Devil Girl From Mars

Martian Manhunter

Devil Girl From Mars
UK 1954 Directed by David MacDonald
British Lion/Studio Canal Blu Ray Zone B

Devil Girl From Mars is a movie I’ve been meaning to get around to seeing for some time. It’s all set in more or less one location, that being an inn on the Scottish Moors. Just to underscore the location, we have John Laurie cast as one of the owners, many years before he went on to household fame as Frazer in Dad’s Army. Now, the single location makes more sense when you see, on the opening credits (underscored with music by British composer Edwin Astley) that the film is based on a stage play by John C. Mather and James Eastwood, the latter of the two writing the screenplay.

The film takes time to build up its characters after a huge spaceship, thought at first to be a meteorite, comes crashing to Earth. So we have a young model fleeing from a doomed relationship, played by Hazel Court, the land lady played by Sophie Stewart, the barmaid played by Adrienne Corri, the land lady’s sister’s son and a throwaway geezah who gets disintegrated fairly early on into the proceedings. Through the miracle of a radio tuned to a station giving exposition, we know that a Professor has travelled to the area to study the fallen meteorite, played by Joseph Tomelty with an accompanying reporter played by Hugh McDermott. And furthermore, we know from the radio in their car, that an escaped murderer... though he didn’t really do it on purpose and he’s also the lover of the barmaid, played by Peter Reynolds... has escaped from the local prison.

And, of course, all converge at the inn for the night, only to find themselves locked in a small area of land by invisible walls, as a flying saucer lands and out pops... Nyah played by Patricia Laffan, a Martian woman wearing a slightly ahead of its time PVC fetish suit (the actress wasn’t allowed to eat or drink on set in order to get the thing on and off). She is accompanied by her killer robot, who looks mighty impressive on the posters. Said robot bears no resemblance to the actual costume at all and it’s a bit clunky and quaint but, certainly tall and imposing.

Nyah is a cold blooded woman, being from Mars and one of the women who have, after years of bloodshed, won the Martian War Of The Sexes. So, with her mighty powers, she is here to collect male breeding stock to help her top up her race again. In fact, she’s a little off course due to the thickness of the Earth’s atmosphere, so she plans on getting to London soon, in order to freeze everyone with her ‘everybody stands still with glazed expressions on their eyes’ powers so she can take her pick. So it’s up to these, pretty powerless humans to try and come up with some kind of plan to thwart her efforts.

And it’s all very quaint and British and, I feel, has been held up to ridicule for a long time but... yeah, I dunno, I actually found the film not only charming but quite watchable. There’s a good bunch of actors who really know how to bring the characters to life (if you’re going to be stuck in a pub with a bunch of nice people, these would be the ones) and the sets and miniatures are well lit and shot. I mean, right from the outset you can tell the pub and its immediate surroundings are a huge interior studio set but, even so, it’s a pretty good one, it has to be said. And there are some quite clever lines in the film too such as, when being scolded by his wife for drinking, John Laurie remarks with words to the effect that he’s being patriotic by drinking the scotch. His wife’s withering retort is, “You should see him when he has a patriotic head in the morning.”, which I thought was pretty good.

Now, to be fair, there are a lot of things people could latch on to in order to criticise this as a bad movie... the smoking glasses after a guy has been disintegrated, the cumbersome robot and the uptight demeanour of the Martian lady... but I found it to be mostly good and, not exactly gripping but it’s a pleasure to see actors of this quality taking the subject as seriously as they can and, it turns out, I have a lot of love for this film. Even if the ending seems somewhat... well... a bit rubbish and unsatisfying. But, yeah, I’ve said it and you can judge me for it (I know my dad will, who found the whole thing absolutely ludicrous) but I really liked Devil Girl From Mars and think it would make a good part of an all nighter marathon of British sci-fi/horror films from the period. Good stuff, as far as I’m concerned.