yes, Judy Meredith. 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: apparently discovered by the comedian George Burns when she was
Speaker 3: performing at the Pasadena Playhouse. This led to a role
Speaker 3: on the half hour TV comedy show he presented with
Speaker 3: Gracie Allen, and then this in turn led to more
Speaker 3: TV and film roles, including Queen of Blood. But it
Speaker 3: looks like a lot of you know, the kind off
Speaker 3: the sixty stuff Western.
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, so without her intervention, we might not have gotten
Speaker 2: to the point of the black Hole. Who knows. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: we may have to do black Hole at some point.
Speaker 2: I can't get my family to watch it with me,
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna have to revisit it on my own
Speaker 2: at some point, so you can make me watch it
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 3: Yes, well I look forward to that. But yeah, to
Speaker 3: come back to I like shooting Meredith in this again
Speaker 3: kind of like Basil Rathbone here. I feel like she's
Speaker 3: a little bit kind of underused by the script, but
Speaker 3: she's got good spunk in her scenes. And also, like
Speaker 3: Basil Rathbone's character, it becomes fun in the last ten
Speaker 3: minutes or so, and she's kind of just like arguing
Speaker 3: with John Saxon about whether or not we should let
Speaker 3: these aliens completely drink all her blood.
Speaker 2: I agree she doesn't have as much to do, but
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, it's interesting because this is, Yeah, this is not
Speaker 2: Dennis Hopper as a villain or a wild man. I
Speaker 2: feel like he says daddy O or something at some
Speaker 2: point and we felt like an ad lib and maybe,
Speaker 2: But aside from that, there's not a lot of what
Speaker 2: you might expect from Dennis Hopper. He plays this kind
Speaker 2: of kind and sensitive astronaut character that's like really, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to connect with the They don't know it at
Speaker 2: the time, but this alien vampire who they brought on board.
Speaker 3: They make him a writer. So he there's a part
Speaker 3: where I don't remember exactly what he says. We can
Speaker 3: explore that later, but he he's like giving an update
Speaker 3: on the ship's log and they're like, wow, Jack Kerouac,
Speaker 3: nice work.
Speaker 2: All right. So yeah, Dennis Hopper playing Paul Grant here
Speaker 2: he lived in nineteen thirty six to twenty ten. We
Speaker 2: profiled him last week on the Super Mario Brothers episodes.
Speaker 2: We're not going to go into all that again, but
Speaker 2: just to put it in context, Queen of Blood hits
Speaker 2: just the year before sixty seven's Cool Hand Luke and
Speaker 2: The Trip, as well as of course sixty eight heads
Speaker 2: sixty nine's Easy Rider. So you know, it's like a
Speaker 2: lot of big stuff was about to happen for Hopper,
Speaker 2: but he'd still had over a decade's TV and film
Speaker 2: experience at this point, though mostly in smaller roles. As
Speaker 2: we mentioned earlier, Harrington gave Hopper his first starring role
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty one's Night Tide, and Hopper apparently always
Speaker 2: spoke well of him due to that, you know, that
Speaker 2: break that film gave him, but also his experiences on
Speaker 2: that film. He felt like Harrington like gave him the
Speaker 2: room he needed to, you know, to craft his performance,
Speaker 2: 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. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: But so the last three actors I said, I felt
Speaker 3: kind of underused, all talented but maybe they weren't given
Speaker 3: enough attention, maybe their roles weren't given enough oomph in
Speaker 3: the script. I don't think I would say that about
Speaker 3: Florence Marley. She gets some close up time.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just straight up coming at the camera with
Speaker 2: glowing eyes and that face. She doesn't actually have any
Speaker 2: lines in the movie, but it's a very physical performance. Yeah,
Speaker 2: doesn't need a line. She speaks, She's doing everything psychically.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Florence Marley playing on IMDb, its credit is
Speaker 2: Alien Queen. In the post credits for the film, it's
Speaker 2: just Florence Marley as question mark, like she doesn't given
Speaker 2: a name and the New Mysterians, Yeah she was, but
Speaker 2: she has lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen seventy eight. Checkborn
Speaker 2: actress who made her mark in European film in the
Speaker 2: thirties and forties, in such movies as forty eight's Krakatit
Speaker 2: and forty seven's The Damned, before making the move to
Speaker 2: Hollywood after the Second World War, she appeared in such
Speaker 2: American movies as forty nine's Tokyo Joe opposite Humphrey Bogart,
Speaker 2: fifty seven's under Sea Girl. I know that was the
Speaker 2: title that got your attention, Like, what does that consist?
