The Quatermass Xperiment 1956 Exclusive Films
Director: Val Guest
A british rocket ship crash lands and there is only one surviving astronaut, the other two sucked dry of all their blood. Sensing trouble with the government, the rocket's designer, a chap named Quartermass, quickly takes control of the situation. He moves the surviving astronaut to his research facility and has his staff care for the ailing spaceman, while cleverly keeping prying eyes out.
Eventually, however, they can no longer care for the man and Quartermass sees to it that he is transferred to a hospital, but only under the strictest confidentiality- he does have his companies interests to look out for! The astronauts wife and the former doctor decide to take matters into their own hands and free the astronaut from the hospital. In the process, the astronaut smashes a cactus in the window and hurts his hand. He than kills the doctor and flees his wife.
Soon, all of Scotland Yard is after the mutant cactus-handed man and they have become aware of a gruesome fact- He is hosting an alien life-form which must drink blood to survive! As the search ensues, the now-more-cactus-than-man creature hits the Park Zoo, eating nearly every animal in the place overnight. It is also leaving quite a slime trail, making it easier to track. And track it they do... Right to Westminster Abbey, for the big show-down!
Totally ridiculous! In the end, the monster is a giant octopus, with cactus-like barbs. How did it morph into this you ask? I do not know. This is a pretty hokey movie but it did have some elements that clearly seemed to have influenced later (better) films, most notably The Blob. I guess we can thank it for that. XX
Quatermass 2: Enemy from Space 1957 Hammer Films
Director: Val Guest
Always the dreamer, Quatermass is building a new atomic rocket and has designs for a large moon base (built to scale in his office no less). One day his team of rag-tag assistants spot meteors on the radar- lots of them! Quatermass himself comes across a badly burned man escaping the same area. Back at "mission control", he puts two and two together and by damn, "Let's go!"
There, much to his dismay, he finds a top secret military installation which looks exactly like his moon base (those bastards!). His dumb-ass friend also finds a whole meteorite and just like the guy Quatermass saw before, he holds it up to his face where... Yup. It explodes and burns his face! Army men overtake them and take the injured dumb-ass away. Quatermass escapes.
Back in his lair, he and the others spot a mysterious object "on the dark side of the earth", from which they suspect these mysterious meteors came. Quatermass tags along with a government official on a tour of the strange facility and by now, he suspects there is something to the odd scars on everyone involved with this damn place.
On the tour of the supposed "food plant", the official sneaks off to have a look-see at the giant vat of food. Quatermass narrowly escapes the masked guards and discovers the true horror of the complex. Again, he narrowly escapes to go rally the drunken villagers against the menace. Off they go, with torches and pitchforks(!) to fight their way in. But can they fight off their own ignorance? Quatermass may have done as well on his own!
This was a much better film than the ridiculous Xperiment (above). Sure, it was a little campy, cheap and that state of the art "moon base" was easily recognizable as a common oil refinery! Okay, it's not Citizen Kane but it is a fun, exciting and even suspenseful little brit sci-fi flick! XXXX
Queen of Blood 1966 Cinema West Productions
Director: Curtis Harrington
Starring: Dennis Hopper, Basil Rathbone and Forrest J. Ackerman!
An Earth colony on the moon receives a message from Mars, stating that Earth will soon have visitors from Mars. This is followed by an SOS that the visiting ship has crashed on Mars. The moonbase sends a rescue ship immediately, to make contact. When the land on the (blue) red planet, however, what they find is a lone dead martian astronaut. Knowing there were more a second rescue attempt is launched.
This smaller ship, manned by a couple of manly '50s actors, finds a live martian astronaut and brings her back to the ship. Since the ship cannot carry all three of them, Tony stays behind so Allan can be reunited with his gal, Laura, on the original rescue ship. So, they get back to the ship and Ms- Martian wakes up surrounded by men and quite happy about it! Until she sees Laura and turns all pissy.
Paul (Hopper) is assigned first watch, i.e. first victim status, and is sucked dry by the green alien queen. All aboard discover (to their horror) why she would not eat earlier. They decide to feed her plasma and keep a closer watch, but the commander gets it next. Allan is onto the green broad's ways and they tie her up. But even he cannot resist her hypnotic gaze and nearly succumbs himself- if not for Laura...
Doc Farraday (Rathbone) arranges to meet them back on earth with the corpses of the commander and the alien queen (who died in the most unremarkable cat fight ever). But then, looking around the ship, they discover the true reason the alien queen came aboard... To set up a sequel!
At first I thought this to be a bigger budget sci-fi flick (it was distributed by MGM after all), but it turns out all the special effects and elaborate sets were simply stolen from a russian sci-fi film, Nebo zovyot. Stealing from other countries' movies is nothing new in Hollywood, only now it's just the story, not actual footage! All in all, it was pretty good but it was no Planet of the Vampires. XXXX, with an extra X for the trippy opening credits (which may have also been stolen. Who knows?)