by Victoria Silverwolf

Holiday for Hemophiles

A rather lurid double feature showed up at my local movie house a few days ago. Naturally, I had to go see it.

Nothing says Fun For The Whole Family like Shrieking Mutilated Victims.

Besides being released by (or escaping from) the same production company, these two films would seem to have little in common other than the prominent use of the word Blood in the title. This shouldn't come as a surprise, since American International also brought us Blood of Dracula (1957), Night of the Blood Beast (1958), and A Bucket of Blood (1959).

One is a black-and-white supernatural thriller, the other is a science fiction melodrama, full of bright colors. Quite different, right?

Actually, they resemble each other closely in a very specific way. Both make extensive use of footage from other movies. The scenes are chopped up, rearranged, and slapped back together, like making a Frankenstein's monster from random body parts. I'll go into detail as I discuss each film.

Art in the Blood

Let's start with Blood Bath, a confusing story that began as an ordinary crime drama.

Nothing like this actually happens in the movie. That's advertising for you.

Take a deep breath, because the path to the final product on screen is a long and tortuous one. (You may also find it torturous. Please note the distinction between these two terms.)

According to Hollywood gossip, this thing started life as a tale of murder filmed in Yugoslavia. It had something to do with a painting by the great artist Titian. None of this remains in Blood Bath.

Not a Yugoslavian crime film.

In fact, all we've got left are some nice scenes of Yugoslavia and the presence of actor William Campbell, familiar to me for his work in the psychological shocker Dementia 13 (1963). It was a pretty decent scare flick, written and directed by a newcomer named Francis Coppola.

Campbell stars in Blood Bath as an insane artist who lives in an old bell tower.

The next stop in the convoluted road to Blood Bath was to dump the plot and turn it into a horror movie involving a crazed painter. He imagines that he's possessed by the spirit of an ancestor, also an artist, who was condemned as a sorcerer way back in the bad old days. He kills his models and dumps them into a vat of wax.

Apparently this wasn't creepy enough for the producers. More new footage establishes that the madman is also a shapeshifting vampire. I don't mean that he turns into a bat or a wolf. I mean that he turns into another actor.

You see, Campbell was no longer available. Some other guy, who looks nothing at all like Campbell, plays the artist when he changes into a bloodsucker.

Not William Campbell.

I previously mentioned the movie A Bucket of Blood, which was an enjoyable black comedy about a guy who becomes an acclaimed sculptor when he accidentally kills a cat and covers the body in clay, creating his first masterpiece. He goes on to murder people and turn them into works of art in the same way. (I said it was enjoyable, not in good taste.)

Anyway, that film contains a great deal of biting satire concerning the pretentions of arty beatnik types. Blood Bath tosses that into the mix as well, resulting in a movie with wild shifts in mood from grim to comic.

Beatniks!

One artist produces what he calls quantum art by loading a pistol with a packet containing paint and shooting it at the canvas. Another applies paint directly to the face of a model, then shoves her into the canvas. (I felt sorry for the actress playing this tiny role, who had to put up with getting some kind of goop on her face.)

All this makes the movie seem like a real mess, and I can't deny that it's even less coherent than I've made it sound. And yet it's not without interesting moments. As I've mentioned, there are some fine scenes of Yugoslavia. (The film actually takes place in Southern California, so there are some inconsistencies. Notably, the bell tower is supposedly from medieval times.) The cinematography, in general, is quite good, creating an eerie mood, full of darkness and shadows.

The vampire attacks, although they stick out from the rest of the film like sore thumbs, are done with some imagination. There's one at a merry-go-round, and another in a swimming pool.

In particular, I was very impressed with a hallucinatory sequence. The artist imagines himself in a desert landscape full of strange objects, while his ancestor's mistress dances and laughs at him.

It reminds me of a Salvador Dali painting.

The ending, which I won't give away here, doesn't make much sense, but is strangely effective in its own way. That pretty much describes the whole movie, really.

Red Planet, Green Vamp

Let's leave Yugoslavia/California and head for outer space, in order to meet the Queen of Blood.

The portrait of the Queen is pretty accurate, but the movie does not feature tiny people floating in a giant spider web.

We start with some really nifty abstract art under the opening titles.

Painting by John Cline. He gets on screen credit, too.

Our helpful narrator tells us that it's the year 1990. People have settled the Moon, and are planning voyages to Mars and Venus. Space travel is under the auspices of the International Institute of Space Technology.

The IIST receives signals from another solar system, indicating intelligent life. We then cut to scenes of the alien world.  These are quite impressive, and show a great deal of visual imagination.

Looks like something Chesley Bonestell might have dreamed up, doesn't it?