Speaker 2: Is she a mermaid? Is she like in a wetsuit?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, I didn't know. She also she
Speaker 2: was on a number of TV series as well, including
Speaker 2: the original Twilight Zone. Now, like other actors of the
Speaker 2: mid twentieth century that we've discussed, she was impacted by
Speaker 2: the House on American Activities Committee's Blacklist, though it turns
Speaker 2: out that in her circumstances, it was due to a
Speaker 2: case of mistaken identity, and even though this was eventually
Speaker 2: cleared up, the damage to her career was done at
Speaker 2: that point. This was one of the last handful of
Speaker 2: films she worked on, though she later appeared in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three's Doctor Death Seeker of Souls, and the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six film The Astrologer, which I've heard great things about.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be kind of like a weird rediscovered classic.
Speaker 2: She also apparently, and I'm going off of various databases
Speaker 2: and so forth for this. She apparently wrote and starred
Speaker 2: in a short film sequel of sorts to this movie
Speaker 2: titled Space Boy Yes, with an electronic score by BBA
Speaker 2: and Louis Baron of the Forbidden Plan of Forbidden Planet Fame,
Speaker 2: and this would have been in nineteen seventy three. I
Speaker 2: see various mentions of it. It's listed in the databases
Speaker 2: I can, but I find no actual footage of it anywhere.
Speaker 2: I don't see any indication that it was included as
Speaker 2: an extra on anything or compiled anywhere. It's almost like
Speaker 2: it's listed in error, or it's a lost film entirely.
Speaker 2: I'm 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 2: Absolutely all right. Another actor in this I wasn't even
Speaker 2: going to mention them because before we watched it, I
Speaker 2: was thinking, oh, this is the fourth crewman on the ship.
Speaker 2: He's just gonna die. He's not going to be that interesting.
Speaker 2: But I actually found the performance kind of fun. This
Speaker 2: is Robert Boone as Anders Brockman. He's like the practical
Speaker 2: older guy on the on the vessel who says things like, well,
Speaker 2: how different is it drinking blood from just enjoying a nice,
Speaker 2: rare stake. It's not that different. We shouldn't be quick
Speaker 2: to judge 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 2: Yeah, she's just murdered his crewmate at this point. But
Speaker 2: at any rate. This actor lived nineteen sixteen through twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Dutch born actor active from the late forties through the
Speaker 2: early eighties. And you look at this guy's credits. He
Speaker 2: started off playing a lot of German soldiers and so
Speaker 2: forth uncredited in war films, and I mean a lot
Speaker 2: of them. It's an impressive list of like German soldier
Speaker 2: uncredited and so forth, but eventually starts getting better parts.
Speaker 2: He shows up on a couple episodes of the classic
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone. Same year, he's an uncredited player in Hitchcock's
Speaker 2: Torn Curtain. Mostly TV work follows, but I read that
Speaker 2: he served as a member of the Motion Picture Academy's
Speaker 2: Foreign Language Nominating Committee, So yeah, this is his most
Speaker 2: well known film. But he's also it's not just an
Speaker 2: invisible role in the movie. Like, I don't know, I
Speaker 2: kind of like this character all right. Now, it's worth
Speaker 2: noting I didn't actually mark him in this because he
Speaker 2: would have been a bit younger, but Forrest j Ackerman
Speaker 2: plays Faraday's aid in this with nineteen sixteen through two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. This is the father of sci fi fandom.
Speaker 2: An avid collector of sci fi memorabilia, He was also
Speaker 2: the founding editor and principal writer of the magazine Famous
Speaker 2: Monsters of Film Land, and was a literary agent for
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yes, yeah, I think that's probably him. Yeah. This is
Speaker 2: also kind of interesting. Gary Kurtz was a production manager
Speaker 2: on this picture. This is, of course, the future producer
Speaker 2: of the first two Star Wars movies, The Dark Crystal
Speaker 2: and returned to OZ. He lived nineteen forties through twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Notable because if you've watched any documentaries about the making
Speaker 2: of the first two Star Wars movies or The Dark
Speaker 2: Crystal he's the guy with the whaler's beard, the kind
Speaker 2: of Abraham Lincoln beard who talks and has a very
Speaker 2: serious tone to his voice and always has some interesting
Speaker 2: things to say about the production. That's him the production
Speaker 2: manager on this movie. Wow. And then finally, the music
Speaker 2: is by Ronald Stein, who lived nineteen thirty through nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight. Composer who worked on a lot of low
Speaker 2: budget films, particularly for American International Picture. His credits include
Speaker 2: It Conquered the World, Not of This Earth, Attack of
Speaker 2: the Crab Monsters, Dementia thirteen, and more, including The Rain People,
Speaker 2: Coppola's picture prior to The Godfather.
