Devil Girl from Mars (1954)
Anytime I watch a movie and the opening credits roll by saying that it is based on a play, I cringe. If you've ever been to a play (and really, why would you if have anything resembling a life?) the one thing that is the hallmark of the form is that the characters talk and talk and talk some more.
See, they have this stage so they can't really do anything exciting, because what can possibly happen on a stage that's exciting? No car chases, nothing blowing up, and no change of scenery except when they lower those fake backgrounds or when the curtain goes down and the eager beavers working on the play move in some new furniture in case you are retarded enough to be tricked into thinking that suddenly you are somewhere else. I suppose that some stories lend themselves to this type of format (the wordy, boring format), like courtroom dramas or character pieces or some other thing I'd never want to see in a million years, but the alien invasion movie isn't one of them.
First of all, who would go see a play about an alien invasion? Second, an alien invasion movie needs, no - it demands action, explosions, special effects and some outdoorsy scenes. You need something kinetic going on so that you don't stop to think how idiotic the proceedings are. You don't want to get bogged down in a bunch of talk so that I start realize that it's just so much hot air. So, with that in mind, I laid down on the couch, my head propped up by the half-empty box of Suzy-Qs that had been drafted to accompany me into battle with this film. When it popped up that this film was based on a play, I involuntarily yawned and reached for a softer pillow than the container of confections I had started with.
A strange meteor-type object was spotted crashing around the Scottish countryside one night, so the "home office" has dispatched a professor and a reporter to go find out what it is. I've never been to Scotland (and don't plan on it as long as they still got dinosaurs crawling around their cold, murky lakes) so I have no idea what the "home office" is but I suppose it has something to do with prime ministers, crumpets and guys that wear plaid skirts. I'm not sure why the home office would have a professor and a reporter go investigate things, especially since this is the country (or is it?) that has those Highlander superheroes running around.
So you got these two fools cruising around the countryside and they get lost. Along the way, they manage to listen to a radio report of an escaped killer who is at large in the area. When you roll your eyes into your head 10 minutes into the film, you just know things are only going downhill from there. I mean, you would think that the whole Martian invasion angle would be enough gimmick for this movie, but they insist on trotting out the escaped killer bit and it only makes you wonder what other hoary, old cliches have signed up for a part in this movie. Well, as luck would have it, you soon find out as our two heroes make their way to this out of the way inn where they decide to rest for the night. This location is where the rest of the movie takes place. I bet you never thought the fate of the world and the first alien contact would take place at some dumpy Scottish Motel 6.
I suppose that part of the movie's reason we are in the inn all the time (aside from the obviously budget-friendly reasons) is that this allows us to get to know our characters and enables the film to bring people from different walks of life together. You've got the old, fuddy duddy professor, the hard drinking reporter, some old geezers who run the inn, a 26 year old model that looked like she was 45, a waitress who happens to be the squeeze of the escaped killer, a little boy who is staying there for no real reason (he's somebody's nephew), the crippled-up handyman, and the escaped killer who's real name is Robert, but hides his identity by calling himself Albert (devilishly ingenious, old chap!).
With all these people milling around, you can imagine how much blathering goes on when they ought to be out pimp-slapping Martians. Oh don't get me wrong, they sure do talk a lot about pimp-slapping Martians, but they're a little short on action in that area. But enough talk about all the talk! The flying saucer has landed!
A ramp pops out of the saucer so that whatever fetid and blackhearted creature that inhabits it can show itself and start invading. Out steps this tall broad in some type of black leather get up complete with leather helmet and cape. So this Devil Girl who flew all the way from Mars comes prancing out of her bulky-looking ship and she is as smug as most Martians are when they make their first appearance on our planet. She is accompanied by a giant robot that does nothing except shoot a ray out of its head that vaporizes stuff. It also resembles a large mailbox with arms and legs. Before we go any farther, you should be made aware that this is the extent of the Martian invasion in this movie: a crabby chick in ugly fetish outfit and a robot that looks like it was made in shop class.
Now, originality isn't really the strong suit of this movie and if you want to know the truth the only strong suit of this movie is that it wasn't any longer than 77 minutes. As soon as this Martian bimbo starts running her flap you can tell you're in for the standard invasion lecture. Superior race, inferior humans, Mars needs male sperm donors, ship broken down, invisible wall around area so no one can escape or contact anybody, invade London once ship repaired, etc. It's all so very trite.
Let's break it down though. First of all, Mars needs men. It seems that the Martian men ain't pulling their weight in the bedroom. Uh, have you looked in the mirror, Devil Girl? You look kind of butch. If you could tear yourself away from watching Xena, take off the leather helmet and put on some lipstick or something, maybe the Martian men wouldn't be so inattentive.
