Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. In today's episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to revisit an episode that originally published nine
Speaker 1: nine twenty two. This is Devil Girl from Mars. Let's
Speaker 1: dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today we're going to be taking a look at a
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty four science fiction movie called Devil Girl from Mars,
Speaker 3: a movie about people who are obsessed with liquor, who
Speaker 3: in fact are in many cases even named after liquors,
Speaker 3: and who are gather in a rural inn in Scotland
Speaker 3: to be attacked by an evil Martian boss lady who
Speaker 3: wants to kidnap and dominate scdish men. Yes, that's right,
Speaker 3: Fans of Weird House Cinema may feel an inkling of
Speaker 3: a memory that this is, in fact the second movie
Speaker 3: we've done with this exact plot, the plot of women
Speaker 3: from another planet within our Solar system are running out
Speaker 3: of men and must come to Earth to steal our
Speaker 3: precious earth hunks. The other one was the lighthearted Mexican
Speaker 3: romantic musical horror comedy Ship of Monsters from nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: and that one was such a delight. I still remember
Speaker 3: that so fondly. I think Devil Girl from Mars is
Speaker 3: also a delight, but in a very different way. Ship
Speaker 3: of Monsters is clever, spunky, charming, intentionally funny and made
Speaker 3: with this infectious sense of whimsy. Devil Girl from Mars
Speaker 3: is the exact opposite. It is made hilarious by virtue
Speaker 3: of its absurd self seriousness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is not a lighthearted musical romp that
Speaker 1: it's It's still a lot of fun and has some
Speaker 1: great design work in it, because that was one of
Speaker 1: the things we loved about about about the Ship of
Speaker 1: Monsters has some great monster designs, some great costumes, and
Speaker 1: we have some of that going on in Devil Girl
Speaker 1: from Mars as well.
Speaker 3: But also there is no character in Devil Girl from
Speaker 3: Mars like Lolo Gunzalez and Ship of Monsters, you know,
Speaker 3: with the twinkle in his eye and the funny songs
Speaker 3: and all that. No, this is a movie mostly about
Speaker 3: men who are very serious about staying on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and none of the male performers are actually that interesting,
Speaker 1: either in their in their careers or in their performances here.
Speaker 1: At least I didn't find them so. But the female
Speaker 1: performers are pretty great.
Speaker 3: The titular devil girl from Mars, I think is clearly
Speaker 3: the star of the show. My initial reaction to this
Speaker 3: when I started watching it. I got about twenty minutes
Speaker 3: in and I was like, I don't know if this
Speaker 3: is all that great. Maybe this movie is really going
Speaker 3: to be kind of a drag. But then and the
Speaker 3: moment the Martian shows up, the movie kicks into high
Speaker 3: gear immediately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree that you warned me about the first
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, and the first twenty minutes of this film
Speaker 1: are indeed quite slow and are not all that fantastic.
Speaker 1: So so definitely know that going into the film. But
Speaker 1: we mentioned Scottish as much as anything is purely a
Speaker 1: Scottish film. I guess this is kind of our first
Speaker 1: Scottish film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Right, I can't think of another one. And it's also
Speaker 3: it's not incidentally Scottish. It's not just like made by Scott's.
Speaker 3: This is very much set in Scotland.
Speaker 1: Right right, I think you can you can maybe get
Speaker 1: into the production credit and say like, well, it's more
Speaker 1: basically a British production basically in introduction, but yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of Scottish talent involved in this picture and set
Speaker 1: in Scotland, right.
Speaker 3: This film also has a very interesting indirect role in
Speaker 3: the history of science fiction literature because it was apparently
Speaker 3: an early point of inspiration, a sort of anti inspiration,
Speaker 3: for the great science fiction author Octavia Butler. I found
Speaker 3: a transcript of a talk she delivered at MIT in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety eight about the role of media like movies
Speaker 3: and TV in the history of sci fi. And she
Speaker 3: goes over a bunch of different topics in the speech,
Speaker 3: but one of the first things she does is talk
Speaker 3: about seeing this movie when she was a kid. So
Speaker 3: I want to read her quote from the speech. She says,
Speaker 3: it's impossible to begin to talk about myself and the
Speaker 3: media without going back to how I wound up writing
Speaker 3: science fiction, and that is by watching a terrible movie.
