Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. In today's episode, we're going to revisit an episode that originally published nine nine twenty two. This is Devil Girl from Mars. Let's dive right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be taking a look at a nineteen fifty four science fiction movie called Devil Girl from Mars, a movie about people who are obsessed with liquor, who in fact are in many cases even named after liquors, and who are gather in a rural inn in Scotland to be attacked by an evil Martian boss lady who
wants to kidnap and dominate scdish men. Yes, that's right, Fans of Weird House Cinema may feel an inkling of a memory that this is, in fact the second movie we've done with this exact plot, the plot of women from another planet within our Solar system are running out of men and must come to Earth to steal our precious earth hunks. The other one was the lighthearted Mexican romantic musical horror comedy Ship of Monsters from nineteen sixty and that one was such a delight. I still remember
that so fondly. I think Devil Girl from Mars is also a delight, but in a very different way. Ship of Monsters is clever, spunky, charming, intentionally funny and made with this infectious sense of whimsy. Devil Girl from Mars is the exact opposite. It is made hilarious by virtue of its absurd self seriousness.
Yeah, yeah, this is not a lighthearted musical romp that it's It's still a lot of fun and has some great design work in it, because that was one of the things we loved about about about the Ship of Monsters has some great monster designs, some great costumes, and we have some of that going on in Devil Girl from Mars as well.
But also there is no character in Devil Girl from Mars like Lolo Gunzalez and Ship of Monsters, you know, with the twinkle in his eye and the funny songs and all that. No, this is a movie mostly about men who are very serious about staying on Earth.
Yeah, and none of the male performers are actually that interesting, either in their in their careers or in their performances here. At least I didn't find them so. But the female performers are pretty great.
The titular devil girl from Mars, I think is clearly the star of the show. My initial reaction to this when I started watching it. I got about twenty minutes in and I was like, I don't know if this is all that great. Maybe this movie is really going to be kind of a drag. But then and the moment the Martian shows up, the movie kicks into high gear immediately.
Yeah, I agree that you warned me about the first twenty minutes, and the first twenty minutes of this film are indeed quite slow and are not all that fantastic. So so definitely know that going into the film. But we mentioned Scottish as much as anything is purely a Scottish film. I guess this is kind of our first Scottish film on Weird House Cinema.
Right, I can't think of another one. And it's also it's not incidentally Scottish. It's not just like made by Scott's. This is very much set in Scotland.
Right right, I think you can you can maybe get into the production credit and say like, well, it's more basically a British production basically in introduction, but yeah, a lot of Scottish talent involved in this picture and set in Scotland, right.
This film also has a very interesting indirect role in the history of science fiction literature because it was apparently an early point of inspiration, a sort of anti inspiration, for the great science fiction author Octavia Butler. I found a transcript of a talk she delivered at MIT in nineteen ninety eight about the role of media like movies and TV in the history of sci fi. And she goes over a bunch of different topics in the speech, but one of the first things she does is talk
about seeing this movie when she was a kid. So I want to read her quote from the speech. She says, it's impossible to begin to talk about myself and the media without going back to how I wound up writing science fiction, and that is by watching a terrible movie. The movie was called Devil Girl from Mars, and I saw it when I was about twelve years old, and
it changed my life. It was one of those old nineteen fifties movies in which the beautiful Martian woman arrives on Earth to announce that all of the Martian men have died off, and there were a bunch of man hungry women up there, and the earth men don't want want to go. And as I was watching this film, I had a series of revelations. The first was that geez, I can write a better story than that, And then I thought, gee, anybody can write a better story than that.
And my third thought was the clincher, somebody got paid for writing that awful story. So I was often writing, and a year later I was busy submitting terrible pieces of fiction to innocent magazines. I found this story so beautiful.
Yeah, that's fun. I wasn't aware of this connection. And indeed, this is essentially, I think, one of the things that I've always enjoyed about films of this nature. Not that I mean there have been times where I've been inspired to write something based on a less than stellar plot in a film or something, but more often than not, it's just like you're watching a film. There are spaces in it, spaces that yes, it's not only like could
this be improved? But what if this was improved? So there's this like there's this film, there's this skeleton within the film, and then you sort of apply the meat to that skeleton with your own imagination, either in a in a product based creative endeavor, or just in the mindscape of enjoying the film totally.
I have long been of the opinion that if you're trying to study a creative art you can learn just as much or even more by studying bad examples of that art form as you can from studying good examples, Like when you see the Bad Ones, it gives you a kind of analytical confidence you can understand how and when things aren't working.
Yeah, now there's a lot that does work in this film, though at least from a from a design standpoint. Uh As we'll get into there's a there's there's there's at least one amazing costume, there's a there's some cool sets, there's a there's a cool robot, and and there are some times where there's a lot of technobabbles we'll discuss. But occasionally, as our a visitors talking about conditions back home and laying down a little world building, some of it does it, you know, kind of gets you gets
or at least got my mind rolling. It's like I wonder what this this gender war was, like? How did all the Martian men die?
You know?
And you know that they're not they're not filling on all the details for you, but they're giving you, like a few visuals, some some sights and sounds, some ideas, and then your brain kind of sketches in the rest of it. And that's that's something I always enjoy about a film like this totally.
I was actually I was tempted to start asking genuinely interested questions about the War of the Sexes that took place on Mars. I was like, well, where they're like, were there like people on Mars who fell in love and they were like traders to their to their side in the War of the Sexes? I don't know.
Yeah, it raises a lot of questions. You probably shouldn't think too literally about it. All. I know that this isn't the only work of fiction to contemplate such a thing, so I guess, you know, metaphorically at least it it's it's useful in in fiction. You know.
This plot differs somewhat from the premise of Ship of Monsters and Ship of Monsters the Aliens or one of the Aliens. It comes from Venus, and the problem is that on Venus, the men all destroyed each other with atomic wars. So the men they got nuclear weapons and they killed all the other men. So Venus has no men left, so it was an intra sex dispute. The men killed each other on Venus. In this movie, it is that the women of Mars went to war with
the men of Mars and killed them. I don't know if that's significant anyway.
Maybe not. Well, I guess she is supposed to have sort of a black widow kind of vibe to her.
In fact, there is. It's part rather clumsily where one of the child the child characters what's his name, Tommy, Tommy, Yes, Tommy's like, you were like that spider and that my dad sees in the barn or something like that, you know, basically saying, oh, you're like a black widow spider, and it's kind of like, yeah, yes, that's part of what they're going for with the black costume, and you know this, and it's kind of a trope and a stereotype of like a feminine power in films like this.
Yeah, I think the character is written in a way that is supposed to strike terror in the hearts of a nineteen fifties male in the way that she is at least I think the way she's supposed to be received is as like very beautiful but also very like cold and rational and calculatingly evil.
Yeah, and it's definitely portrayed in a way that is I would say, sexually ahead of her time. Like I was reading about this film in Michael Weldon's Psychotronic books that summarizes this, He writes, quote, the alien herself is a real vision in boots, black tights, padded shoulders cape and a shiny black skull cap. The stuffy British males actually want to stay in England, which.
Is great, though not in England, they are in Scotland. I guess a couple of of them are from England and stuck in Scotland and others are from Scotland. But whatever the case, Yeah, they for some reason do not want to return to Mars with her and become part of like a captive earthling breeding program, right.
But then, I mean I was also thinking this whole time. I was like, like, if they were excited to go, they would get to Mars and they'd find out that their participation in the breeding program involves being like hooked up in a tank somewhere and having their brain removed or something, So which would I think would have been fitting? That would have been a nice like I don't know if that would be a maybe be a nineties outer limits ending.
