Donna Freydkin USA TODAY

In the eerily prescient big-screen adaptation of the third book in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Queen of the Damned, the late pop star Aaliyah plays Queen Akasha, as power-hungry as she is beautiful, brought back from the dead to prey on the living. Her face is prominent on the movie posters, seductively baring her teeth. Her body, clad in a metallic bikini, promotes a film she'll never see.

Some industry watchers doubted the $35 million movie would ever make it to theaters -- that a film starring someone playing a vampire, who had recently died in real life, didn't stand a chance. It would go straight to video, they predicted -- a prediction director Michael Rymer calls ''absurd.''

Aaliyah's brother Rashad Haughton, who redubbed parts of her dialogue after she died Aug. 25 in a plane crash in the Bahamas, says the marketing of the movie was discussed with the family.

''It's a horror film, so the subject matter was touchy,'' says Haughton, 24. ''But everything was handled tastefully. It was her last performance, and she wanted it to be a success, so we were behind it.''

On Friday, one year after she finished shooting Queen, six months after her death and nearly one hour into the 90-minute gore-fest, Aaliyah Dana Haughton, 22, makes her posthumous bow.

Aaliyah is in only the last third of the film, yet she remains the movie's biggest and best-known draw. This places Rymer and Warner Bros., the studio releasing Queen, in something of a no-win situation. If they ignore Aaliyah's death in marketing the movie, they run the risk of angering fans who think the distributor is disrespectful or oblivious to what happened. Or they may overemphasize her presence, guaranteeing that others will level accusations that Aaliyah's death has been milked for box office bucks.

''Everyone is very sensitive about being appropriate,'' Rymer says. ''The studio feels her loss terribly, but they're not in the business of articulating that. And I personally believe that they were going to market the film the same way -- that Aaliyah was always the biggest name in the film.''

Co-star Stuart Townshend, who plays the vampire Lestat, Akasha's lover and sidekick, agrees. ''In a weird way, Warner Bros. is now promoting us because of Aaliyah, and thankfully, the family's right behind it. And now, her death might make more people see this movie. . . . It's a tough thing.''

Warner Bros. appears to be erring on the side of caution, a tactic other studios have adopted in the past, says film historian Leonard Maltin.

''I don't see the studios as callous bad guys in this situation,'' Maltin says. ''On the whole, they're usually very respectful and don't want to seem exploitative.''

Perhaps that's why her official bio in the press notes accompanying the film makes no mention of her death. And, to date, the movie doesn't close with a dedication to Aaliyah, a fact that doesn't bother her brother.

''It was close to her heart,'' Haughton says. ''You can't turn your back on that and not let her art be seen. That was the bottom line.''