Devil Girl from Mars (1954)

Devil Girl from Mars’ statuesque Patricia Laffan proudly sports Ronald Cobb’s amazing costume for the Martian woman Nyah, comprising black vinyl, leather, form-fitting dark stockings, stylish boots, a shiny black skullcap, a flowing cape, and George Partleton’s startling contrasting makeup with dark lipstick. Altogether, she is the very picture of patronizing contempt (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

I love this movie. If I had to choose a dozen movies to take to a desert island for the rest of my life, this would be one of them. Many will find this a disturbing admission. “How,” some people would wonder, “could a sane man, a competent author, say such a thing about this movie ... in public even?”

Those who are familiar with this film will remember that the story seems to revolve around the kidnapping of earthmen to take to Mars for breeding purposes—which nearly all the summaries of the film focus on right from the outset. This point seems totally puerile, the nadir of low-budget B movie, and utterly inexcusable in the minds of most critics.

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The spaceship from Mars.

Let me list some other reasons why some people loathe this movie:
• It is stage bound because it was adapted from a play, and nobody took the time to resolve that problem.

• The Devil Girl’s robot looks like a refrigerator, and her own costume looks like it might be a remnant from an S&M porn movie.

• The special effects are pure B-movie bologna.

• The characters are all stereotypes who do nothing but talk and talk and talk.

• The devil girl’s speeches are monotonous drivel delivered in a wearisome monotone.

• All the acting is second rate at best.

Needless to say, I disagree with all these arguments. In fact, I whole-heartedly believe they utterly miss the point.

This is a wonderful 2-minute condensation of Devil Girl from Mars found on YouTube. 
It shows all the saucer effects and all of Nyah's attitude.

First, for all practical purposes, that "collecting men" so-called plot is irrelevant. Little time and few sentences are spent on the business of collecting men. It is merely an excuse for the Devil Girl to act haughty and patronizing. This movie is important for its design—the way it looks. It must be watched with an open and inventive mind to be appreciated. Far be it from me to quote the blurb on the back of a DVD package, yet this one happens to be 100 percent accurate: “A beautifully crafted production, unique special effects, inspired production design....”

For instance, the shots of the exterior of the inn (probably a model) are evocative of the time and place and weather, all of which play important roles in the film. The interior of the inn is totally believable. The alien flying saucer, while in flight spinning impressively and also on the ground, is one of the best ever conceived for a science fiction film. Only Ray Harryhausen’s fleets of saucers for Earth vs. the Flying Saucers are better. (I’ve heard it said that Klaatu’s ship in The Day the Earth Stood Still is superior to Earth vs.; sure, on the ground it’s nice enough, but in the air it is only a blob of light.) Devil Girl’s exterior set on the moor in the yard in the neighborhood of the landed spaceship is breath-taking (combining a soundstage set and backdrop of a barren waste with a few twisted trees, a practical ramp, and a stunning matte painting of the bulk of the saucer), much as was so successfully accomplished in an equivalent scene in Forbidden Planet.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.
 On the left is a shot from Forbidden Planet. The foreground, the people, and the lower part of the spaceship (including the bottom half of the wide saucer) are real enough, but the entirety of the top half of the saucer and the night sky with two moons is a matte painting, On the right is a shot from Devil Girl from Mars which shows two people entering a spaceship by walking up a ramp; the ramp is real, as is the doorframe, but all the rest of the saucer is likewise a matte painting including the exterior walls surrounding the doorframe, the saucer element itself, and the down lights. (The Devil Girl saucer image courtesy Wade Williams Distribution.)

Then there is the Devil Girl herself!
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The screen has never seen such a being before or since. Bill Warren in his Keep Watching the Skies! ventures his opinion of her statuesque appearance, “Ronald Cobb’s costume for Nyah was supposed to seem futuristic and classy, but all the black vinyl, and leather, the stockinged legs, the stylish boots, the black skullcap, the dark lipstick and the flowing cape put her firmly in S&M territory.” As you’d expect, I disagree with Warren’s final evaluation, but the rest is true enough. To my mind, she looks very cool, futuristic, scary, and alien.