Oh, that would be a good twist if like the character who goes as very like over eager young man. But I was thinking the other twist given that like they didn't the Martians didn't realize Earth was going to have a thick atmosphere, so when they got here, you know, they had trouble landing. It makes me think, well, what if they get the Earthlings back to Mars and they don't realize that Earthlings need to breathe oxygen, so as soon as they get there, it's just suffo.
We got to go back for more. Now.
I think we've already done the elevator pitch, so maybe we can skip that. But we've got to hear some trailer audio.
All right, let's do it.
We saw this with our own eyes, and object the like of which we had never seen before, A frightening strain shape descending from out of space with relentless putts.
Where did it come from? And what did it want of us?
Well, we've never seen before. How what do you mean?
Hello, It's like something from out of planet Tom.
Do not try to follow me. You cannot get help.
Around this pass.
I've drawn in the visible wall to which no one may pass. Here is a news reporter with a world shattering storm, a girl trying to escape from her pups, the scientist trapped in spite of his knowledge. And here also is the Bombade Secret, a murderer with a life already of Harford, and introducing the devil girl from Mars.
Back on fire?
You for.
Shoot on shoot?
All right? All right, sounds pretty good.
Let's see. So there are a bunch of places you can watch this one. I think I just streamed it on Amazon.
Yeah, I rented it through through Prime. You can stream or buy it wherever you get your digital movies. It also looks like you can stream it via Film Movement, Flix, Fling, some other places. And I should also point out that there have been some basic physical releases as well, but also Bridget and Mary Joe covered it on riff tracks, So I haven't actually experienced their riff of the film, but I've very much enjoyed Bridget and Mary Joe's riffing in the past, so I bet they do a good
job with this one. There's a lot of stuff to have fun with here.
Yeah, I've got to watch that now.
All right. Well, let's get into the various humans, mostly Scottish humans, involved in the creation of this picture, all right. Starting at the top, we have director David MacDonald born nineteen oh four and died in nineteen eighty three, Scottish born director who at one point worked under Cecil B. De Mill in the US as a production assistant. This would have been like the late nineteen twenties and I guess early thirties, basically an apprenticeship. Before returning back to
the UK. He worked with the Crown Film Unit during World War Two to produce morale boosting pictures. And I've seen this film referred to as a career low point. Certainly, he seems to have maybe been more successful during his lifetime with various other film and TV projects, most of which I'm not familiar with. I don't think he did much in the way of sci fi or horror outside
of this film. For instance, his most noteworthy film seemed to have been nineteen forty seven's The Brothers nineteen forty eight Christopher Columbus and the nineteen fifty seven Swashbuckler The Moonraker.
The Moonraker.
Yeah, no connection, or at least I don't know. Maybe Moonraker has something to do with the plot of this fifty seven Swashbuckler. I'm not sure.
So when I was watching the credits for this movie, one of the weirdest things I noticed was the credit indicating that this is somehow based on a play for the stage.
Yeah, this was weird. It was similar to something we encountered with Doctor X, right, Yeah, but in this one. Yeah, you have the credit that reads like the credit for a play based on the play by John C. Mather and James Eastwood. And then James east Wood also has a screenplay credit, which because at first, when I was looking at just how it was listed on IMDb, I was like, well, maybe they say play, but they mean screenplay. No, it seems more more clear that this was a play.
And then it was adapted into a screenplay. Okay, yeah, I don't know. This is Mather's only film credit, while Eastwood also worked on the screenplay for such films as nineteen fifty five's The Case of the Red Monkey, and nineteen fifty six is Beyond Mombasa, which has Christopher Lee in it of a young Christopher Lee, but it starred seemingly mostly just a shirtless Cornell Wild and then also Donna Reed.
Oh but let's not bury the lead. If there is one reason to watch this movie, it is our villain played by Patricia Lafon.
That's right, she plays Naya. This is our martian visitor. E. Lafon lived nineteen nineteen through twenty fourteen. And yeah, this is this is a really fun role of our vamping space lord here. And it's fitting because herr biggest film role outside of this, and I guess, probably being fair, probably her biggest screen role period was playing Empress Pompeia in MGMs Sword and Sandal blockbuster Quovadis from nineteen fifty one.
That was a film that had Robert Taylor Peter Euston Off in it, and also an uncredited role as a chariot driver. We have Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee is just in the background, creeping around, uncredited with a goatee I learned, sometimes credited in at number of pictures from this era.
This movie, I don't know if it's primarily about Nero, but it's Nero is a major character in an Emperor Nero and I think she plays a Queen of Rome. Is that right?
Oh, yes, she's queenly. Yeah, you can look up footage and stills from it. She's in that. She's decked out in gold and this elaborate hairdoo. But she has that look on her face. She's got that smirk and those eyes. And I do have to say, like, if you look up images from Devil Girl from Mars, there are probably any of her performances. Yes, stunning outfit, stunning screen presence, but you're missing it. You're missing out on all the nuances if you don't see her alive in the scene.
Because her her sneer has a life on its own. She's using her her eyebrows in very expressive ways. It's a it's a wonderful performance.
Yeah, I mean, in some ways you would say it's a it's a very emotionally flat performance, like she's supposed to play like a very like unfeeling, like a cold, imperious, unfeeling creature. But she is very expressive in like the way she raises her eyebrows at the pathetic attempts at heroism by earth men.
Yeah, it's kind of like sometimes you hear a criticism of a villain role and say, well, this is a real mustache twirling villain role, meaning that, yes, it's leaning into a whole bunch of stereotypes and and tropes regarding you know, the particular classic cinematic villain.
And this over the top evil. Yeah.
Yeah, and this is very much similar case. But the thing is when a mustash is twirl just right on screen, it's satisfying. So this is definitely a performance that satisfies.
Yes, this is a pencil thin, eyebrow twirling role.
Yes. So. Lafon also appeared in twenty three Paces to Baker Street in fifty six that had Van Johnson and Estelle Winwood in it. She was an actor of stage and screen, and she also seems to have had some connections to the London, Paris, New York fashion world.
I love her every time. It's like, you know, it's like Pooci. It's like every time Nya was not on screen, character should be asking where is Naya? When is she coming back?
I felt the same way. Yeah, all right, I'm going to mention some of these male performers, though again they're the least interesting part about the film. For the most part, you have Hugh McDermott playing Michael, a journalist. This actor lived nineteen oh six through nineteen seventy two, Scottish actor, also known for Pimpernel's Smith from forty one in The Flying Swan from nineteen sixty five. Not familiar with either of those pictures.
He plays a loudmouth journalist who I think is supposed to be likable, but he is not. He comes off as an absolutely insufferable jerk.
Yeah, but hey, now we have another of the female players in this film, and it's a really good one. We have Hazel Court playing Ellen, a fashion model.
You know, I haven't introduced this concept yet, but the beginning of this movie is sort of like the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, where it's just a gathering of all of these randos into an inn somewhere and finding out all about like why is this person here? Oh, it's a surprise that they showed up. And she is also like sort of an odd puzzle piece amongst all the others here. She's like a fancy London fashion model who's all glitz and glam. She drinks tomato juice notably,
and people repeatedly point this out throughout the movie. In fact, I think they even refer to her sometimes as Tomato juice Girl, and I think she's meant to be taken in the situation of the film as sort of a gem amongst the rough pebbles.
Yeah.
Yeah, So it's fun. It's a fun performance. I feel like she breathes a lot of life and character into this role, probably more than was necessary, and also in a way that lets it gives you a hint of what's to come. Because a British actor here, but also essentially a horror queen of the late fifties early sixties, she'd go on to become a star of Hammer horror films, and she also worked with the likes of Roger Korman.