So Mars, is coming to Earth looking for a few good men to bump space-uglies with. Some may recall the movie Mars Needs Women where this plot device was used in reverse. You also may recall any number of other sweaty-palmed male fantasy films where hot babes from outer space crave the affections of big, flabby, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching dudes because their planet would simply die without our good-loving!
I never really got the appeal of that plot device. I think you could stay right here on Earth and be treated like crap by any number of women, and most wouldn't kill you after having sex. Additionally, from a common sense standpoint, why would all these superior races want to mix with us inferior types and create some type of mongrel half-breed? If we're so crappy, why are we such good candidates to mate with? Isn't our genetic make up the source of our crappiness? If they were really advanced, they could come up with some solution to their bedroom woes on their own planet (cloning, Viagra).
Here's another problem with the movie and its alien invasion. The old "my ship broke down on the way to the invasion" gag. How many times have we seen that? I would guess that at least 65% of all alien encounters on this planet are the result of one of these doofus' ships breaking down on them. Is that supposed to instill fear into me? "We will destroy your planet once our ship is towed to the garage, put up on the rack and the alternator is replaced!"
Devil Girl makes all these announcements about the invasion, needing a boyfriend (preferably one that can rebuild a hyperdrive) and the fact that she'll be there for several hours while her ship is getting fixed. There's not really much else to say, and everyone realizes that since we then have several repetitive scenes where people go out to the ship for no reason and the Devil Girl walks back to the inn to scowl at the Earthlings for no reason. Most of the time she comes back to the inn to threaten the people there about how she's going to kill them all when she gets around to it (once the capacitor for my destructo-ray comes in!), chide them for their foolish efforts to destroy her or taunt them about how she's going to take one of them to London with her so that they can show her around. If your invasion plan requires you to stop in the Scottish boonies, pick up a local and get directions from him, then I'd say that the invasion is still in its "blueprint stage."
The really bad part about having such a worthless villain who does very little is that it leaves lots of time for the rest of the characters to take the stage. The reporter and the model have their moments and somehow fall in love during the twenty minutes it looks like this invasion might happen. We learn some about their past - he drinks a lot and she's trying to forget that hunky dress designer that broke her heart. Memo to the airhead model: male dress designers are probably not the best choice of boyfriends. In fact, I bet if you asked Devil Girl, she would tell you that she's got a whole planet full of male dress designers.
We also get a little action on the escaped killer/waitress front. Its never really made clear what happened with this killer guy in his past, but he apparently killed a woman or he was framed for it or she deserved it. I couldn't ever tell. Devil Girl also periodically hypnotizes people into a stupor. That doesn't really have anything to do with anything else, but they threw it in so I thought I would. It did allow the reporter and the escaped killer to engage in a brief and all too sissy fight while the killer was under her control which was pretty much it in the action department.
This is as slow and low-rent a movie as you'll ever have the displeasure of watching. We know from movies like Night of the Living Dead and The Birds that a group of isolated people fighting off supernatural terrors can be done in a suspenseful and entertaining fashion. And now we know that it can also be done in dull and mind-numbing fashion.
One of the problems was that you could never take this alien invasion threat seriously. Devil Girl was completely out of her depth here, ramming her spaceship aground, her only ally a flimsy-looking robot that has even less personality than her. The fact that she runs her mouth enough about how her ship is powered so that this incontinent professor figures out that all you have to do is mess with the ship's battery to destroy it should give you a clue as to how brainless the Martians and this movie are.
The fact that nothing goes on once this woman lands is a major failing of the film. There's no tension when she walks back to the inn about every ten minutes. She's just as bored as the rest of us, has no where else to go and the filmmakers are obviously trying to figure out how to work her into as many scenes as possible even though they don't have the money or the intelligence to have her do anything except talk the humans to death.
The humans are as one dimensional as the Martian and her walking mail box. Everyone's character is explained in a couple sentences of dialogue that they upchuck during the film's slowest moments. The characters we spend the most time with (the reporter and the model) are the worst as far as this goes and he's such a pushy, take charge kind of guy, you end up wishing the male dress designer would have made the trip instead of him. The rest of the cast are no better, serving no other purpose but to take up space.
This movie though, promises all sorts of action with its retro-cool title and cheesy robot attack poster. But like another excitingly titled movie of the era, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, it delivers nothing but an awful story, slipshod production values and enough tedium to make you swear off 1950s alien chick movies for a long time. Wait a minute! What's this? I see that this Cat-Women Of The Moon movie is only 64 minutes long. How bad could it be?