From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Devil Girl From Mars released in 1954.
Starring:
Hugh McDermott, Hazel Court, Peter Reynolds
Directed by:
David MacDonald
Genre:
Sci-Fi
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
Approved
Budget:
N/A
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
5.0
The Synopsis is:
A female extraterrestrial from Mars, Nyah comes to earth seeking men to save her species from extinction.
My shorter reviews are often spoiler free, but I must warn you that there are going to be light spoilers in this review, because there is a lot I want to discuss about the film.
Devil Girl From Mars originated as a play by John C. Mather and James Eastwood, released by British Lion Films. The idea for the film came from Mather when he was working with American brothers Edward J. and Harry Lee Danziger who produced many British films and TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s. They also produced this film as well. And that is perhaps why this British production has an american appeal to it with many of the actors speaking in American accents and feeling reminiscent of many of the B sci-fi classics like The Day The Earth Stood Still, which it quite blatantly, heavily emulates… but in a good way, I feel.
In both movies a humanoid alien visits earth in a flying saucer with a monstrous looking robot that is an unstoppable power. Then there is the religious implications of both films. The alien in The Day The Earth Stood Still is meant to represent the innocence of Christ, where as the alien in this film is meant to represent an evil version of Christ’s mother, Mary, with her desire to repopulate her kind and bring destruction upon the earth. It’s also revealed in the fact that the title laughably uses the word “Devil” to describe the antagonist.
This is a really intimate and modest production shot in three weeks, no retakes, and a very low budget. The whole thing appears to be is shot in two to three rooms and a sound stage, much like a play.
There was a lot attention to creating a sense of drama and suspense through lighting and music. Now the music was a bit interesting because the composer, Edwin Astley’s reused his score from 1950’s detective television series, Saber of London, about a British police captain named Mark Saber, since there was so little money for the production.
Much of the action in the film is very slow moving and minimal special effects, and carried by mounds of exposition to tell most of the story.
It starts out with a convict, Albert, escaping from prison and finding refuge with an old girlfriend who works at an inn in the countryside in Scotland. We get a variety of characters conveniently at the inn with soap opera type subplots swirling around to help pad out the run time. The alien flying saucer crash lands nearby, trapping them all inside.
Nyah presents herself to the panicking characters at the inn and tells them flat out of her plan to take male earthlings back to Mars. I love the fact that she is so direct and it speaks a lot about her character, but it really isn’t a smart tactic to use on sentient beings even if she thinks that they are too dumb and powerless to stop her.
I think we could all agree that a smarter tactic for the invader would have been to appear under the guise of peace.
Her arrogance is her downfall, but in turn it does offer the audience a great deal of entertainment through her pompous exposition. Her dialogue is pretentious and for a lack of a better term, priceless. I absolutely loved it all.
Nyah’s look is one of the most interesting and striking things about this film that caught my attention right away. She is played by Patricia Laffan who wears the incredibly constructed PVC costume which she complained was horribly uncomfortable. Much like the sacrifices made in the film Metropolis by Brigitte Helm wearing her iconic robot costume.
Patricia was limited in what she could and couldn’t do in the contraption, but it made such a remarkable impression in the film. The design was credited to Ronald Cobb, but some other sources say that it was designed by British fashion designer and fetish photographer, John Sutcliffe using the name Ronald Cobb as an alias.
The costume is quite bold and bears a resemblance to Darth Vader’s from Star Wars released in 1977. George Lucas has been rumored to receive many of his inspirations for his films from B movies of this era, so Nyah could be one of his direct influences.
Even the body language and tone of voice matches to two characters.
While watching Patricia Laffan’s performance of this character I can see how specific she is choreographing her movements and it is spellbinding to watch it in action. The way she walks and pauses before she turns away beaming with dynamic charisma. This is the lasting and timeless appeal of the film and I believe it was a fantastic performance given what she had to work with.
Nyah is a strong female character cladded with a dominatrix look which I love so very much. She as well as the premise for the film is definitely a male fantasy. Is that terrible? I don’t think so. At the time, there were several B movies that were obsessed with the theme of all-women societies from other worlds that needed earth men to restore their ranks.
It’s a hilarious premise, but it was one of the few chances that young girls of the era and decades later could see powerful women with rank in sci-fi.
One of the things that hurt the film is the predictable dialogue and how awfully the human characters were written. They are all mostly forgettable except two characters, Albert the convict and Michael the heroic news reporter, acts too bold and drinks too much.
The two are at odds immediately which leads up to a wild gut wrenching knock down drag out fight between the two, that makes little sense when it happens. You just know it’s going to happen and it goes on for a while.
What hurts the film the most is the formulaic repetitiveness of Nyah entering the inn’s bar room, threatening the humans, leaving the humans alone to plot and plan against her to no avail. For the deadly danger that they were in, it seemed that the characters were written to be unrealistically calm about what is happening to them. That is probably why it is so really hilarious to see this film because you can’t believe the reactions between the characters. It’s kinda funny.
The reception in 1954 was really bad, but along the way there were many youngsters who were influenced by the film such as Nebula award-winning author Octavia Butler, artist Gronk, and possibly even George Lucas (as I discussed before, but that is more of a theory and it’s not been proven… possibly just a coincidence).
This film is so enjoyable that it made it into “The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made” list in the book “THE OFFICIAL RAZZIE® MOVIE GUIDE”.
Since the dawn of video, fans of this oldie kept the flame for it alive and made it a cult classic!
I love this cute little movie, but I am not so sure there are others that would share my sentiments so I’ll just say that this is truly my guilty pleasure.
My Rating:
6.8
That sums up my quick spoiler free review. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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