Devil Girl from Mars (1954) - Mastodon viewing this Sunday evening!
Devil Girl from Mars (1954) - Mastodon viewing this Sunday evening!
Devil Girl from Mars is the subject of this Sunday's "monsterdon" viewing over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling!
- Just start watching that movie this Sunday, Jan 5, 2025 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT, which is 2am Monday UTC
- and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon
- I usually open two web browser windows on a laptop side-by-side but you could follow the mastodon commentary on your phone while watching it on TV or something...
How to watch:
- someone claims they'll be streaming it on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time
- you can probably find it on a streaming service? someone said it was on tubi and that adblock worked on tubi but I dunno what tubi is.
- Here are a bunch of free youtube uploads:
- colorized? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA83HKMFpow
- black-n-white https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXMm8TclN6Y
- black n white https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvp6Hfkmbes
- black n white https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Q0w0kldsI
A female alien is sent from Mars to acquire human males to replace their declining male population. When negotiation, then intimidation, fails she must use force to obtain co-operation from a remote Scottish village where she has landed her crippled flying saucer.
...
Rolling Stone columnist Doug Pratt called Devil Girl from Mars a "delightfully bad movie". The "acting is really bad and the whole thing is so much fun you want to run to your local community theatre group and have them put it on next, instead of Brigadoon."[11]
American film reviewer Leonard Maltin said the film is a "hilariously solemn, high camp British imitation of U.S. cheapies".[12]
Filmink called it "bonkers fun".[13]
...
The film inspired Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Octavia E. Butler to begin writing science fiction. After watching the motion picture at age 12, she declared that she could write something better.
This was a killer B-movie. With a couple more revisions (and a lot more work on the special effects) it might have been a real first-run film, but apparently it was done on a tight budget and written on another project's spare time. So there are a couple promising themes regarding gender and class that could have been explored, and the various character relationships could have been much better handled. At one point a fistfight breaks out and it's a surprisingly entertaining fight but it makes no sense for it to be happening in terms of the actual story.
The movie is reminiscent of those old Twilight Zone episodes in which some weird event happens, and most of the show is about a bunch of people puttering around just trying to process it. It's not necessarily a bad technique -- Asimov got a lot out of it in his early Foundation novels -- but you have to be careful about the writing and as described above that wasn't an option.
So what really makes this movie memorable is the performance by Patricia Laffan as the alien woman. 90% of what her character utters is nonsensical or only entertaining in a campy way, but wow did Ms Laffan deliver it in an imperious tone. Watching her appear to a roomful of British folks worrying about their tea and their liquor and the details of their dull lives is like actually watching a messenger from another world -- or from a future they will not be ready for. Ms Laffan the actress sounds like she was a heck of a person. She wrote short stories, and also radio scripts in fluent French. Her hobbies were "fast cars and breeding bull terriers", she never married and had at least one girlfriend, and besides her acting she produced fashion shows. Her costume for this movie was designed by John Sutcliffe, "a British fetish clothing designer and publisher of the fetish magazine AtomAge" who influenced the leather catsuit of Emma Peel in The Avengers as well as some of the later "punk look" of the 70s. In a sense, the pubful of normies really were being confronted by an alien world just beyond their comprehension.
It totally make sense that future SF author Octavia Butler would watch this and think I can do better, because there's lots there that's worth doing better. The themes and visuals are explored in many future works, and great fanedit could be made of the existing video. Hail, woman of Mars! Hail, future of splendor! I from the depths of camp and low budget salute you!
Ooh fun! I always miss these, thanks for posting ahead about it!