Let me back up a bit and explain why some parts of this movie look quite lovely, and others look, well, cheap. Queen of Blood takes much of its footage from a Soviet film, Mechte navstrechhu. My Russian is a little rusty, but this seems to mean something like To the dream.

Similar things have happened in the past. The Noble Editor and the Young Traveler have already told us how the Soviet film Nebo Zovyot (The sky is calling, more or less) emerged as Battle Beyond the Sun in American theaters.

Last year, Planeta Bur (Storm planet) showed up as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet. I'm sure more of this kind of thing will go on in the future. Why? Simply because the Soviet SF films are so visually impressive.

Take a look at this scene from the alien world in Queen of Blood, for example.

Back at the IIST, we meet our heroes, about to take a lunch break. Their meal is interrupted by the announcement that the alien message has been translated.

From left to right, John Saxon as Allen, Judi Meredith as Laura, Dennis Hopper as Paul, and Don Eitner as Tony. For a supposedly international organization, the IIST is sure full of Americans.

All four are astronauts, and Laura is also the communications expert we saw listening to the alien broadcast. She and Allen are romantically involved, but that doesn't prevent them from acting in a fully professional manner when on the job. I'll give the film credit for making Laura a vital character in the plot, rather than simply the Girl.

The leader of the IIST tells a huge crowd of listeners (more Soviet footage) that an alien spaceship is on its way to our solar system.

Very special guest star Basil Rathbone, everybody's favorite Sherlock Holmes, as the director of the IIST.

A small device, containing a record of the voyage, falls into Earth's ocean. This reveals that the aliens suffered an accident and crash landed on Mars.

The beautiful alien spaceship, before it leaves its home planet.

By the way, the scene in which the crowd listens to the announcement is visually stunning. It features a statue of heroic proportions, symbolizing humanity's exploration of space.

Seriously, isn't that monument gorgeous?

Naturally, the IIST sends astronauts to Mars to contact the aliens. Aboard the oddly named spaceship Oceano are Laura and Paul, along with a Dutch-accented commander. (OK, not everybody in the IIST is American or British.) The vessel is launched from the Moon, which allows us to see some very nice Soviet models of a lunar base.

The Oceano gets hit by a so-called sunburst on the way to Mars, forcing them to use extra fuel and causing some damage. They find the alien spaceship, occupied by one dead extraterrestrial. They figure out that some sort of lifeboat must have carried away the survivors of the crash.

In other news, home sales increase.

Because the Oceano II isn't ready yet — couldn't they think of another name? — Allan and Tony volunteer to take the much smaller Meteor to help with the search for the lifeboat. They can't land the tiny vessel on Mars and then take off again, due to limitations on how much fuel they can carry, but they can land on Phobos, due to the lesser gravity. (Hey! Some real science!)

The view from Phobos. Nice work, comrades.

The logistics of the space voyages get pretty complicated here. After the guys on the Meteor find the sole surviving alien on Phobos, thanks to pure dumb luck, it turns out that Allan can travel to Mars to join the crew of the Oceano with his extraterrestrial passenger aboard the Meteor's own lifeboat, but that Tony has to stay on Phobos and wait to be rescued by the Oceano II when it shows up in a week.

We finally get to meet our title character. She's well worth waiting for. Looking very much like a human woman, except for her green skin, she remains mute throughout the film. This makes her all the more intriguing.

Czech actress Florence Marly as the Queen of Blood.

Communicating with the Earthlings strictly through facial expressions and gestures, she clearly coveys a sense of friendship for the males, but dislike for Laura. Paul soon teaches her to drink water from a bottle, but she refuses all offers of food. She also reacts violently when Laura tries to take a blood sample from her, knocking the syringe to the floor in anger.

Paul demonstrates how to use a squeeze bottle. The Queen of Blood is more interested in another liquid.

Well, given the title, you can probably guess what comes next, and who the first victim will be. Suffice to say that the Queen of Blood was quite right to be suspicious of Laura, who turns out to be the film's real hero.

Queen of Blood eggs, suggesting that there should be a question mark at the end of the above phrase.

A Bloody Good Time

I won't claim these two films are masterpieces. Both have serious flaws.

Blood Bath is incoherent, to say the least. It does have some moody scenes, however, and its lack of plot logic gives it a dream-like feeling that may be appealing.

Queen of Blood suffers from the cheapness of the American scenes, obviously filmed on small stages, as opposed to the sweeping vistas of the Soviet scenes. On the other hand, Florence Marly's performance is compelling.

Oh, that's where the question mark went.

If you enjoy these movies, maybe you'll be inspired to do a good deed of some sort once you leave the theater.

---

---

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.