Speaker 3: Wow, he's writing her Zone.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He's probably come up before, and as we just
Speaker 2: don't remember him. I mean, the music in this is
Speaker 2: not completely unforgettable. It has some nice, kind of haunting
Speaker 2: little bits that have a bit of a night gallery
Speaker 2: feel to them that I liked, But in other places
Speaker 2: it's just more traditional. All right, Joe, are you ready
Speaker 2: to jump into the plot here?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, Oh yes.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: One thing that I as far as I know, was
Speaker 3: not imported from the Soviet films. I think this may
Speaker 3: be original is the beautiful art behind the opening credits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I, as far as I know, this is original
Speaker 2: and it this is definitely was the section of the
Speaker 2: film starts off strong for me because it does feel
Speaker 2: very night Gallery skit. This looks like the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that that would be on one of the Night
Speaker 2: Gallery paintings, and the music also has that kind of
Speaker 2: eerie vibe to it, like firmly establishing that, yes, you're
Speaker 2: gonna see a lot of space stuff, but this movie
Speaker 2: is going to at heart be spooky in one way
Speaker 2: 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: lightly representative but mostly abstract illustrations with a psychedelic stained
Speaker 3: glass effect, and I thought it might be fun to
Speaker 3: try to describe some of these images. First, there is
Speaker 3: a kind of a psilocybin yule lad butterfly with beard
Speaker 3: made out of rainbow colored tumors. Then there is a
Speaker 3: two headed witch king of Agmar, but he is chained
Speaker 3: in the Jacob Marley fashion with sixteen dimensional Mardi Gras beads,
Speaker 3: and in the background there are some mountains and twin moons.
Speaker 3: After this, there is a giant pink root vegetable nostril
Speaker 3: with a wing that has bones for feathers. Then there
Speaker 3: is a scene of multicolored gravel eggs hatching into spoon
Speaker 3: plants at the base of a mountain made out of
Speaker 3: dog paws. This is when it says Dennis Hopper, by
Speaker 3: the way. After that, it's blood volcano leaking more gravel
Speaker 3: eggs and mandl brought fissures into the air, while there
Speaker 3: are these white pale vines that reach up toward the
Speaker 3: black sun. More bone wings, more blood planets. There's one
Speaker 3: where there's sort of the top right corner of the
Speaker 3: screen kind of looks like the Punisher logo version of
Speaker 3: a bunny rabbit, but with terminator eyes, and then there's
Speaker 3: a bunch of circuit board components under the rabbit's jaw.
Speaker 3: Backgrounds for the title of the movie, I would describe
Speaker 3: as a DMT furbie with a city skyline inside its
Speaker 3: Hairdo maybe I'll stop there. There is more, but in
Speaker 3: general I think this is all good stuff. Puts one
Speaker 3: in an alien mood, goes well with theorem, and music
Speaker 3: suggests that we may be in for sites beyond our comprehension,
Speaker 3: and as much as I love Florence Marley, I don't
Speaker 3: think the movie will be quite as psychedelic as the
Speaker 3: credits imply. But after the credits we get a starfield
Speaker 3: eerie strings playing, and the narrator says, what did we
Speaker 3: say it was going to be? The year nineteen ninety?
Speaker 3: It says the problem of traveling to the Moon has
Speaker 3: been solved for many years. Note that this movie was
Speaker 3: in sixty six. The first human moon landing was in
Speaker 3: sixty nine, so that's 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 of slight.
Speaker 2: Note here two thousand and one, a Space Odyssey wouldn't
Speaker 2: come out for another couple of years, So I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's like I think all science fiction depicting travel within
Speaker 2: our own solar system, like near future space travel and
Speaker 2: our solar system, you almost have to judge it in
Speaker 2: terms of before two thousand and one or post two
Speaker 2: 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 flare. 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 2: Oh yeah, I don't know. It's just everyone's on the
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yes, oh yeah, yeah, it was a little weird, but
Speaker 2: it's the future. It's nineteen 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 lunch.
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 2: I mean a pinwheel day at a cafeteria, so you
Speaker 2: gotta go. But no, it's what do they actually say
Speaker 2: they're eating it? I mean it looks disgusting. It looks
Speaker 2: like a kind of burned waffle. But before we see
Speaker 2: them at lunch, so they leave and we're seeing like
Speaker 2: the equipment in the Earth based communications lab, and we
Speaker 2: hear the droning of the signal from the other planet,
Speaker 2: and the droning of the signal becomes louder, and we
Speaker 2: cut into space, and we zoom toward the surface of
Speaker 2: 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. Then and
Speaker 3: then we see a giant ball of wires that's maybe
Speaker 3: the thing that is sending out the signal. And inside
Speaker 3: that ball of wires, I guess it's a building. We
Speaker 3: see what must be aliens. There are humanoid bodies standing
Speaker 3: in the shadows. It's very dark inside, and they're manipulating
Speaker 3: machinery to guide a beam of turquoise light as it
Speaker 3: sweeps across space, Like are they beaming a signal toward us?