Then, of course, there’s her behavior. At all times she struts and marches and stands at attention with her head held high and stiff. She is never any less than haughty, firm, contemptuous, brash, sneering, condescending, arrogant, smirking, and patronizing. Her tone is entirely dismissive of these mere earthlings.

Her entrances are the stuff of legend. Many times she enters the barroom through the French doors leading to the yard and the saucer, and every time it is majestic, dramatic, and rousing. Part of this effect is due to camera angles that are mostly looking up at her. Part is due to Patricia Laffan’s strong performance.

Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.
 Two of Nyah's majestic entrances (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

Warren also says, quite correctly, that she “plays everything with a cocked, superior eyebrow, impatient with these dreary Earth people.”

All that said, the Devil Girl is stunningly picturesque. Barry Atkinson, in Atomic Age Cinema, describes her as “lofty” and “mouth-watering,” terms with which I cannot help but happily agree. Above, I mentioned the wondrous design of the picture. Clearly Laffan’s character and costume are at the very heart of that design. Laffan wearing Ronald Cobb’s almost unprecedentedly exotic costume and George Partleton’s fully appropriate contrasting makeup is a wonder to behold.

The fact that following a couple of these eye-opening entrances Nyah announces that she needs men to take to Mars seems hardly relevant and not worthy of all the critical bother that focuses on those silly statements (which inevitably end with the picture being dismissed out of hand). Otherwise the film is practically perfect. Frankly, all this seems perfectly obvious to me, and I am dumbfounded that certain critics (actually most of them) are so short-sighted that they spend so much energy deploring the entire movie because they object to a few lines of dialogue or because they simply don’t recognize the craft and value implicit in this picture.

As to the other characters, they are all quite fine and well-rendered except Hugh McDermott’s Michael Carter, who often seems hysterical. Plus I very much enjoy the amount of time spent on the barroom set, as I find it and its roaring fire in the fireplace calm and comforting (the antithesis of today’s omnipresent nonstop chain-reaction car crashes).

Devil Girl’s exterior set of the moor in the neighborhood of the landed spaceship is breath-taking (combining a soundstage set and backdrop painting, which together "sell" the feel of the moor as dark and unsettling. This photo clearly shows the care with which the yard outside the French doors was designed; plus Nyah's robot Chani is more large and menacing than not (courtesy of Wade Williams Distribution).

Though it is clearly a biting backhanded compliment, the reviewer for the British Monthly Film Bulletin (1954) wrote that the “settings, dialogue, characterization, and special effects are of a low order, but even their modest unreality has its charm. There is really no fault in this film that one would like to see eliminated. Everything, in its way, is quite perfect.” That reviewer couldn’t be more wrong about “settings ... characterization and special effects,” but the last half of his statement is true enough. As I said, the joy in this film is its production design, effects, and Patricia Laffan’s performance.

There are only two things about this movie that disappointed me: the weak main title sequence that features an airliner exploding in midair, a scene that has nothing to do with the film, and also the extended barroom-type brawl towards the end that goes on unnecessarily long.

One final point. Do you remember the trick that screenwriter Edmund H. North pulled on us all in The Day the Earth Stood Still wherein he introduced a spaceman named Carpenter, who performed apparent miracles, who was betrayed by a member of his inner circle, and who then rose from the dead? (A prank North readily shares with genre film authority Tom Weaver for It Came from Weaver Five: “It was my private little joke. I never discussed this angle with [producer] Blaustein or [director] Wise because I didn’t want it expressed. I had originally hoped that the Christ comparison would be subliminal.”) I think the same sort of thing is happening in Devil Girl from Mars, but Nyah here is an unexpected and unforeseen version of Mary. Nyah is one pissed off Mary, the polar opposite of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Nearly every image of Mary shows her wearing a scarf covering her head, but Nyah wears a shiny black skullcap. 
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Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

  (Nyah image courtesy Wade Williams Distribution. The Marian vision image is from The Song of Bernadette [20th Century Fox].)