Her credits include The Curse of Frankenstein from nineteen fifty seven, The Mask of the Red Death from sixty four, The Man Who Could Cheat Death in nineteen fifty nine, Doctor Blood's Coffin in sixty one, and also nineteen sixty three Is the Raven. On TV, she appeared on both the twilight Zone and Thriller, and I suspect we'll discuss her once again in an upcoming Halloween selection for Weird House Cinema. The final film was nineteen eighty one's The Final Conflict,
in which she had basically a cameo. But this was the OMEN picture that had Sam Neil playing a grown up Damien.
Oh okay, it's called The Final Conflict, but it's the Omen three, right, It's like the OMEN three colon the Final Conflict.
Yeah, or sometimes I think it's just called the Final Conflict. I don't know.
You're right, Yeah, it's both. I think the demonic Sam Neil becomes President of the United States.
I think something like that. I don't think I ever saw that one. I think I always saw the first one. Yeah, all right, But she's not the only exciting female presence in the picture. We also have Adrian Corey, who plays Doris, a bar maid. So Corey lived nineteen thirty one through twenty sixteen, Scottish born actor known for her roles, probably best known for roles in Doctor Schivago and A Clockwork Orange, along with such films as nineteen sixty five's A Study
in Terror. This is a film that had John Neville as Sherlock Holmes taking on Jack the Ripper. And then she's also in a film that I know you've seen, but I haven't. I remember you talking about this one nineteen seventy four is Mad House, starring Vincent Price and Peter Cushion.
Looking this up, I don't know have.
I seen this? Maybe you haven't seen it.
Maybe if I said I've seen it, I don't remember seeing it now.
Okay, well maybe we just will see it in the future at some point. But Corey was also in the fun Hammer Space Romp Moon zero two from nineteen sixty nine, in a film from seventy two called Vampire Circus that I don't know much about, but with a title like Vampire Circus, you know that there's got to be something interesting in there.
I would say that both Hazel Court and Adrian Corey do more with the roles they have in this movie than is actually there on the page.
Right, Yeah, they both like clearly, these are two actors who would go on to have much bigger roles and bigger pictures, and you can see why.
Oh you know. I would also actually say that about mainly because this is just a really underwritten movie for the just you know, delicious weirdness of all the scenes where Nya is explaining her home planet, their and their plans and stuff. But other than that, it's it's the characters are kind of underwritten. But the guy who plays the Professor also does a little bit more with the role than you might have expected.
Yeah, he's played by and acted by the name of I think I'm saying his last name Ryd could be wrong. Joseph Tomalty.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Tomalty. He lived nineteen ten through nineteen ninety five, Northern Irish novelist, playwright and character actor, and he was in at least I don't know the extent of these roles, but he is credited as having appeared in nineteen fifty eight Tonight to Remember I Believe that's a Titanic movie, and nineteen fifty six is Moby Dick.
So he plays Professor Hennessy. Yes, that's right, and he had I think, despite the fact that the movie is all really all Nya. The line that Rachel and I kept quoting back and forth at each other is one of his lines, the part where he says, I am a scientist. I believe what my brain tells me to believe.
Oh that's not how it works. I love it.
I also believe what my brain tells me to believe. I really have no choice.
All right, let's see another I'm not including all of the because here are at least a half does another male characters?
Way too many characters in this movie.
Yeah, but there is another one by the name of David who is a handyman, and he's played by James Edmund. James Edmund was a Canadian actor, probably best known for this film, but he was also in nineteen seventy four's Black Christmas, alongside one kind of forgets that. That had a pretty good cast. Black Christmas. It had Olivia Hussey, it had Ker Delay, Margo Kidder and John Saxon. I saw it many years ago.
I remember it did not leave a good impression.
But now it's kind of a kind of a nasty film, as I recall. But there's no argument with that cast. That's a good cast. Oh yeah, all right. On the music front Edwin Astley did the music. British composer of nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety eight, worked in a lot of British action TV shows, such as The Saint.
That's probably what he's most known for. He also did music for The Hammer adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera from sixty two starring Herbert Lohm, and a nineteen fifty eight Jack the Ripper TV movie starring Boris Karloff.
Now, one name that caught my attention from the credits for the wrong reason was it said that Patricia Lafon's costume was by Ronald Cobb, and I was like, Ron Cobb like from Alien and Raiders of the Lost Ark. No, it is a different ron Cobb, but also a second excellent Ron cob This world has at least two genius ron Cobbs in it.
Yeah, this was a lot of fun to dive into because of Initially, when I did the scan of the people involved, I saw that credit too, and I saw this guy, Ronald Cobb, and I saw that he had no other film credits, so I thought, well, maybe it's just a one off, but it's worth mentioning, and because the costume is great and clearly is one of the
selling points of the whole picture. But looking into it a bit more, Yeah, this is a Ronald Cobb who lived nineteen oh seven, through nineteen seventy seven, and this guy worked primarily in theater and especially in cabaret during this time period. I ran across some of his watercolors for various costumes that he designed over the years, several of which seemed to be in the collection of the
Victoria and Albert Museum. I included a link here for you, Joe, and also include these links in the blog post I do for this at im mutamusic dot com. I didn't find anything that looked like a sketch that he had put together for Devil Girls specifically, but oh wow, there's some really wild, imaginative, dark and ahead of their time I think kind of designs that he put together for these costumes.
Right, So, these he has a lot of costume designs for, like it appears to be burlesque clubs of some kind in London in like the sixties and seventies. But they are not just your your standard sexy outfits. They are weird. Like one is kind of grim Reaper themed with like a big gallows and I don't even know what it has bats.
Yeah, yeah, there's another one that has this like a flag with a pentagram on it, Like this really wild stuff that seems that, you know, you wouldn't expect to be emerging from this time period necessarily unless you're you know, really into I guess too, you know, or less costume design of the period. There's also a headdress that has something that looks like a like a kind of like a muppet goblin on top of it. It's really really cool, kind of almost it also looks almost like a camera.
I don't know, it's weird. I can't really put it all together. But you can find all these images online and the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. There are also some images. Apparently he did some of his designs for Murray's Club and SOHO back in the day, and so if you go to the website for Murray's Club, they have some of these watercolors as well for other designs that he did. Some of these are not as weird as the ones we're describing here, but they're still
pretty interesting. Now. The costume that that Naya has on in this picture, it's not nearly as as revealing as these various cabaret designs, but still you can see you can see some of the connections to this world, you know, like That's why it is perhaps a little more alluring than what you would normally see going on with costuming in pictures from this time period.
No, the Devil Girl from Mars is dressed kind of like a cross between the astronauts in Planet of the Vampires and Batman, but with a burlesque TWI.
Yeah, now, I read that writer John mather We referenced earlier later claimed in an interview that the suit was actually constructed by John Sutcliffe, a British fashion and fetish designer and photographer who worked a lot with leather and rubber and PVC, so lots of like catsuits and gas masks. However, I couldn't find anything of anything firm about his connection to this film, and there do seem to be some misconceptions about film projects that he is sometimes said to
have been involved in. For instance, I think sometimes it's been said that he designed the cat suit that m appeal We wears in The Avengers. That doesn't seem to be the case. But he did design the cat suit that Maryanne Faithful wears in nineteen sixty eight's The Girl on a Motorcycle, and I think that inspired the cat suit worn by him appeal, So I don't know where
the truth lies and all of that. It seems like maybe it's a situation where yeah, Cobb designs it, and then they're like, well, somebody needs to build this thing, and someone's like, well, I know this guy named John, he's really into this stuff. He can make it come to life.