Speaker 3: We see hands reaching out for a series of darkened
Speaker 3: orbs topped by prismatic triangles, and then cut to John
Speaker 3: Saxon and Laura having lunch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this the this whole segment of course, on the
Speaker 2: alien planet is all footage from the Soviet productions that
Speaker 2: are sampled here. And it was I don't know, I
Speaker 2: was distracted just thinking about like did we need to
Speaker 2: see any of this? If? Like the causation of filmmaking
Speaker 2: is kind of messed up here, because like, would you
Speaker 2: create this footage for use in the film? You know,
Speaker 2: does it actually serve an important purpose in the narrative
Speaker 2: or is it really what we have here where it's
Speaker 2: just like, well, we have it. We should show what
Speaker 2: this other planet is, even though we're never actually going
Speaker 2: to visit it, but we should just show it to
Speaker 2: them because we have, you know, 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 on he sits down on the left.
Speaker 3: His name is Paul. We learn from conversation that John
Speaker 3: Saxon is scheduled to travel to Mars. And then we
Speaker 3: get Dennis Hopper's first line, which is, what's the latest scuttle?
Speaker 3: But there, Tony baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Dennis Hopper lays and.
Speaker 3: JOm, I think this is the line where you said
Speaker 3: he may have been ad libbing. I would agree, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what were we saying beforehand? It's imagining him doing the
Speaker 3: voice and the trailer saying like space man, it's a
Speaker 3: real bad trip.
Speaker 2: That would have been That would have been a great tagline,
Speaker 2: especially if this movie had been made just like two
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And now I should also a couple
Speaker 2: other things. You mentioned. The uniforms I do have to
Speaker 2: drive home, these are not the uniforms in this film
Speaker 2: are not on the same level at all with Planet
Speaker 2: of the vampires. I mean, the colors match, everything has
Speaker 2: a certain uniformity to it, but high fashion is not
Speaker 2: in play. I also feel like this lunch scene that
Speaker 2: everyone was very animated for this sequence. I don't know
Speaker 2: if they just had a lot of fun setting around,
Speaker 2: if there's a lot of cutting up in between takes,
Speaker 2: but everyone seemed really happy to be on set for
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 3: I agree, yeah, spirits are high. But their lunch is
Speaker 3: interrupted by an announcement on the loudspeed. It's calling everybody
Speaker 3: to gather in Area one for an important announcement. The
Speaker 3: dudes get up and they say that means us, but
Speaker 3: the announcement literally says all personnels. I don't know why
Speaker 3: they say that. But on the way, John Zackson he's
Speaker 3: asking Laura, He's like, hey, have you ever imagined you'd
Speaker 3: be getting married on a rocket ship to Mars? So apparently,
Speaker 3: I guess they're engaged.
Speaker 2: Zero g wedding sounds exciting.
Speaker 3: Oh, that'd be very cool.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So the meeting place is outdoors and the background here
Speaker 3: is a gigantic sculpture. It's bigger than the Statue of Liberty.
Speaker 3: It's huge, and it's a goddess leaping into the air
Speaker 3: with arms outstretched, and there's a ringed planet at her feet.
Speaker 3: Kind of reminds me of the winged victory of Samothrace.
Speaker 3: But here we get an announcement from Basil Rathbone. He's
Speaker 3: playing doctor Faraday, kind of the big boss at this place,
Speaker 3: and he says, my friends and fellow workers in the
Speaker 3: Great Adventure of Space, I have the most important news
Speaker 3: to announce since our first successful landing on the Moon
Speaker 3: twenty years ago. As many of you know, for several
Speaker 3: weeks now, we've been receiving organized signals from a far galaxy.