Speaker 3: The movie was called Devil Girl from Mars, and I
Speaker 3: saw it when I was about twelve years old, and
Speaker 3: it changed my life. It was one of those old
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties movies in which the beautiful Martian woman arrives
Speaker 3: on Earth to announce that all of the Martian men
Speaker 3: have died off, and there were a bunch of man
Speaker 3: hungry women up there, and the earth men don't want
Speaker 3: want to go. And as I was watching this film,
Speaker 3: I had a series of revelations. The first was that geez,
Speaker 3: I can write a better story than that, And then
Speaker 3: I thought, gee, anybody can write a better story than that.
Speaker 3: And my third thought was the clincher, somebody got paid
Speaker 3: for writing that awful story. So I was often writing,
Speaker 3: and a year later I was busy submitting terrible pieces
Speaker 3: of fiction to innocent magazines. I found this story so beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fun. I wasn't aware of this connection. And indeed,
Speaker 1: this is essentially, I think, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I've always enjoyed about films of this nature. Not that
Speaker 1: I mean there have been times where I've been inspired
Speaker 1: to write something based on a less than stellar plot
Speaker 1: in a film or something, but more often than not,
Speaker 1: it's just like you're watching a film. There are spaces
Speaker 1: in it, spaces that yes, it's not only like could
Speaker 1: this be improved? But what if this was improved? So
Speaker 1: there's this like there's this film, there's this skeleton within
Speaker 1: the film, and then you sort of apply the meat
Speaker 1: to that skeleton with your own imagination, either in a
Speaker 1: in a product based creative endeavor, or just in the
Speaker 1: mindscape of enjoying the film totally.
Speaker 3: I have long been of the opinion that if you're
Speaker 3: trying to study a creative art you can learn just
Speaker 3: as much or even more by studying bad examples of
Speaker 3: that art form as you can from studying good examples,
Speaker 3: Like when you see the Bad Ones, it gives you
Speaker 3: a kind of analytical confidence you can understand how and
Speaker 3: when things aren't working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now there's a lot that does work in this film,
Speaker 1: though at least from a from a design standpoint. Uh
Speaker 1: As we'll get into there's a there's there's there's at
Speaker 1: least one amazing costume, there's a there's some cool sets,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a cool robot, and and there are
Speaker 1: some times where there's a lot of technobabbles we'll discuss.
Speaker 1: But occasionally, as our a visitors talking about conditions back
Speaker 1: home and laying down a little world building, some of
Speaker 1: it does it, you know, kind of gets you gets
Speaker 1: or at least got my mind rolling. It's like I
Speaker 1: wonder what this this gender war was, like? How did
Speaker 1: all the Martian men die?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: And you know that they're not they're not filling on
Speaker 1: all the details for you, but they're giving you, like
Speaker 1: a few visuals, some some sights and sounds, some ideas,
Speaker 1: and then your brain kind of sketches in the rest
Speaker 1: of it. And that's that's something I always enjoy about
Speaker 1: a film like this totally.
Speaker 3: I was actually I was tempted to start asking genuinely
Speaker 3: interested questions about the War of the Sexes that took
Speaker 3: place on Mars. I was like, well, where they're like,
Speaker 3: were there like people on Mars who fell in love
Speaker 3: and they were like traders to their to their side
Speaker 3: in the War of the Sexes? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it raises a lot of questions. You probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: think too literally about it. All. I know that this
Speaker 1: isn't the only work of fiction to contemplate such a thing,
Speaker 1: so I guess, you know, metaphorically at least it it's
Speaker 1: it's useful in in fiction. You know.