All right, Well, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Let's dive into the first twenty minutes of The Devil Girl from Mars.
Really, I feel like the first twenty minutes of this movie is going to be more fun to discuss than to watch. And then it's a flip side once Naya shows up.
What starts with the bank?
Yeah?
Yeah, well he starts with big Ben. I mean, how could you deny that? We see that, you know, there's like a title card a London film's international release, and then we see an airplane coasting through the clouds, then a whistling sound growing higher in pitch, and then boom, plane explodes in a stupendous fireball, and we see the title It's Devil Girl from Mars in block letters. Now, there were several things I thought were funny about the credits.
There was seeing the name Ron Cobb, even though it was a different one. There was seeing that this was based on a play. But then the other funny thing that caught my attention is the producer credit screen. The producer get their own screen, and the screen makes it look like we're supposed to already know who the producers are. It says produced by the Danzigers, and then it's got two little signatures, like in handwriting Edward J. Danziger and
what does it say Harry Lee Danziger. I have no idea who those people are, but like it it presents it as if they're like the Osman's or something.
Yeah, I looked at it into them briefly. They apparently were very active producers at the time, American born brothers who produced many British films and TV shows in the fifties and sixties. I'm not sure most of the titles they were involved with really resonated beyond their time, so I think it's it's unless you're really into pictures of this time period that you probably don't know who the dan Ziggers are. Devil Girl seems to be one of
the best remembered productions from everything they put out. For example, along with perhaps The only film that maybe is a little more famous than this one would be the nineteen fifty six sci fi movie Satellite in This Sky. This one had Kirian Moore in it, who many out there may remember as the actor who played Pony in Darby O'Gill and the Little People. He was also in Crack in the World and Invasion of the Triffets.
I haven't seen any of that.
So ah, you haven't seen Darby Ogill. No, oh, it's a fun one. When St. Patti's Day rolls back around, you should watch that one.
Oh, okay, all right, Well, after the credits wrap up, we establish the setting of the movie, which is the Bonnie Charlie. It is a rustic country inn nestled upon the Scottish more, supposed to be somewhere in Inverness Shire, which is up in the highlands. And it's said to be wintertime, so it's cold, and this is a you know, a lonely, cozy little country house and inn. And the first thing we hear is a radio going so we go inside and the radio is saying, this is the
BBC Home Service. Here is the news. It was announced by the Home Office today that the mysterious noise heard over a lonely part of Inverness Shire yesterday was caused by a supposed meteor falling to Earth. And here we meet a couple of characters. We meet Tommy the annoying Kid, and we meet Doris the barmaid. And of course she is going to be very busy in this movie because a major theme of Devil Girl from Mars is needing a drink.
And granted, the characters in this film are put in exceptional circumstances, but it's still their intake of scotch suggests a daily, regular intake of scotch that seems a bit beyond what I would be comfortable with.
Well, yeah, and the excessive intake of scotch begins long before any aliens appear on the.
Same right, Yeah, they're already hard drinking before anything supernatural or out of this world occurs.
So, you know, the radio's blabern on with exposition about an unidentified white aircraft seen floating in the sky over the Hebrides, and Tony the Kid is like, OI, what's a meteor? And Doris says, I don't know, but you know, let's say good job to the media for not landing on us. And then here comes Missus Jamison, who is Tommy's aunt, and she is the proprietor of the inn,
and she kept reminding me of Maggie Smith. But her main characteristics are being suspicious of strangers, which is a very good quality for an innkeeper, and scolding her husband for having his seventeenth dram of Scotch. I can't remember if I've already flagged this or not. Maybe I have, but I just want to emphasize again. The owners of the inn are named Jamison, and the husband is apparently named Jamie Jamison.
Wow, that'd be like if you had a character named Jack Jack Danielson.
Jack Jack Danielson, or I think the professor's character name is Henny Hennessy. So anyway, Tommy the kid, he's sent to bed and Doris and Missus Jamison discussed the medior. Doris thinks it mighty romantic that it came all the way from outer space to land in their sleepy neck of the woods, and Missus Jamison is not impressed. She's just like, oh, a bit of rock from the sky. But after Missus Jamison leaves, Doris, the barmaid surreptitiously turns the radio back on. It's like she has a secret
science news habit. And the radio says, Professor, Oh, okay, it's not Henny Hennessy, it's Professor Arnold Hennessee. The radio says, the well known astrophysicist has traveled north today to investigate the mysterious object, and we'll give a detailed report to the Home Office. So we've got the Jamisons, so we got the Hennessy's, and we know that their paths are going to collide. And you cut from here to two
guys in a car in the dark. One is Professor Hennessy himself, and the other is a fast talking, wise cracking journalist named Michael Carter played by Hugh McDermott. Michael Carter is such an insufferable lout. I guess they've been driving around all day to find the mediaite. But now they are lost in Scotland, in the land of perpetual darkness, and they are unable to figure out the map that
they're consulting. And then there's some really clunky expository dialogue where Carter says something like, you mean to tell me you spend your whole career plotting stars millions of miles apart, and yet you can't read a road map of Scotland. I really think they should have inserted a prize in there, like he should have said, you mean to tell me you won the Nobel Prize for plotting stars millions of miles apart. But Professor Hennessy reveals that he believes the
whole investigation is a waste of time. Anyway, He says he doesn't believe it will turn out to be a meteor. He thinks it will be more probably turn out to be the engine cowling of an airplane.
Well, let's hope he's wrong, because that sounds like that. That would be terrible for this film.
That would be boring. Yes, we also get more exposition via the radio. The radio announcer says Robert Justin, who earlier today escaped from Sterling Prison, is still at large. His description is as follows, height five feet ten inches, fair hair. And then what do you know? Next thing we see as a guy, presumably the escaped prisoner, darting around between hiding places in the dark beside the road as the professor and the journalists passing their.
Car, and he's so unremarkable looking.
Yeah, well when we first see him, he's got kind of a wild look in his eye. But he's also he's kind of blandly handsome, so you could probably tell he's going to turn out to be the hero.
Yeah, he doesn't look he doesn't look menacing. So that's the that's the key, that's what that's the tail here.
Do you think it's possible all these characters will make their way over to the Bonnie Charlie the end? Anyway, next thing is we see Doris the barmaid, and then mister and Missus Jamison doing some chores around the house while mister Jamison is trying to sneak off into the other room and she's like. Miss Jamison is like, where are you going? And he says, oh, I'm just going into the lounge and she says into the lounge bar you mean, well, you'll stay here if you're thirsty. There's
plenty of water in the tap. So this is the ongoing dynamic between mister and Missus Jamison. He is always getting caught in an attempt to sneak away for draft of Scotch and Missus Jamison forbids it. Though I will say starting about halfway through the movie, he just starts getting away with consuming scotch and she just sort of like laughs about it, like, oh, there he goes again.
He sees the opportunity. It's like alien visitation. This is my chance to just drink scotch NonStop without being fussed at.
But Doris the barmaid instead goes off to the lounge where she hears a strange rapping at the door, and she opens it up, and what do you know, it's that escaped prisoner we saw earlier. And he comes in and she says Robert, and he says, no, it's not Robert anymore. It's Albert, Albert Simpson. Okay, so he was Robert justin but now he's going by Albert Simpson. And confusingly, this is how everyone will refer to him for the rest of the movie, even though they first introduced him
by a different name. Okay, so what happened, Well, we find out quote Albert Simpson escaped from prison and Doris and Albert already have a relationship. In fact, they were in love, and while he was in prison, she promised to wait for him to get out, and she took the job in Invernesshire to be close, I guess to Sterling Prison where he was being held. But he escaped
and here he is. Why was he in prison? We find out it is for murdering his wife, but he maintains that it was not murder, it was an accident. This is never really resolved. He just says it was an accident, and that's as much as we ever find out about it.