Speaker 3: This morning, our code experts finally deciphered the message these
Speaker 3: signals contained. It is a most extraordinary document. It's very long,
Speaker 3: and then he explains he's not going to read the
Speaker 3: whole thing, but that it means the Aliens dispatched a
Speaker 3: spaceship containing an ambassador who will come to Earth and
Speaker 3: live with us here since our atmosphere will support their
Speaker 3: form of life. Faraday says that the entire world will
Speaker 3: await the arrival of the alien ambassador with the keenest anticipation,
Speaker 3: and everybody applauds. But as the applause dies out, we
Speaker 3: fade back to visions of the other world. So we
Speaker 3: see again the waves crashing on knights Plutonian shore, and
Speaker 3: we see the towers of rock and the beings moving
Speaker 3: about in the shadows of their weird castles filled with
Speaker 3: unrecognizable technology. There are pipes and hoses and big olds,
Speaker 3: spheres that themselves seem to contain stars. And there's no
Speaker 3: dialogue and no music, just the shrill droning of the
Speaker 3: radio signal that's beaming out to Earth. And I actually
Speaker 3: think that these scenes of the alien planet, especially the
Speaker 3: way that they are inner cut with the scenes of
Speaker 3: brightly lit, noisy gatherings and social activity on Earth, are
Speaker 3: extremely effective. It's very moody and disconcerting, the way it
Speaker 3: goes from like the crowd at the institute to the planet,
Speaker 3: and that nobody's saying anything. They're just moving around in
Speaker 3: the shadows, manipulating technology that we can't even understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right. It visually drives home this
Speaker 2: feeling that's later brought up in dialogue to some extent,
Speaker 2: like this idea of like we really don't know what
Speaker 2: these other beings consist of, like not only like their
Speaker 2: biology but also their society. Like, what is it they value,
Speaker 2: what do they want? And what does it mean that
Speaker 2: they're sending an ambassador to us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything we see of them is 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 2: 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 spherical
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 there's no
Speaker 3: local sound, just the droning signal, and then they blast
Speaker 3: off into space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a cool looking ship. These the circuit, the
Speaker 2: spherical ship with the kind of halo around it. This
Speaker 2: is from nineteen sixty threes. Mitch to now of stretch too,
Speaker 2: So it looks good, but yeah, it's it's made by
Speaker 2: 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 disbelief, and
Speaker 3: that's this is fine. But note to sci fi wriders,
Speaker 3: if you care about being realistic at all, the space
Speaker 3: between galaxies is immense. I think if if you want
Speaker 3: to have aliens, they should be from another star in
Speaker 3: our galaxy, now, from another galaxy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unless you're dealing with a far future interstellar empire
Speaker 2: sort of scenario, then you can maybe get into these
Speaker 2: distant galaxy ideas. But even then, like the galaxy is
Speaker 2: big enough, there's still room for discoveries and surprises and
Speaker 2: 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.
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 an almost ritualistic fashion, a
Speaker 3: 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,
Speaker 3: remark arkable crash landing on Mars. And this is their sos.
Speaker 3: We're obviously in touch with beings that have a very
Speaker 3: advanced technology. So there's a big meeting in a kind
Speaker 3: of auditorium. This is the one with the giant statue
Speaker 3: holding spot Nick in his hand like Youoric Skull and Basil.
Speaker 3: Rathbon says, basically, the aliens need our help. They have
Speaker 3: crash landed on Mars. They are stranded there. We are
Speaker 3: obliged to go help them out.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty good setup. Actually, yeah, more in retrospect
Speaker 2: than I think in my actual experience of watching this
Speaker 2: portion of the film. I feel like there's a there's
Speaker 2: a bit of padding getting to this point, but once
Speaker 2: we get there, it's like, Okay, we've got a mission here.
Speaker 2: This sounds good. It was going to be like we
Speaker 2: meet the Space Ambassador, but the Ambassador's ship is crashed
Speaker 2: 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 like 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 shi is Laura and then Paul that's Dennis Hopper,
Speaker 3: and then Anders who is the commander, and that does
Speaker 3: rhyme commander and reporting for duty. I think it's Commander
Speaker 3: Alexander Anders, so they have some kind of relaxed cutting
Speaker 3: up time on the ship. We talked about the scene
Speaker 3: where Dennis Hopper is like narrating his space stuff and
Speaker 3: then Laura is saying, Wow, you know, your logs of
Speaker 3: this journey are so interesting. Maybe when you get back
Speaker 3: to Earth you can have them published. You'll be that
Speaker 3: famous writer slash astronaut fella. But I think the scene
Speaker 3: could have used some punch up in the dialogue because
Speaker 3: I wrote down exactly what Dennis Hopper says that impresses
Speaker 3: them so much. This is it, he says, Mars is
Speaker 3: giving off a red coloring and is becoming more vivid
Speaker 3: as we approach. It suggests that there is a really
Speaker 3: deep oxidation of the planet's major substance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not great, and Hopper's character has has some
Speaker 2: better lines, 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. You know, there is a
Speaker 3: burst of activity off the surface of the Sun and
Speaker 3: their ship is damaged and they I don't know if
Speaker 3: this really changes anything. It's damaged. But then they get
Speaker 3: to Mars. They enter the orbit of Mars. Oh, they
Speaker 3: do have Dennishopper take quote oxygenator tablets, and when he
Speaker 3: takes them, he's like, oh, there's a symphony playing in
Speaker 3: my skull and it's not Brahms. The ship lands, there
Speaker 3: are some beautiful and eerie shots of the rocky red landscape,
Speaker 3: and Anders and Paul put on their spacesuits and they
Speaker 3: 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 to the vampires, but aspects
Speaker 3: of alien may also have come from this.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I think I saw that that. Harrington also
Speaker 2: commented on it at one point. I mean not in
Speaker 2: a mean way or a spiteful way or anything, but
Speaker 2: I mean it's part of the legacy of sci fi horror.
Speaker 2: The threads that connect these films are stronger than in
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: I thought it was funny.