Speaker 3: This plot differs somewhat from the premise of Ship of
Speaker 3: Monsters and Ship of Monsters the Aliens or one of
Speaker 3: the Aliens. It comes from Venus, and the problem is
Speaker 3: that on Venus, the men all destroyed each other with
Speaker 3: atomic wars. So the men they got nuclear weapons and
Speaker 3: they killed all the other men. So Venus has no
Speaker 3: men left, so it was an intra sex dispute. The
Speaker 3: men killed each other on Venus. In this movie, it
Speaker 3: is that the women of Mars went to war with
Speaker 3: the men of Mars and killed them. I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's significant anyway.
Speaker 1: Maybe not. Well, I guess she is supposed to have
Speaker 1: sort of a black widow kind of vibe to her.
Speaker 1: In fact, there is. It's part rather clumsily where one
Speaker 1: of the child the child characters what's his name, Tommy, Tommy, Yes,
Speaker 1: Tommy's like, you were like that spider and that my
Speaker 1: dad sees in the barn or something like that, you know,
Speaker 1: basically saying, oh, you're like a black widow spider, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, yeah, yes, that's part of what
Speaker 1: they're going for with the black costume, and you know this,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a trope and a stereotype of
Speaker 1: like a feminine power in films like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the character is written in a way
Speaker 3: that is supposed to strike terror in the hearts of
Speaker 3: a nineteen fifties male in the way that she is
Speaker 3: at least I think the way she's supposed to be
Speaker 3: received is as like very beautiful but also very like
Speaker 3: cold and rational and calculatingly evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's definitely portrayed in a way that is
Speaker 1: I would say, sexually ahead of her time. Like I
Speaker 1: was reading about this film in Michael Weldon's Psychotronic books
Speaker 1: that summarizes this, He writes, quote, the alien herself is
Speaker 1: a real vision in boots, black tights, padded shoulders cape
Speaker 1: and a shiny black skull cap. The stuffy British males
Speaker 1: actually want to stay in England, which.
Speaker 3: Is great, though not in England, they are in Scotland.
Speaker 3: I guess a couple of of them are from England
Speaker 3: and stuck in Scotland and others are from Scotland. But
Speaker 3: whatever the case, Yeah, they for some reason do not
Speaker 3: want to return to Mars with her and become part
Speaker 3: of like a captive earthling breeding program, right.
Speaker 1: But then, I mean I was also thinking this whole time.
Speaker 1: I was like, like, if they were excited to go,
Speaker 1: they would get to Mars and they'd find out that
Speaker 1: their participation in the breeding program involves being like hooked
Speaker 1: up in a tank somewhere and having their brain removed
Speaker 1: or something, So which would I think would have been fitting?
Speaker 1: That would have been a nice like I don't know
Speaker 1: if that would be a maybe be a nineties outer
Speaker 1: limits ending.
Speaker 3: Oh, that would be a good twist if like the
Speaker 3: character who goes as very like over eager young man.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking the other twist given that like
Speaker 3: they didn't the Martians didn't realize Earth was going to
Speaker 3: have a thick atmosphere, so when they got here, you know,
Speaker 3: they had trouble landing. It makes me think, well, what
Speaker 3: if they get the Earthlings back to Mars and they
Speaker 3: don't realize that Earthlings need to breathe oxygen, so as
Speaker 3: soon as they get there, it's just suffo.
Speaker 1: We got to go back for more. Now.
Speaker 3: I think we've already done the elevator pitch, so maybe
Speaker 3: we can skip that. But we've got to hear some
Speaker 3: trailer audio.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it.
Speaker 5: We saw this with our own eyes, and object the
Speaker 5: like of which we had never seen before, A frightening
Speaker 5: strain shape descending from out of space with relentless putts.
Speaker 6: Where did it come from? And what did it want
Speaker 6: of us?
Speaker 4: Well, we've never seen before. How what do you mean?
Speaker 5: Hello, It's like something from out of planet Tom.