That red flag just remains hanging there the whole time, flying in the breeze.
I think we're meant to understand that he's telling the truth and he didn't really murder her. I don't know.
Yeah, I feel like the film should have put in a little more leg work on that one.
Yeah, at least explained, like it doesn't go into how it was an accident or like why it was he was falsely accused. Yeah, maybe that would sell it a little better. I don't know, but anyway, Okay, so he's convicted of murdering his wife. He escapes from prison. He finds his old girlfriend at the end and he's like, hide me. But in the middle of them talking about how she needs to hide him, O, here comes missus Jamison. You know, Maggie Smith comes in basically, and and they've
got to come up with a ruse really fast. So Doris is like, oh, this is a hiker. His name's Albert Simpson. He was out hiking, you know, in Scotland, and he dropped his wallet in a stream while he was trying to look at a fish. They say, and now he is lost and he needs to stay at the end and he will work for his keep. And Missus Jamison accepts this, but she's very suspicious of him. She says, I'm counting the spoons. Oh and you know what does Doris do? First thing? She's like, would you
like a drop of something? So she pours him a scotch and she's got all these questions about his time in prison. She just keeps asking, like did you read a lot? You used to love to read? What was it like inside? And you can just see the pressure building up. He's like, stop, stop asking. Yeah and so and then Albert Simpson's like, okay, well, I got to know who all's here while I'm hiding out And Doris
tells him this is confusing. She's like, the only people here are mister and Missus Jamison and their nephew Tommy. But then the rest of the scene is other people like coming in who she didn't list. So the first guy is this guy David, who appears to live and work at the end. He's kind of he's the tor go of the inn, you know, he's carrying wood around and stuff. And Doris confides that David gives her the creeps. But then she also says, oh yeah, and there is
somebody else here. It's miss Prestwick. She is a gorgeous model from London. What she's doing in a place like this, I don't know. This, of course is Hazel Court playing Ellen Prestwick. And then we see her come down to the lounge where Jamie Jamison tries to flirt with her. He's being very inappropriate. He's like, oh, you're always pretty as a picture, and she's like doing a little fashion show for him in the hall. I don't know, it's weird.
She's like, she's like talking about the outfit she's wearing as if it's in a fashion catalog.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's kind of fun. Like he's, like I said, she's breathing a lot of life into this character. Yeah, fully inflating the character here.
And then more hotel high jenks ensue Jamie keeps sneaking booze, and he says, my wife has the most unpatriotic contempt for her national beverage, and miss Jamison, Missus Jamison says, you should see him when he has a patriotic head in the morning.
Ah.
Meanwhile, the professor and the journalist, they were the ones lost in the car. Well, they're done being lost on the road. They see a sign for a pub and
they're like, let's go get a drink. So they pull up outside and they run in talking about how they're going to get quote, a couple of big scotches, and then they come in and there's more like can we accommodate them type hand ringing like we got with Albert Simpson earlier, and eventually missus Jamison informs them, was like, well, we're supposed to be closed for the enter right now. The rooms aren't ready, they're not in ship shape, but
you can sleep there. She says the beds are good, and Rachel and I both reacted to that, like something about the Bonnie Charlie does not seem like it would have good beds. My impression is this place would have beds that are basically a piece of flagstone wrapped in wool that feels like barbed wire. And I don't know if you also got the same just uncomfortable vibes from
the setting. Like I think inside this building, it's one of those places that feels like it would be somehow cold and stuffy at the same time, like it's too cold and too hot simultaneously.
Yeah, and one of those situations where you know that wooden bar that it probably has that situation going on where you have like the dust and the grime have kind of they're kind of one thing. Now this kind of like sticky like black film over everything, like you know that has to be the case here.
Well, missus Jamison offers them something to eat, but Michael Carter says, what I need most is a drink. So they go and they get drinks and Jamie is trying to serve them, and there's more bickering about whether he will serve them drinks or not. As they settle in, Michael Carter, the journalist, begins obnoxiously hitting on Miss Prestwick. He's commenting on the fact that she's drinking tomato juice and he's like, not many girls drink tomato juice unless
they're afraid of putting on weight. So he's like trying to do some kind of nagging pickup artist routine. And I was just thinking, when will the Martians kill this man? Unfortunately never he turns out to be one of the heroes of the movie. But then Professor Hennessy introduces himself and they decide to have another we scotch. And I think this is the scene where in the span of thirty seconds they like, go get a drink three separate times.
Yeah, gosh, there's just so much scotch drinking. And occasionally other liquids are suggested as possible beverages, possible liquids that could be andsumed, but generally everyone seems to be of the opinion and no scotch is the best.
Yeah. They do sit down to have some dinner, to have some supper, which for which they're having scotch broth. And know, if you're not familiar, that is actually a type of soup. It is not just a term for hot scotch in a bowl. And one of the things they talk about at dinner is Jamie Jamison giving a passionate defense of the lockness monster. He's like, I will not have anyone speak ill of that fine creature. Yes, but can we explain the scene of Michael Carter blowing
Albert Simpson's cover. So the escaped convict comes in, he's, you know, working for his stay. So he's like serving bread at the table, and then the journalist recognizes him. He's like, do you know who that is? That's not Albert Simpson, that's this other guy. And unless I was mistaken, I think we're supposed to believe that he recognizes him based on the description that was given on the radio earlier.
I guess, though that is a very vague description. Yeah, so I guess Michael Carter is a journalist though, right, Yeah, so maybe he's seen a picture through journalism.
I don't know, Oh, he just happened to cover this guy's trial or something.
Maybe, I mean, it's it's not explained anyway.
The tension of this confrontation, when it's at its peak, it's suddenly interrupted by a cataclysmic event. There's like a shaking of the house, and it is the approach and landing of a flying saucer, which when they go outside they can't even get close to it because it's too hot, and this flying saucer, I'm gonna say the effect looks a little too good for the movie that it's in.
Yeah, it is way better UFO, way better flying saucer than you might expect from this film, a film that is often One of the things that's often written about it is that it had a low budget. It's not a high budget affair. And also, you see enough films from this area, you see enough films with flying sauce in it, you get used to a certain level of cheapness. You know, you can have like some sort of a dinky model and some large tripods for characters to stand around.
That's essentially all you need. And it can be fun, it can, but there's sort of a standard level of quality that you kind of accept things to hover around, and I feel like this flying saucer goes beyond that. It's it's got this, you know, it's got plenty of the elements of a standard's fifties, standard fifties flying saucer that you might come to to expect, but it also has this kind of different energy to it. You know, it's described as being hot, it portrayed as being hot.
It has this kind of industrial atomic sensibility to it, and it has these like telescopic legs that come out.
Yeah, it has moving parts, and it seems to emit its own light.
Yeah. So it's this is a really cool flying saucer model, I have to say.
All right, So they all react to that in various ways. Mister Carter, the journalist runs to the telephone and I think, quite hilariously, just keeps like screaming into it, Hello hello, hello, hello, hello hello. And meanwhile Doris gets her convict boyfriend to hide in the attic. Others scramble around trying to get a car working or define a functional telephone, all to
no avail. We get our first action scene. In our first scene seeing Patricia Lafon is NYA when the ship opens up and a ramp extends down out of the hull and we see Nia come out. She hasn't said anything yet. She's just silent and wearing all this shiny
black leather with the skull cap. She looks very dangerous and she comes down the ramp and uh, oh, there's you know, there's David the ends the Bonnie Charlie's torgo wandering around outside and he collapses outside the ship and she just vaporizes him.
