Devil Girl from Mars

Devil Girl from Mars is a 1954 British film about a flying saucer landing on the Scottish moors near a country inn. The residents are a professor, his assistant, an old couple that runs the place, another woman, some society dame, a young boy, a waitress, her escaped convict husband, and whew! I get tired just giving out that roster. Was there anyone I missed?

The saucer lands, and a tall, slim, regal, thoroughly bitchy space alien femme (Patricia Laffan as "Nyah") in black fishnets and a long rubber cape, sporting a medieval leather cap (and with perfectly done makeup and lipstick), steps out. She's from Mars, dig?; and she's come here to test something about the Fourth Dimension.

I can't remember what exactly [1], and I don't care enough to go back and try to find it again. Suffice it to say, her parked saucer (which looks like a giant-sized flying top with a couple of weird plastic bubbles and a central section that spins as it makes its way through interstellar space) sits out on the moors, waiting for the rest of this movie to improve.

She's come here with Chani, her robot companion, who is like an old-fashioned electric shaver with vacuum cleaner attachments for arms and legs and a glass dome for a head. He laser zaps a car and a tree as a demonstration of force.

The waitress's husband has escaped from jail after killing a woman (which fact doesn't seem to bother the wife) and hides out in the inn. When the professor's assistant realizes who he is, this does not sit well with him, and his square-jawed, 1954, all-American yet seemingly English self whoops up on the escaped con; regardless, nothing comes of that because we're moving toward the surprise ending.

Nyah the Devil Girl is a total dominating femme bitch top (think "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S."), and she is unhappy with the Earthlings (she's also headed to London to wreak killer robot havoc). She kidnaps the boy at one point (she's, by the way, rendered a force field around the surrounding area preventing escape by any at the inn), but he escapes nonetheless. Coming back, he peeps out from behind the curtains, coming through the window, and says, "I bet I scared you!" And, yeah, thinks the viewer, for a kid he's a little creepily reminiscent of a dwarf or ventriloquist's puppet come to life.

I won't give away the ending because it's more or less dumber than a devil girl, but the escaped con husband makes good and the whole thing ends with a colorful cloudburst. And that's all I can say. otherwise, the Devil Girl and Robot Chani will tag team me and I'll be a goner.

In closing, let me just opine, editorialize, and provide food for intellectual comment, and remark, so cogently, that such ancient, doddering, laughable old sci-fi flicks have a certain dank odoriferous waft thoroughly unique, much like musty droppings in an old toilet bowl. They give off a feculent effluvia that is rather like a moldy basement-dwelling, one perhaps littered with the rusted remains of so many robot monster toys once fondled by loving little hands who dreamt of outer space rides aboard spinning outer space whirligigs, but not ones piloted by Nyha the Devil Girl, because that bitch is just one step beyond and a bridge too far, dig me?

Now, because I still have seventy words to go to fill out this review or critique or essay or whatever, I'm going to list the cast at the bottom here, even though they're all completely unknown (as well as all certainly pushing up daisies). Here goes:

Starring Hugh McDermott as Michael Carter Hazel Court as Ellen Prestwick , Peter Reynolds as Robert Justin/Albert Simpson , Adrienne Corri as Doris , Joseph Tomelty as Professor Arnold Hennessey , John Laurie as Mr. Jamieson , Sophie Stewart as Mrs. Jamieson , Anthony Richmond as Tommy , James Edmond as David. Screenplay by James Eastwood and John C. Maher. Directed by David MacDonald. Produced by Harry Lee and Edward J. Danziger.

One final thing to note: World-renowned science fiction pioneer Octavia E. Butler reportedly saw this film as a twelve-year-old girl, and swore that one day she would write something "far better." And do you know what? That child must have been psychic.

[1] Actually, I found out later it was so she could kidnap Earth dudes and take them back to Planet Devil Girl and breed them out. I must have been asleep during that explanation. However, I can easily envision miles of incels lining up to get a ride with Nyah back to her homeworld, volunteering quite eagerly despite whatever perils they should happen to face. In space.

Devil Girl from Mars (Sci-Fi, 1954) Patricia Laffan, Hugh McDermott | Cult Movie, Subtitle