Devil Girl from Mars (1954)

Director:

David MacDonald

Writers:

James Eastwood (writer)
John C. Mather (play)

Release Date:

27 April 1955 (USA)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Invasion from Outer Space!...Sights too weird to imagine! Destruction too monstrous to escape!

Plot:

An uptight, leather-clad female alien, armed with a raygun and accompanied by a menacing robot, comes...

Plot Keywords:

UFO | Helpless Captives | Inn | Beautiful Woman | Extraterrestrial

Cast

Hugh McDermott	...	Michael Carter
Hazel Court	...	Ellen Prestwick
Peter Reynolds	...	Robert Justin, alias Albert Simpson
Adrienne Corri	...	Doris
Joseph Tomelty	...	Prof. Arnold Hennessey
Sophie Stewart	...	Mrs. Jamieson
John Laurie	...	Mr. Jamieson
Patricia Laffan	...	Nyah

Runtime:

USA:77 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate number not listed) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK

Company:

Danziger Productions Ltd.

Trivia:

This film is listed among The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book THE OFFICIAL RAZZIE® MOVIE GUIDE.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When the "indestructable" robot Chanti leaves the spaceship, a close-up of his feet reveals paint scraping off where the joints of the suit and the boots meet.

Quotes:

Michael Carter: Mrs. Jamieson, may I introduce your latest guest. Miss Nyah. She comes from Mars.
Mrs. Jamieson: Oh, well, that'll mean another bed.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Midnight Movie Massacre (1988)

British take on early sci-fi

At first you may think this is another fifties low budget sci-fi saga, the type Hollywood churned out by the truckloads(and still do.) The big difference here is the fact that its actually a brit production and that makes it rather rare. The English take their movie making seriously(sometimes to seriously) so the production values, writing, lighting, etc. are a notch above that of the typical Hollywood production.

The wildest thing about the movie is the alien babe who is pretty darn sexy in that freaky outfit she wears. The biggest negative is probably the robot who must have been made out of an old refrigerator. However, to the robots credit he has a cool disintegration ray. First his head lights up , a beam of light shoots out and anything it hits glows then disappears leaving only a bit of smoke. This is by far the best special effect and this technique showed up later on many American sci-fi shows including THE INVADERS and STAR TREK. As i recall from my childhood, the aliens glowing and disappearing after being killed was the coolest thing about THE INVADERS. The robot appears to be really huge also and that alone might have scared the bejesus out of its audience back in the day.

I can imagine that back in the fifties most people who put down their change to see THE DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS left feeling they got their money's worth and then some. Its still pretty entertaining. Better than most from that era no doubt!!!