Yeah, he is not a specimen that she thinks is going to help Mars out at all. So intantly vaporized leaves nothing but smoke and a pair of spectacles.
That's right, it's just like a steaming patch of sod and the major tote glasses. But it's hard facts of life. She's looking for hunks and torgo here does not make the cut.
This is in stark contrast to a ship of monsters, remember, because in that one, our females from Venus arrive. They encounter our male hero and they're like, oh, it's a male and they ask him. It's like, are you the prime specimen? Are you like the peak specimen for your species? And he's like, yeah, I am.
And they believe him.
Yeah, they may believe him in this She's like, no, now, this isn't it vaporize?
No?
What this is nineteen fifty four. I guess she'd be like, where is rock Hudson? Take me to your Rock Hudsons.
Though interestingly, this film has no Rock Hudson caliber actress in it.
So no, So that unfortunate thing happens to David, and meanwhile, the Professor and Michael Carter have been trying to fix up the phone in the car, but to no avail. It says if all of their Earth technology has been magically disabled, And so they come back inside and they're like, hey, Doris, fix us up a couple of big scotches, will you. That is a direct quote. But Doris can't fix them big scotches because she has been hypnotized. And this is
something that will happen to multiple characters throughout the movie. Later, the escape convict, it gets hypnotized. The Martians appear to have some kind of like mind control ray and when somebody suggests do you think her catatonic state could have anything to do with the flying saucer outside, the Professor for some reason, is just categorically opposed to the idea that the flying saucer could have anything to do with it. He goes, I tell you that's absurd. But this is
the scene where we meet Patricia Lavon. She suddenly throws the doors to the room open and comes inside, and here she is, folks. The alien commander is standing between the French doors, you know, cold and imperious, and this scene just rocks. There is something so unusual in a
simultaneously funny and kind of spellbinding way. About the rhythm of the dialogue and this scene, the way it mostly consists of fairly short questions and answers, like the Earthlings will ask a question of the Martian and then she will answer in a short form, and the way she delivers her lines. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, rob, but it just establishes this amazing rhythm that's so consistently weird and funny.
Oh yeah, yeah, the rapport here is pretty great. And I also have to say the scene where suddenly she's there, Naya is there, emerging through these the French doors. There was something about this that, I mean, it's a visually captivating a scene, but it was tingling something in my memory, and then I realized what it was. It's Jim Henson's nineteen eighty six film Labyrinth. Pretty early on when we
encounter Jareth the Goblin King, he is standing. It's not exactly the same, but it's very similar, like these terrestrial door French doors or something, or windows that have been opened, and inside this opening you have this just exquisite character from another world in this amazing costume. That's, you know, bold and confident and sexy.
I see exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah.
So she comes in and the guys in the room ask her who she is. She says her name is Nia. They ask her where she's from. She says Mars. Professor Hennessy objects that it is preposterous that she could be from Mars. No way, and then she says, you men on Earth are not as we expect it. She's very disappointed, and Professor Hennessy says, we scientists were always skeptical about the possibility of life on Mars, but certainly nothing so human. And she asks him you are a scientist. He says yes.
Then she says you are a very poor physical specimen, so cold, so mean. But then she just sort of shoves the professor out of the way, presumably because I don't know, she's trying to get a look at Michael Carter. I guess he's a better physical specimen. But Michael Carter's like, you speak English, and she says, of course you are English, aren't you. What other language should I speak? And then she does this weird hand gesture. I don't know what
this is all about. I think maybe she's like turning off the hypnosis mode on Doris. And then she says that she in fact speaks all languages by picking up Earth Radio. They ask her, is this the first time Martians have landed on Earth? And she says yes. They ask why did she land here, and she says, it's
a miscalculation. You see, she was trying to get to London, presumably to locate the stud district of London, but Earth's atmosphere was thicker than the spected and part of the ship was torn off and they were forced to land in Scotland, and the part of the ship being torn off explains the meteor from earlier. She says repairs are going to take about four earth hours and in the meantime, I guess she's probably just going to toy with them
very cruelly. Now they ask her is she alone in the ship, and her answer is, according to the version I was watching in the subtitles that came with it, the answer is Johnny is with me. I have read elsewhere that the character she's referring to is actually named Chohnnie spelled Ani, but it sounds like they're every time she says it it sounds like Johnny, and the subtitle spelled it Johnny, so I don't know what to believe.
Yeah, I read it somewhere as Chawnny, but when she's saying it in the picture, it's really hard to hear anything other than Johnny. But Chawnie would be a more fitting name, I think for an off world robot.
Right, because Johnny is a killbot. She explains, john Fani is a mechanical man, a robot with many of the characteristics of a human. This is hilarious when you see him later, because he does he's not very much like a human. But she says, yeah, he's a refrigerator with arms and legs. But they but she says, oh, but he is improved by an electronic brain. And then here we got a bunch of voluntary technobabble from Naya. She just offers up explanations about how all of her stuff works.
She says, the metal from which her spaceship is constructed can reproduce itself. And then, weirdly, I don't know why this is, but we see miss Prestwick outside the door, like listening in, like she's spying on them. But eventually she gets Fomo and just sort of comes into the room. But the professor and everybody arguing about this, do you realize what you've said? They've turned the inorganic into the organic. Okay, well we're about to get to the main premise. So
they start questioning her why she's going to London. This is what Nia says. She says, many of your Earth years ago, our women were similar to yours today. Our emancipation took several hundred years and ended in a bitter, devastating war between the sexes, the last war we ever had. Henny here says, So you've had wars too. I was like, why would you ask that?
Obviously she just said, they just said that.
She just said that that. Nia says, all inhabited planets have had wars. Some have ended by wiping themselves out. For every new weapon invented, a defense was perfected until the ultimate weapon was developed, a perpetual motion shaane reactor beam.
God, this has got to be peak technobabble, Like what is that even? And then how even I'm failing to imagine what that could be? Much less hallid is than utilized in an on planet battle. Queen two factions based on sex.
Oh I mean, she explains a little bit. He's the Professor's like, tell me more. I want to know about the perpetual motion chain reactor beam and she says, as fast as matter was created, it was changed by its molecular structure into the next dimension and so destroyed itself.
Okay, well, I don't know if that actually helps me any, but that she's got more to say.
The professor his comment on this is so there is a fourth dimension. But Nya explains more. She says, you know, after the War of the Sexes, women became the rulers of Mars, but now the male has fallen into a decline. The birth rate is dropping tremendously. For despite our advanced science, we still have found no way of creating life. I guess she means other than like standard sexual reproduction, which we assume is their method, though they're never explicit about that,
so I don't know. But then Miss Prestwick she kind of challenged jiz Nia on this. She goes, so you've come here for new Blood, and I love the way Hazel Court here has this like defiant tone, like Miss Prestwick is feeling territorial, and she's like, you're not gonna steal my beloved earth schlubs. You know they belong here with us. But Nya just you know, she's not having any any defiance. She's like, yes, we're here to steal your males. We're going to kidnap your males and breed
with them. But also we are here to test a newly invented organic metal quote of which my ship is built on Mars. Some think I will not return, that the metal is too unstable, but when I get back, we will build more spaceships. Meanwhile, I will select some of your strongest men to return with me to Mars.
