Devil Girl from Mars
April. 27,1955 NREight people at a remote Scottish inn find themselves confronted by a woman from Mars, who has landed her flying saucer for repairs but intends to soon conquer the Earth and enslave its men for breeding purposes.
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Reviews
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
"Devil Girl from Mars" is a rather worse than mediocre piece of 50's SF - a bit special because it's a British production, but neither does it spin a new angle on the "Invaders from Mars" theme, nor is it particularly charming.I could overlook many of this movie's problems - the cheap production design, the simple set, the cardboard characters - even the ridiculous robot (all the more ridiculous because it doesn't do anything the imposing Ms. Laffan couldn't have done herself) - but there's one big problem I can't overlook, and that's the sluggish pace. Humanity's survival is at stake but there's never any urgency, any sense of doom. A group of people trapped in a limited location and fighting for survival - quite a common theme for movies, many of them very good, so you can't blame the small budget or the SF genre - it's simply a script, direction and editing problem.Conclusio: I found this really really hard to sit through. Recommended only for completists of the genre.
Don't listen to the pundits who have been trashing Devil Girl From Mars as a cheap, low budget quickie, so bad you watch it only for laughs. Whether you view it as high camp or harmless entertainment, this early British entry in the genre is really quite good, a classic example of the science fiction from the 1950's when it was mostly for fun. Production values are actually a bit above average for space operas of the period, whether Brit or American. Stylish costumes, good special effects for the time, tight direction, a competent cast, and intelligent story and dialog, all work to keep this picture well above the mass of cheap sci-fi flicks flooding the market at the time. While it is a bit slow moving at times, intense characterization, sharp editing, and a number of subplots keep it from ever dragging.Entertainment value is considerably boosted by the presence of three of the sexiest lassies ever to grace the silver screens of Albion in the winsome persons of Patricia Laffan, Hazel Court, and Adrienne Corri. Ms. Court and Ms. Corri were best known for spilling gallons of comely cleavage in Hammer and Roger Corman's horror pictures and other lurid productions of the late '50's and '60's. But they manage to project plenty of sex appeal here while staying buttoned up to their throats by the simple old time expedient of being feminine and vulnerable. Not to mention both showed terrific figures in any duds. Hazel looks so shapely and elegant in her stylish, frilly-front suit, we are easily convinced she could be the professional model her character is -- at least in the days before models were expected to look as if they have barely survived years in a concentration camp.Though billed behind Court and Corri, gorgeously gammed Patricia Laffan is the real star as the exotic Martian femme fa-tale invading the British Isles to kidnap virile earth males back to man-starved masses of amazons on the Red Planet. Costumer Ronald Cobb decked out the long-legged Laffan in one of the kinkiest space babe outfits seen on the screen to date -- flared-shouldered cape, neck-length cloche, hot pants, and boots, all in black leather, with smoked nylon hose showing her terrific legs to best advantage. Wow! she looks like a space tootsie designed for a Busby Berkeley extravaganza!But the intent is perfectly serious, and the Devil Girl is deadly serious about her wicked plans for World conquest. The movie is kept serious by David MacDonald's taut direction, and an intelligent script by James Eastwood from his and John C. Mather's play. They give us full-bodied characters we can care about, rather than the usual sci-fi stereotypes, all expertly portrayed by a fine cast including Court, Corri, Hugh McDermott, John Laurie, Sophie Stewart, Peter Reynolds, and Joseph Tomelty. In the best tradition of 'fifties science fiction Jack Whitehead's special effects are well augmented by a clever use of light and sound and Edwin Astley's eerie score. The Mars babe's giant robot, somewhat resembling a massive electric space heater may seem laughable to some jaded moderns, but low angle camera shots to make him loom, and closeups of his giant mechanical feet walking with appropriate sound effects would have made him ominous enough to 'fifties audiences. The destructive effects of his heat ray, on the other hand, were well done by any standard, and the flying saucer was one of the best of the era.Devil Girl From Mars is a fine example of the fun, stimulating science fiction movies of the generation before the genre degenerated into pointless special effects exercises and vehicles for thinly disguised New Age theology. The title itself tells what the more sober and more Christian movie makers and audiences of the 'fifities thought of the common New Age cliché that the space aliens are coming to save us. Laffan's Devil Girl oozing cold-hearted evil from every leather covered pore would have been quite the demonic menace -- if she just weren't so darned sexy! Come to think of it, no one would follow the Devil if he -- or she -- didn't make it attractive.Never mind, Devil Girl From Mars isn't all that heavy-weight. It is just plain fun!
Without a doubt "Devil Girl from Mars" is the single worst science fiction movie I have ever seen. It isn't the low budget or small cast. "The Man from Earth" was made with a smaller cast, fewer sets and with no special effects, yet I'd rank it as sublime.This movie lacked something critical, and that was a decent script. It didn't have even a decent premise. It was just a chop suey of bad movie clichés with dialogue that made you cringe.It had no compensating virtues. The acting was poor, like the cast had been held hostage. The special effects were ludicrous, even for that time period. The robot was a joke. It looked like a guy wearing a cardboard box suit, which it probably was. The space ship was quite passable, but when that's the only virtue for the movie it has little indeed. The costume for the title character was absolutely cliché, black evil and short tights.
I'd been wanting to see this classick Brit piece of sci-fi for many decades, and must say that it was almost worth the wait. This flick is almost like a poor man's "Day the Earth Stood Still," except that instead of Michael Rennie, we get a British lassy playing some kind of Martian dominatrix, and instead of the wonderful Gort, we get one of the most lumbering and ridiculous-looking robots in film history. Still, the acting is fair, especially the always wonderful Hazel Court, and the effects pretty cool...especially the incredible explosion at the film's end. All in all, not the worst time killer that one could imagine, and a must for all fans of British sci-fi and/or Martian dominatrix movies.