Queen of Blood (1966) / Mechte Navstrechu (1963)

Two views of Florence Marly’s eerie performance

as the green alien vampire woman.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;

copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

Soon after the releases of three films in their native Soviet Union, legendary B-movie maestro Roger Corman, along with American International Pictures, gained access to these amazingly well-crafted high-budget science fiction epics—Nebo Zovyot, Planeta Bur, and Mechte Navstrechu. The first two were refashioned into three sci-fi films for American teenagers by some of Corman’s young apprentice filmmakers, including a couple named Coppola and Bogdanovich.

Mechte Navstrechu, however, Corman handed over to apprentice avant garde filmmaker Curtis Harrington along with $35,000 production cash and an eight-day shooting schedule. In fact, Harrington was able to create something of a minor masterpiece, the science fiction horror picture Queen of Blood. He salvaged much of the extremely colorful, almost psychedelically rich, footage from the original, lensed some new shots with American actors, changed the ending of the story, borrowed a few rifts from Forbidden Planet’s tonality score, and assembled Queen of Blood. The color shots from Mechte Navstrechu are exotically gorgeous. Incredible matte paintings and elaborate models and sets were all lit with new concepts in colored lighting.

Queen of Blood is historically important because it partly inspired the creation of the film Alien, along with Planet of Vampires and It! The Terror from Beyond Space.


Queen of Blood (1966)

In Queen of Blood the Earth is at peace and science has advanced. Earth is virtually a utopia. A message is received from another galaxy. Some aliens wish to get to know us better and are sending a ship with their emissaries, but the embassy ship crash lands on Mars. A rescue mission is sent from earth. There is no exposition about the months required to travel from earth and Mars.

Of course, the ship encounters solar flares (it never fails; it’s always either meteors of solar flares that cause havoc), which uses precious fuel that would otherwise be used for Mars landing and take-off maneuvers. The earth crew of three, including Laura James, lands on Mars. They locate the alien spacecraft with one crewmember dead at his post. There had to be others. Where are they? The problem is that they used so much fuel avoiding the solar flares that they don’t have enough to cruise around the planet looking for more alien astronauts.

Queen of Blood opens with a lovingly conceived,

colorful abstract title sequence that may be the

best thing in a generally commendable movie—

as did many of Corman's films whether he made

them himself, as in many of his Edgar Allan 
Poes, or produced them as in this case.

Two earth astronauts, including Allan Brenner, who were not selected for this initial trip, provide chief scientist Basil Rathbone with a plan. They will take a smaller ship to Mars, distribute several reconnaissance satellites in orbit around the planet, land on Phobos, then use their two-passenger rescue craft to go down to the planet to join their fellow astronauts (which Brenner and James are happy about, as they are in love). However, following their landing on Phobos, they must launch the tiny two-man rescue craft in 29 minutes or they will have to wait a week until Phobos and Mars are lined up properly.

When they look out their porthole they see an alien vessel—their alien visitors’ escape pod that had ejected, crashing into Phobos. They search the pod, find an unconscious green female survivor, and get back to their own ship, all within the 29 allotted minutes. Since the small rescue ship is small, one of the astronauts must stay behind. They flip a coin to decide who stays behind to be picked up when the next earth ship arrives in a week. The rescue craft enters the Martian atmosphere and gets lost in a sandstorm, crashing far from the earth ship. Our brave astronaut, Brenner, carries the alien woman for miles through the horrible sand storm. When everyone is together, they take off for Earth.

This German poster for the Soviet Union’s Mechte Navstrechu (1963) focuses on the strength, 
courage and selflessness of a future Soviet astronaut who is risking his life
saving the life of an alien woman (an episode freely adapted for Queen of Blood).
Creative license places the planet Mars behind him when in fact, he is steadfastly
struggling through a whirling red sandstorm on the surface of Mars.

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Where the original film (see below) focused on a friendly first contact between beings from different worlds, Harrington integrates the Russian footage into an outer-space sci-fi horror movie that may well be one of the inspirations for Ridley Scott’s Alien (along with It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Planet of Vampires; Alien seems to channel each of these three movies more or less equally).

The Queen of Blood trailer (YouTube)

When the alien awakens she displays great dislike for needles and for Laura James, the woman in the earth crew. In short order, one of the men winds up dead with his blood drained from his body. Now they understand what the creature is. She’s a vampire with hypnotic powers. She drains another victim dry and is starting on a third when Laura James spots her and they engage in a cat fight, wherein the alien is scratched, all her blood drains out, and she promptly dies. She was a hemophiliac. As they reach home, they discover that the alien has laid her pulsating eggs by the dozens hidden all over the ship, which the scientists are uncommonly excited about and carefully remove from the ship to be studied.

The alien has laid her pulsating

eggs all over the ship.