Okay, so it's it's a dual mission.
Yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's testing out the prototype metal and it's collecting Earthmen. And Michael Card of the Earthman says, and if I don't want to go with you, just assuming he's going to be picked, and Nia says there is no if. She says, she will take her pick of quote the Man and subdue London with the help of a nuclear paralyzer.
Ray.
So like the humans start arguing about this with each other, Miss Prestwick says to the professor, don't you understand that this thing from Mars can destroy all life. And then very funny. So most of the earth males don't want to go to Mars, but I thought it was funny here how the professor is like, well, hold on, now, we must think objectively about what is happening. He says, this is the turning point in the history of the world. Maybe you know, I think he's saying we need to hear her out.
But it's also extra funny given how cold she was to him earlier. He's like, yeah, He's like, but but maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the one you should go.
No, you're a very poor male specimen. But then, oh, but then one of the funniest parts of the whole movie, Missus Jamison comes into the room and she sees this lady here just dressed in this like crazy leather spacesuit, and Michael Carter says, Missus Jamison, may I introduce your newest guest, miss Nia. She comes from Mars. And then what does Missus Jamison reply?
She says, oh, well that'll mean another bed. Yeah, And it is one of the It's always kind of neat when in a film like this you have one or two lines that are legitimately intentionally funny. That was some good riding there.
Yeah, but then she does a double take.
By the way, Joe, you included here for me a screenshot of the of the character standing in front of the bar. Do you think those are all scotch bottles? Back there on the wall? They have like four, I don't know, shelves of liquor bottles, and I'm just I'm suddenly wondering, what are we looking at here?
It's a lot of bottles, and I don't I don't know. I'm not seeing a lot of gin back there. It all looks like a brown liquor of various sorts.
Scotch enthusiasts will have to let us know. I really only know my way around a couple of scotches.
Yeah, though it's funny. I just remembered something when Rachel and I were watching this, you know, with all the characters that are named Hennessy and Jamison, When when Nya first came in and Rachel said, my name is cam PARI.
That's good. It's a good riff.
Oh.
Suddenly, at this point in the movie, everybody gets agitated that they can't find David, the guy that she vaporized out on the lawn and they're like he's missing. And then they all turned to her and they're like, miss Naya, have you and she says, of course he was no stud muffin, so I killed him. And Michael Michael Carter gets really mad about this. They have to like him. He's like trying to punch her or something, and they're all holding him back.
I don't know why they felt they needed to establish that they found him creepy earlier, like that. There was no payoff for that, Like, yeah, he never did anything that was creepy, there was no Sometimes you introduce the stereotypical creepy grounds keeper character because you want to have him be a suspect in the you know or something, or you know, or he's creeping around and happens to, you know, run a foul of the Jason or whatever is running around on the on the grounds. But in
this case, he was just out getting wood. Like, why did it matter that he was creepy.
He didn't actually do anything wrong. Yeah, you kind of gotta feel bad for David, Like, for all we know, he was a totally nice guy. He had no lines. Yeah, But anyway, here Naya leaves and she says, Okay, around this house, I've drawn an invisible wall. You can't get through it, so I don't even try to leave. I'm going to do repairs on my ship and I'll be back to kill you all and maybe take some of
the strongest mans. And then the rest of the movie is just people coming and going back and forth from the ship like fifteen times. Uh Naya in a quite funny manner. In fact, keeps leaving and then coming back to the inn. And then there there are some more scenes between the humans that are I think trying to do character development, Like there is a scene where Michael Carter, the the really annoying journalist, and miss Prestwick fall in love.
Like he ostensibly he comes up to her room at the hotel, knocking on the door with the excuse that he has come to see if she has any scotch.
Like like they're old downstairs, Like.
Yeah, no, they're clearly not. It's like, hey, I was wondering if there's any air in your room that I could breathe. I couldn't find any anywhere else. But if she invites him in and he's like, you got any scotch and she says no, but I've got some brandy, okay, and uh and so, and we get their backstories. Miss Prestwick talks about how she's in Scotland. Actually she doesn't
volunteer this information. He does like a cold reading routine where he tells her her whole backstory just by I don't know, by like observing her and I guess it's all correct, you know. He figures out that she's in Scotland because she's she's hiding from a married man with whom she is having an affair. I think he is the fashion designer and she is his muse. And then meanwhile, Michael Carter explains his backstory is like He's like, oh, I've seen all the terrible things in the war zones,
but now I'm done with all that. And then he says, now I'm letting my hair down, which was a laugh out loud moment because he does not have much hair to let down, right.
Oh. But then there's also the invisible wall. This was a lot of fun because you have a Nya established that she was going to set a perimeter, an invisible wall to keep people from leaving. And again, these characters have been drinking Scotch non stop, and then you have the professor bumble in.
Right, so they look out the window. Actually, before this, sorry, before this, Michael and miss Prestwick have a dialogue exchange that is so funny. It means nothing, but at one point he's just I guess he's just frustrated. He just goes, it's that thing out there, and then she says, it is there. Michael, Yeah, thanks thanks movie. Yes, oh yeah, I remember. Now there is a spaceship outside and they're.
Trying to also an invisible wall though, and.
That's right, well maybe that's the thing they were talking about. I don't know, is it the spaceship or is it the robot or the spaceship. But so the professor comes back. He's got blood on his head now and they're like, Professor, what happened And he's like, well, I went out walking and then I crashed into the invisible wall. There really is an invisible wall. I thought it impossible by all that is known to science.
Yeah, I don't know. I just found that also hilarious.
I think this might be the scene with I believe what my brain tells me to believe, and.
My brain ran into an invisible wall.
Now Here we get the first of a couple of times where the people at the end try to figure out how to outsmart Naya. Like there's another scene later where they set literally set an electrical trap for her, like in the Thing from Another World, which doesn't work, but in this scene they try to. They find a gun and they're like, well, we can just shoot her when she comes in, and Naya makes a fabulous entrance.
She like throws the doors open and steps in. And I wish I could like show you the listener out there a gif of this because it's it's such a wonderful step in move.
Yeah, it's very jerious from Labyrinth. Again, there's no owl, but it has that same energy.
Yes, And they try shooting her with a revolver, but the bullets have no effect. The posture that Michael Carter does while he's shooting at her is so funny. He's got his non shooting hand tucked behind his back and he's just standing up straight with the gun sort of at stomach level, just going bang bang, And of course the bullets bounce off of Naya because you know, she's she's perfect, She's she's literally nothing could.
Defeat her, absolutely right.
She says, you pour demented humans to imagine you can destroy me with your old fashioned toy. What do you know of force? Force as we use it on Mars, I could control power beyond your wildest dreams. Come and you shall see. So she's going to give him demonstration. I love it when aliens give a demonstration of their power for a for a crowd of earth onlookers. And so they so she takes them out to the spaceship to show her robot Johnny, to show them what Johnny
can do. So Johnny, he comes out. Johnny is gigantic. He is a refrigerator with arms and legs. His arms are kind of like made out of a stack of solo cups. His head is a police siren, and he walks around. He's slow moving, and he hates trees and he's gonna incinerate them and he vaporizes a bunch of stuff with his death ray while people watch. He does the tree, he does a car, he does a barn. Yeah, you don't want to mess with Johnny.
I think it's a pretty good robot design. I mean it's one of the it's kind of like the the UFO, kind of like the flying saucer in this film, where yes, it does match up with what you would expect from this time period Boxy, you know, sort of lumbering around, but overall well executed. I like how it's it's arms though you just described him as being kind of like stacked silo cups, but they kind of have that telescoping
energy that matches up with the flying saucer. Well, like you feel like these are two things from the same design universe.