Speaker 3: It's like, single dead astronaut found on spacecraft, mystery deepens.
Speaker 2: Well, you want to read the rest of the story, right,
Speaker 2: 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 deduces
Speaker 3: that the other alien astronauts must have boarded a quote
Speaker 3: rescue rocket, and so they ejected from this ship before
Speaker 3: it crashed and killed the 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 rocket,
Speaker 3: and they're going to land on the Martian moon Phobos.
Speaker 3: Basil 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. Oh,
Speaker 3: now she can talk. Okay, he's calling. So again there's
Speaker 3: a little bit of padding in this.
Speaker 2: But around this part of the film we're getting to
Speaker 2: the point where the movie really begins. There's about an
Speaker 2: hour in Yes, I feel like everything'says coming together and
Speaker 2: it becomes comes very watchable and and pretty good 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 2: Also, yeah, it's a well designed spacesuit, like it feel.
Speaker 2: It's obviously a space suit, but it feels a little
Speaker 2: bit alien. It feels it has a good visual flare
Speaker 2: 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 alien rescuee and their ship can only carry
Speaker 3: two people. They need to launch and go meet the
Speaker 3: other earth ship, but they can only go with two people,
Speaker 3: so they flip a coin to determine who goes with
Speaker 3: the alien astronaut and who stays behind. John Saxon says,
Speaker 3: all I have is paper moon money, And the movie
Speaker 3: keeps you in suspense for a while, But who's bringing
Speaker 3: the astronaut to the other ship. We see them walking
Speaker 3: through a dust storm on the surface of Mars, hunting
Speaker 3: down the main ship's beacon and eventually they collapse. But
Speaker 3: finally they are found. Dennis Hopper brings the alien inside
Speaker 3: and they look at her and Laura remarks, Wow, she
Speaker 3: seems so human yet not human at all, and Paul says,
Speaker 3: I know, it's uncanny. It's like what would have happened
Speaker 3: to us if we'd been in another atmosphere. And then
Speaker 3: suddenly Laura remembers to ask, wait, Paul, who brought her,
Speaker 3: But there's no time to answer. In walks John Saxon,
Speaker 3: her space fiance. He was the one who came, so
Speaker 3: he's okay. Now there's a whole thing that's kind of
Speaker 3: a side story about confirming that Oceano two, the other ship,
Speaker 3: will be able to come back to Mars to rescue Tony,
Speaker 3: the guy who was left behind on Phobos. So actually
Speaker 3: Tony really gets the better deal here considering what happens
Speaker 3: on the main ship. So let's see. Yeah, now it's Alan, Laura,
Speaker 3: Paul Anders and the alien lady and they're all on
Speaker 3: the ship together and they're gonna blast off. Now what
Speaker 3: comes next is I would argue the best scene in
Speaker 3: the film. It's the scene where the alien ambassador wakes up.
Speaker 3: She wakes up in the chair, and then she makes
Speaker 3: eye contact with the crew members one at a time,
Speaker 3: starting with Dennis Hopper. She looks at him and her
Speaker 3: face goes through these subtle changes, and she smiles, and
Speaker 3: she has these little flares of expression in her eyes
Speaker 3: and this gradually inflating grin as she looks from astronaut
Speaker 3: to astronaut, except she doesn't smile when she sees Laura.
Speaker 3: She looks at Laura and then suddenly exhales kind of sharply,
Speaker 3: leaving a blast of fog on the inside of the
Speaker 3: glass of her helmet. And ooh, this scene was chilling
Speaker 3: and very interesting, and Florence Marley is wonderful with the
Speaker 3: little tiny expressions.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Like this is the point in the film where, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're really after the races. Here, we have a strong cast,
Speaker 2: we have a limited and understandable set. We know where
Speaker 2: we are and what the immediate stakes are.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Here it kind of turns into a different movie.
Speaker 3: Where before it was like all about blasting off and
Speaker 3: landing and blasting off and discussing what to do and
Speaker 3: then blasting off and blasting off again. Now it's basically
Speaker 3: a bottle episode. It's just some character stuck in a
Speaker 3: ship with something that is acting a little strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like at this point it could be like
Speaker 2: a really interesting episode of the old Twilight Zone or
Speaker 2: Outer 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 drink water through a straw. She has some water
Speaker 3: through the straw, but she is not interested in food.
Speaker 3: Like she turns her face away from the exobiologics and
Speaker 3: anders wonders if perhaps she is used to some sort
Speaker 3: of liquid nourishment the whole time, by the way, she
Speaker 3: is just making eyes at the earth dudes. And oh
Speaker 3: and also we see that when her helmet is off
Speaker 3: she has a sort of onion shaped troll doll hairdoo.