The new movie holds up well enough as an interesting invasion from Mars movie. I agree with DVD Savant, who says in his review, “The new footage is cleverly designed to match expensive special effects scenes from the Soviet original.... Harrington’s matching is remarkable.” I was again and again impressed with how carefully Harrington’s costumes and settings matched their Soviet equivalents, especially with the spacesuits and helmets so that cutting from the American planet-surface scenes to the Soviet scenes and vice versa were practically seamless, especially since Corman had provided him with only $35,000 and an 8-day shooting schedule.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;

copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

Florence Marly’s eerie performance as the green alien woman is truly creepy, with the assistance of William Condos’ inventive makeup and the green and white beehive hairdo designed by George Spicer, a look that Tim Burton paid loving homage to in his Mars Attacks!, which was noted by DVD Savant.

Mechte Navstrechu (1963)

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller;

copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

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In the 1963 Soviet film Mechte Navstrechu the world is a paradise dotted with enormous statues and immense stages. Cosmonaut Andrei and his cosmonaut girl Tanya are lounging on a pier, and Andrei plays a recording of a song to Tanya, who is enchanted by it. The song emanates into space and is heard by the inhabitants of the planet Centuria, who are themselves so enchanted that they send a spacecraft with a crew of two males and one female to earth to investigate the source of such a nice melody. 

Mechte Navstrechu is gorgeous. Its special visual effects, model work, and production design are all top notch for its era. The scenes of the alien Centurian craft—exteriors, interiors, and shots of it wrecked on the Martian surface are as well-rendered and colorful and amazing to watch as anything put on film at the time. The Luna base looks so real, one wishes one could hop on a shuttle and go there. Scenes with people indoors and talking are a bit slow, but the outdoor shots are propped up by amazing matte paintings and other effects shots that convey the Utopian nature of that whole world. This is a rewarding movie to watch.

The Centaurian spacecraft.

The Centurian crew announces their approach to earth, and all the world becomes excited with anticipation. When contact ceases, there is concern, and then one day a space capsule crashes into the sea. The capsule’s message shows that the Centurian spacecraft had crashed onto Mars; then Earth’s nations devise plans to rescue their woebegone visitors. All the plans involve staging the rescue from the Luna spaceport.

Finally, a ship with Tanya aboard takes off, but encounters a solar storm that causes them to use fuel. Unharmed, they land on Mars mere walking distance to the Centurian craft. They find one dead crewman on board, but the remaining two crew that they expect to find are missing. Responding to the crew’s need of assistance, earth send a second crafts with Andrei on board as one of a crew of two to Mars, however it can only land on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, and then they would take a tiny two-man shuttle to the planet’s surface to help with the search.

The crashed Centurian escape pod.

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Arriving at Phobos, they unexpectedly find the Centurian craft’s escape pod with the two missing crew. The male is dead, but the female is barely alive. Naturally the woman needs to be taken to the surface to rendezvous with the earth craft ... but that means one of the two men on the Phobos ship must stay behind and die. Andrei volunteers. His crewmate takes the woman but his shuttle crashes in the middle of a terrible Martian sandstsorm, and he must carry the woman a long distance to the waiting earth ship. He succeeds valiantly, and they all take off to bring the alien woman to earth. Tanya weeps for her lover who has bravely sacrificed himself and is dying on Phobos. Some versions end there, while others end with the entire movie being but a daydream Tanya had while watching the sea from the pier.

The version I watched was dubbed in German, which I don’t speak, and included no English subtitles. The summary just conveyed is a compilation of plot information from various book chapters and articles, most especially the four consecutive data-packed articles by Robert Skotak in Outré magazine, issues 19 through 22, published in 2000. 

Queen of Blood (1966) 
USSR/USA. American International Pictures. C. 1.85:1. 81m. 
CREW: Director Curtis Harrington. Script Curtis Harrington. Producer George Edwards. Associate Producer Stephanie Rothman. Director of Photography Vilis Lapenieks. Editor Leo Shreve. Art Director Al Locatelli. Score Leonard Morand. Set Decorator Leon Smith. Title Sequence Background Paintings John Cline. Makeup William Condos. Hair Stylist George Spicer. Production Manager Gary Kurtz.
CAST: Allan Brenner John Saxon. Dr. Farraday Basil Rathbone. Laura James Judi Meredith. Paul Grant Dennis Hopper. Alien Queen Florence Marly. Anders Brockman Robert Boon. Tony Barrata Don Eitner. 

Mechte Navstrechu (1963) 
U.S.S.R. Odessa Studios. C. 1.85:1. 63m. (alternate titles A Dream Comes True, Begegnung im All, Encounter in Space, Toward Meeting a Dream) 
CREW: Directors Mikhail Koryukov, Otar Koberidge. Script Mikhail Karzhukov, Otar Koberidge. Story A. Berdnik, Ivan Bondin. 
CAST: Andrei Sayenko Boris Borisenko. Tanya Krilova Larisa Gordeichik. 

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