Sure, yeah, I can see that.
And again, he's really tall, He's like fifteen feet tall. Maybe I don't know, he's powering.
She's like, he is like one of your Earth humans, but with an improved brain. And then Nya, let's see, oh oh, Albert Simpson, remember him, the convict. He's been hiding in the attic. Well, he sneaks out of the window along with Tommy the kid. They both climb down a tree and they're running around outside. Eventually Nya comes across them and she's like, ah, this Earth, Tommy, I will take this boy back to Mars with me. And Tommy literally goes goodie. He wants to go to Mars.
But as you might guess, this turns into for the rest of the plot. A lot of it's like various adult men trying to find a way to rescue Tommy and destroy the spaceship. Again, there's the part where they try to set an electricity trap for Nya that does not work. At one point, Professor Hennessy tricks Naya into showing him the inside of her spaceship, and the way he does it by his by like appealing to her pride. He's like, we Earthlings also have powerful machines, and this
makes her really mad. She's like, none equal to those of Mars. So she takes him to see the inside of the spaceship and he's gonna get a look at things to figure out what the weak point inside the ship is. And you know what he finds out.
Yeah, he's You can imagine him being like like, oh you should You should see the self destruct mechanisms we have on earth ships and just like those are nothing. Look at this self destruct button. Yeah, this mechanism is far superior.
But the design of the inside of the spaceship is cool.
Yeah. I really liked it as well. It has some some cool angles in it. They do some nice things with shadow and light, and this leads me to another interesting visual connection. This is not one that I made. This is one that I ran across when I was looking at images from the film Jane Voss of sci fiast dot net that's sci sd I guess it looks
like sciphist dot net anyway. This author made this particular comparison, pointing out that that the the inside of the spaceship matches up at least a bit with the meditation chamber of Darth Vader and the Empire strikes Back. They do a side by side comparison here, and you know, I'm not sure. I one hundred percent am convinced. I think
it's a nifty comparison. The author points out that Lucas certainly was inspired by older genre films and the and in making the Star Wars films, they did look to older cinematic images, so it's I don't know, it's any connection of nothing else. The author also points to the possible connections between Nia and doctor Frankenforter from the Rocky
Horror Picture Show. Again, I'm not so sure personally, but maybe there's certainly some shared DNA between Nia and the likes of Jaff from Labyrinth or Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror, And I guess you could also make some comparisons in a different way between Nia and Darth Vader. I mean they're both you know, stunning characters clad in black, shiny you know, garments and armor.
Yeah, well they both have the black like the shoulder pads and the and the smooth head piece and the foot the floor length cape.
Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know, maybe so at any rate, cool ship interior I like it.
Yeah, yeah, So there's a bunch more intrigue. I'm not going to go into detail about everything else that happens,
especially between the humans. There's one part where like the one of the humans gets hypnotized and then they gets into a fist fight with one of the other guys and they argue about how to defeat the alien in the end, but ultimately the movie ends with Albert Simpson, the convict, doing a brave act of heroic self sacrifice to use the information gained by the professor about the weak point on the ship and to save the day for Earth.
It's a fun ending because, on one level, I don't know, I guess we were supposed to think this as well, because we see him get on the ship. He boards the ship with Naya, and the ship takes off and again wonderful flying saucer effect. It feels dangerous and you know, almost almost explosive, and it takes off and it's ascending up in the atmosphere. It's going to leave her this atmosphere, return to Mars, and we know what he is supposed to do. He is supposed to hit that self destruct.
He's supposed to make the ship explode, and we already have a built in kind of they don't really dwell on this, but she established earlier that the other Martians think that the ship won't survive the trip, so there's almost like a guarantee if they can only blow this ship up, they're not expecting her back. But on the other hand, it's like this guy escaped from prison and his biggest his plan consisted of, well maybe we can
I can flee to Ireland. But now like he's got a chance to flee the planet, he can flee the terrestrial legal system entirely and go to Mars, and yeah, maybe he's going to end up in a eating pod somewhere with a with a you know, some sort of a sensor stuck in his brain, but hey, at least he's not in prison or in Ireland doing whatever he was planning to do in Ireland. So there's kind of this tension building as you watch the ship go up.
It's like, is he gonna betray everyone out of his own self interest or is he going to sacrifice himself for Earth? And then suddenly the ship does explode. But this is great because again, watching a movie from this
time period, you have certain expectations for that explosion. You kind of expect, you know, a sort of a dynamite explosion in the sky, but no, instead you get this really cool, kind of like underwater smoke explosion, which is extra nice here in black and white, and it looks really super creepy, like, indeed, like a dangerous piece of advanced technology from another world just blew up in our atmosphere,
ripped a hole. Perhaps in reality, you know, it looks like it's created a stain the sky that's going to stick around for quite some time. But indeed, he came through, He saved the Earth, and the alien threat has been destroyed or maybe just avoided for a little while. The Martians maybe won't come back to Earth for a few decades.
Anyway, I agree that explosion looks really cool, and it actually I think the way the explosion looks kind of unusual maybe relates to something a scene we didn't actually talk about, the one where Naya like folds herself into the fourth dimension and disappears.
She becomes blurry and they're like, ah, the fourth dimension. This is another scene where she's like basically just showing off how great Martian technology is.
Well, you know, I'd say in the end, Devil Girl from Mars is great fun. I do recommend it. I would also say stick around at least until Nya shows up. It will drag for the first twenty twenty five minutes or so, but once Nya's on screen, it's a hoot.
Yeah, this one's a lot of fun. Again, some great design work in here, some fun performances, you know, some surprisingly good effects and costuming that in many ways, despite the budget, despite the time period, you know, I mean, it feels very ahead of its time. The ending's pretty solid, though part of me still thinks that Scotland should have surrendered and become a breeding colony from Mars. I think I think Nia ultimately she made a good show of force.
She was busting out just a lot of just cold facts on these poor earthlings. So maybe they should have gone in the other direction, but still hard to argue with the solid ending.
That scene where she explains about the negative condensity is just.
Oh so much quality technobabble in this one. I wonder is there still technobabble of this quality in sci fi films today?
I don't know. I mean, I feel like, unfortunately the direction has gone more into just like not saying as much or trying to make it more at least, so am I realistic or plausible or just referencing things that have no relationship to real words? You know that it might as well be magic.
Yeah, or you just I guess nowadays you can you see a lot of the casual invocation of quantum mechanics or nanobots, and that explains everything. They're like, yeah, Tony Stark's power armor, it's basically magic. It just melts away into nothing, It crawls inside of I guess, like a little pocket in its skin or something. It comes back out again and then it's everywhere and it's shooting rockets. Like don't don't, don't worry about it. It's just it's
quantum mechanics. It's nanobots. It all works out. Don't worry carbs. Yeah, it's just carbon nanotudes. That's all you need to know. But they didn't have that excuse back in the old day. You had to work a lot more to create quality technobabble.
You had to come up with phrases like a perpetual motion chain reactor beam or the negative condensity.
Oh so good. All right, we'll go ahead and close it out here, But obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on Devil Girl from Mars or any of the players in this film, or or films in a similar genre. Yeah, right in. We'd love to hear from if you have memories of catching this film on TV back in the day. Yeah, yeah,
We're always always interested to hear those stories. And in the meantime, Yeah, we're primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we do weird house cinema here. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. I do blog posts about these episodes at simmutamusic dot com and if you use letterbox, that's L E T T E R bo x D dot com. Well you can find us on there. Our username is weird House.
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