Speaker 2: I couldn't help but wonder if this is a nod
Speaker 2: to Bride of Frankenstein. Certainly given Harrington's appreciation for the
Speaker 2: 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 2: I know this. I thought this was one of my
Speaker 2: favorite acting moments in the entire movie. It was just
Speaker 2: just the fact that he trails off and he doesn't
Speaker 2: finish the thought, like it just it works so perfectly
Speaker 2: 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 in this
Speaker 3: Hopper 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 2: Yeah, I wasn't sure. And there's another scene where it
Speaker 2: makes it seem like maybe the back of her costume
Speaker 2: is more exposed in the front. I'm not sure on that.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, there she is, so 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 the perspective, like
Speaker 3: 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 2: What a shame? What is shame 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. Ander 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.
Speaker 2: And come on now and come on out, and he's
Speaker 2: just 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. This
Speaker 3: leads to like an argument about whether or not they
Speaker 3: because they can't converse with her that she never talks,
Speaker 3: So they argue about whether they should assume that the
Speaker 3: alien knows it has done something wrong by killing a
Speaker 3: human or not. I think that's a great question for
Speaker 3: a sci fi story. I can't recall if I've ever
Speaker 3: heard that being discussed before, Like should we hold the
Speaker 3: alien morally accountable?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a movie where the mission statement does
Speaker 2: not call for a lot of philosophical pund and yet
Speaker 2: there's just a little It dips its toes in a
Speaker 2: little bit right here, and it's nice.
Speaker 3: Anders 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 2: Yeah, everyone's pissed, but everyone seems to agree. Thus far,
Speaker 2: they need to check back in with headquarters and not
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, yeah, the basic understanding, it's like, if she's not hungry,
Speaker 2: she's not a threat.
Speaker 3: They make a report to Basil Wrathbone about the blood
Speaker 3: drinking and it shows Basil Wrathbone 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 2: Yeah, yeah, it shouldn't be really that shocking, But I
Speaker 2: don't know. I do kind of like it as this
Speaker 2: little flourish that puts you in the space of this
Speaker 2: you know, really kind of like an old fashioned pulpse
Speaker 2: sci fi where like the rest of the Solar system
Speaker 2: is wild, baby, you don't know what's out there, right,
Speaker 2: could be teeming with all sorts of weird life.
Speaker 3: Life forms you can't possibly imagine. This one drinks blood,
Speaker 3: This next one has three eyes. So they hold a
Speaker 3: funeral for Dennis Hopper. They blast his body out the airlock.
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, nah, 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 was no sign of struggle, and Anders says, well,
Speaker 3: she must have gotten to him in his sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They bring up the vampire bad as an example.
Speaker 3: Right, They say, yeah, okay, so vampire back can feed
Speaker 3: on animals without them necessarily detecting. Maybe she has something
Speaker 3: 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 blood. Plasma.
Speaker 3: That's a problem. So next thing, there is a very
Speaker 3: creepy scene. Again, I thought this one was really effective.
Speaker 3: Anders is alone in the control room, awake while everybody
Speaker 3: else is asleep, and he clearly is tired. But he
Speaker 3: starts looking at the door of the room and was
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah, it's a good sequence, a nice build up of tension,
Speaker 2: and you know, and especially I thought it worked well
Speaker 2: because you know that this guy is toast, like, he's
Speaker 2: not John Saxon's, he's not Alan, he's not Laura. He's
Speaker 2: going to get killed by the space vampire at some point,
Speaker 2: and yet it still feels it's still a tense sequence
Speaker 2: 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 2: 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 skin hot enough to burn through
Speaker 3: the ropes.
Speaker 2: That was cool, Yeah, yeah, or yeah, some sort of
Speaker 2: like laser vision or her skin's heating up, but yeah,
Speaker 2: she burns through the bonds and now she's free to
Speaker 2: move around the ship and finds more of that sweet
Speaker 2: 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 he or anything, So
Speaker 3: she gets up, she walks around, and then she suddenly
Speaker 3: catches 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 Saxon
Speaker 3: concludes that she suffered from hemophilia. He says, perhaps she
Speaker 3: was some sort of royalty, a queen maybe, And this
Speaker 3: is referring to royal hemophilia on Earth that I think
Speaker 3: was a heritable trait that in many ways was related
Speaker 3: to I think Queen Victoria and her husband.
Speaker 2: M h yeah. I mean there's also some examples in
Speaker 2: the you know, the Russian royal family as well, if
Speaker 2: memory serves.
Speaker 3: They may have been related to Queen Victoria somehow.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: 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 matching
Speaker 3: European royalty at any rate.