Where Mary endlessly expounds about faith, love and compassion, Nyah is more interested in disintegrating poor specimens, kidnapping, and the destruction of the innocent. Where Mary is often surrounded by angels, Nyah has her enormous robot protector Chani. If wings are important to your image of angels (or of fallen angels), Nyah’s rippling cape calls to mind the giant wings wrapping the devil of Bald Mountain at the end of Disney’s Fantasia. Mary is soft and modest. Nyah is hard and flamboyant. As another point of interest, let’s not forget her flying saucer is made of organic metal that miraculously heals itself. I am not saying that the writers, producers, or director consciously or even unconsciously created this anti–Mary, but it is nonetheless interesting to me that such an interpretation is so easily possible. Also, while yes, I have specified strongly that the “snatching men for breeding purposes” plot element is irrelevant and ought to be ignored; still, if one were to give any credence to that notion, then Nyah, rather unvirgin-like, was collecting men to inseminate her and all her sisters on Mars.

Short summary: It is a cold wintry night, and in the large barroom of an isolated inn, the Bonnie Charlie, on the Scottish moors, a radio announcer explains that a meteor has fallen nearby. This is heard by a small boy, Tommy, and Doris, an employee of the inn. Tommy asks, “What’s a meteor?” and Doris responds, “I don’t know, Tommy.” We also hear that a world-famous scientist is on his way to examine the phenomenon. The elderly proprietress of the inn, Mrs. Jamieson, enters and curtly dismisses any idea that a meteor might be either interesting or important and tells Doris to get to work and Tommy, Mrs. Jameieson’s nephew, to get to bed. The professor, along with a reporter, Michael Carter, drive up to the inn helplessly lost and bitterly cold. Even though the inn is closed for the winter, they ask for and are granted accommodations. A white hot flying saucer, making a great deal of noise, lands in the inn’s backyard. They all busy themselves trying to understand what is happening while the saucer cools down. Then with a dramatic and stirring entrance, Nyah, an aloof picturesque woman from Mars in a minuscule black shiny skirt and a flowing cape, suddenly appears at the open French doors of the inn, startling everyone. She announces that her spaceship, which was bound to London, had a mishap and she needed to land here so the ship can repair itself. She also explains that her mission is to take back to Mars healthy earthmen to help propagate the Martian species, because the inhabitants of Mars are only women. She then busies herself by strutting around for a while, placing an invisible dome around the property, making threats, showing off her robot and its destructive rays. Eventually, the mere earthlings succeed in destroying Nyah and her spaceship.

The standard half-sheet poster (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution)

Devil Girl from Mars (1954)

UK. Danziger Productions, Spartan Productions, Gigi Productions. BW. 1.66:1. 76m.

CREDITS: Director David MacDonald. Producers Edward J. Danziger, Harry Lee Danziger. Script James Eastwood. Based on a Play by James Eastwood and John C. Mather. Score Edwin Astley. Director of Photography Jack Cox. Special Effects Jack Whitehead. Special Visual Effects Bob Cuff. Editor Brough Taylor. Sound Editor Gerald Anderson. Art Director Norman Arnold. Production Manager Jack Martin. Miss Laffan’s Costume Designer Ronald Cobb. Sound Special Effects Bert Ross. Makeup George Partleton.

CAST: Nyah Patricia Laffan. Michael Carter Hugh McDermott. Ellen Prestwick Hazel Court. Robert Justin/Albert Simpson Peter Reynolds. Doris Adrienne Corri. Professor Hennessey Joseph Tomelty. Mr. Jamieson John Laurie. Mrs. Jamieson Sophie Stewart. Tommy Anthony Richmond. David James Edmond.

Post Script Re: Desert Island

In the first paragraph above, I said that Devil Girl from Mars would be among the dozen films I'd take to a desert island for the rest of my life. Here are my two lists. The first is drawn from all movies; the second is from science-fiction movies only.

From all movies:

Muppet Christmas Carol

Groundhog Day

Lifeforce

Final Countdown

Zulu

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

War of the Worlds (1953)

Lawrence of Arabia

Spartacus

Quatermass and the Pit

Devil Girl from Mars

My Fair Lady

From science-fiction movies only:

X the Unknown

Dune

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Lifeforce

Final Countdown

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

War of the Worlds (1953)

Quatermass and the Pit

Devil Girl from Mars

Predator

The Crawling Eye

The Terminator

These are all chosen because I NEVER tire of watching them!

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