MOVIE REVIEWS

Review by Wuchak

***Mars needs men!*** A Martian flying saucer inadvertently lands in the Scottish moors wherein the arrogant female occupant & her merciless robot harass the people at a remote Inn. It turns out, she needs male breeding stock! "Devil Girl from Mars" (1954) is a serious (not campy) B&W British sci-fi that borrows from “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) and “The War of the Worlds” (1953). It lacked the budget of those premier science-fictions and so the story is way less ambitious, but it still works in its one-note quaint way. The haughty Nyah (Patricia Laffan), the titular “devil girl,” is pretty babelicious on the female front, augmented by the presence of Hazel Court (Ellen) and Adrienne Corri (Doris). There are some interesting sci-fi ideas, like the regenerative space ship and the Mars needs men angle. Speaking of the latter, all Nyah had to do for a successful mission was kindly announce her need to Earthlings and quality men from all over the planet would sign-up without hesitation. Her problem is that she’s arrogant, which means she has a chronic case of superiority complex. She felt it was beneath her to good-naturedly work WITH humans, even though it would've made her mission successful. Needless to say, the denouncement of the folly of hubris is a great moral. The film runs 1 hour, 17 minutes, and was shot at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England. GRADE: B