Speaker 2: The end result is that our Queen of Blood here
Speaker 2: is a glass cannon. The slightest little scratch is enough
Speaker 2: to cause her to bleed to death. And there she
Speaker 2: is dead on the ship, seemingly like it was kind
Speaker 2: of a freezing. Now we're done with the alien menace
Speaker 2: 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 Saxson
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's like, hey, listen, I've got something secret to
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah. He suddenly has just all the vim and vigor
Speaker 2: in the world, just just scampering unto the space ship
Speaker 2: here to check out those alien eggs. Nobody's wearing a
Speaker 2: contamination suit or anything, now, like, let's just go get them,
Speaker 2: get big handfuls of these things.
Speaker 3: He really perks up here at the end.
Speaker 2: With the eggs. I have to say that the eggs.
Speaker 2: When we first see the eggs, I thought they looked hokey.
Speaker 2: They looked like they look like little pulsating red balloons.
Speaker 2: But then eventually we do get a close up off
Speaker 2: them as they're being taken off the ship on a tray,
Speaker 2: and in the close up they do look really cool.
Speaker 2: They look gross and pulsating and looks like there's something
Speaker 2: inside them. You know, I'll implied there's some sort of
Speaker 2: form there that is developing. So ultimately, great job. In
Speaker 2: these eggs.
Speaker 3: They are in a trade They're on like a quarter
Speaker 3: sheet baking pan, like there's gonna be some cookies or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's pretty much the close of the film.
Speaker 2: That's close up on the eggs, the end ominous music,
Speaker 2: because you know, ultimately this is I mean, it's it's
Speaker 2: ultimately a darker ending than than Alien because oh, you've
Speaker 2: brought them back, 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 2: I think they say, well that that is true. They
Speaker 2: do like having the sunshine back. But I don't know
Speaker 2: how long they're gonna get to enjoy it. I don't
Speaker 2: know why. How long it takes these eggs to develop
Speaker 2: into 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 the blood bags are all drained.
Speaker 2: So there you have it, Queen of Blood. Like I say,
Speaker 2: I feel like the last thirty minutes or so of
Speaker 2: the picture is pretty solid and pretty fun. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I would have gotten to those last thirty minutes
Speaker 2: had I not been on a mission to watch this,
Speaker 2: you know, And I guess you have to think about
Speaker 2: the original context of the release, right, I mean, this
Speaker 2: was something that was going to be shown theatrically, the
Speaker 2: shown is part of a double feature, so you know,
Speaker 2: it's not something where you had to worry about keeping
Speaker 2: somebody on the same TV channel or keeping them you know,
Speaker 2: watching a film on a streaming service or anything like that.
Speaker 2: So it's a different a different mission statement for this
Speaker 2: film for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder if this was mostly destined for drive in
Speaker 3: theaters or not.
Speaker 2: I imagine, so, yeah, very much a double I forget
Speaker 2: what the film it was released with as a double feature,
Speaker 2: but it was part of the double feature. I also wondered,
Speaker 2: like to what extent did they study, like how people
Speaker 2: watch these films of those double features? They did they
Speaker 2: think about things like when will the teenagers be making out?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And what should be going on in the screen at
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, but at any rate, I will, you know, coming
Speaker 2: back to Curtis Harrington, you know, I feel like he
Speaker 2: did given the weird limitations of this film, you know,
Speaker 2: having to use all of this footage from from from
Speaker 2: Soviet cinema and so forth, obviously not having a huge budget.
Speaker 2: I feel like like the end results work amazingly well
Speaker 2: given those constraints. I feel like the cast does a
Speaker 2: great job given what they're they're given to work with.
Speaker 2: So it is kind of an interesting exercise in in
Speaker 2: overachieving for for you a b picture like this.
Speaker 3: Totally agree. Yes, and despite the fact that it is
Speaker 3: overused and there's too much patting, I will emphasize yet again,
Speaker 3: most of the Russian footage does look pretty beautiful. I
Speaker 3: like the aesthetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be interesting to come back and what
Speaker 2: maybe I don't know if we would watch one of these,
Speaker 2: but there are a number of these Soviet sci fi
Speaker 2: films that I would be interesting to look at more.
Speaker 2: I think everyone called Planet a burr that may have
Speaker 2: been utilized in Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet. I think
Speaker 2: I've seen that one in full. There's like a whole
Speaker 2: box set of these. I think they have them a
Speaker 2: videodrome here in Atlanta, and I've rented one or two
Speaker 2: of them in the past, but I don't recall them much.
Speaker 2: I think I just kind of had them on in
Speaker 2: the background. Well, let's rnd them again. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, we'll go ahead and close it out there.
Speaker 2: But hey, we'd love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 2: if you have thoughts on Queen of Blood, on space,
Speaker 2: vampire films, and media in general. Yeah, right in, let's
Speaker 2: talk about it. We have our listener mail episodes on
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Speaker 2: short artifactor Monster Fact. On Fridays, we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema if you want to see a complete
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Speaker 2: the movies we've covered so far, and sometimes there's a
Speaker 2: thiek ahead to what's coming up.
Speaker 3: Here's thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
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