Speaker 6: Do not try to follow me. You cannot get help.
Speaker 4: Around this pass.
Speaker 6: I've drawn in the visible wall to which no one
Speaker 6: may pass. Here is a news reporter with a world
Speaker 6: shattering storm, a girl trying to escape from her pups,
Speaker 6: the scientist trapped in spite of his knowledge. And here
Speaker 6: also is the Bombade Secret, a murderer with a life
Speaker 6: already of Harford, and introducing the devil girl from Mars.
Speaker 4: Back on fire?
Speaker 6: You for.
Speaker 4: Shoot on shoot?
Speaker 1: All right? All right, sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3: Let's see. So there are a bunch of places you
Speaker 3: can watch this one. I think I just streamed it
Speaker 3: on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I rented it through through Prime. You can stream
Speaker 1: or buy it wherever you get your digital movies. It
Speaker 1: also looks like you can stream it via Film Movement, Flix, Fling,
Speaker 1: some other places. And I should also point out that
Speaker 1: there have been some basic physical releases as well, but
Speaker 1: also Bridget and Mary Joe covered it on riff tracks,
Speaker 1: So I haven't actually experienced their riff of the film,
Speaker 1: but I've very much enjoyed Bridget and Mary Joe's riffing
Speaker 1: in the past, so I bet they do a good
Speaker 1: job with this one. There's a lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: have fun with here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got to watch that now.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's get into the various humans, mostly
Speaker 1: Scottish humans, involved in the creation of this picture, all right.
Speaker 1: Starting at the top, we have director David MacDonald born
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four and died in nineteen eighty three, Scottish
Speaker 1: born director who at one point worked under Cecil B.
Speaker 1: De Mill in the US as a production assistant. This
Speaker 1: would have been like the late nineteen twenties and I
Speaker 1: guess early thirties, basically an apprenticeship. Before returning back to
Speaker 1: the UK. He worked with the Crown Film Unit during
Speaker 1: World War Two to produce morale boosting pictures. And I've
Speaker 1: seen this film referred to as a career low point. Certainly,
Speaker 1: he seems to have maybe been more successful during his
Speaker 1: lifetime with various other film and TV projects, most of
Speaker 1: which I'm not familiar with. I don't think he did
Speaker 1: much in the way of sci fi or horror outside
Speaker 1: of this film. For instance, his most noteworthy film seemed
Speaker 1: to have been nineteen forty seven's The Brothers nineteen forty
Speaker 1: eight Christopher Columbus and the nineteen fifty seven Swashbuckler The Moonraker.
Speaker 3: The Moonraker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no connection, or at least I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: Moonraker has something to do with the plot of this
Speaker 1: fifty seven Swashbuckler. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: So when I was watching the credits for this movie,
Speaker 3: one of the weirdest things I noticed was the credit
Speaker 3: indicating that this is somehow based on a play for
Speaker 3: the stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was weird. It was similar to something we
Speaker 1: encountered with Doctor X, right, Yeah, but in this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the credit that reads like the credit for
Speaker 1: a play based on the play by John C. Mather
Speaker 1: and James Eastwood. And then James east Wood also has
Speaker 1: a screenplay credit, which because at first, when I was
Speaker 1: looking at just how it was listed on IMDb, I
Speaker 1: was like, well, maybe they say play, but they mean screenplay. No,
Speaker 1: it seems more more clear that this was a play.
Speaker 1: And then it was adapted into a screenplay. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is Mather's only film credit, while
Speaker 1: Eastwood also worked on the screenplay for such films as
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five's The Case of the Red Monkey, and
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six is Beyond Mombasa, which has Christopher Lee
Speaker 1: in it of a young Christopher Lee, but it starred
Speaker 1: seemingly mostly just a shirtless Cornell Wild and then also
Speaker 1: Donna Reed.
Speaker 3: Oh but let's not bury the lead. If there is
Speaker 3: one reason to watch this movie, it is our villain
Speaker 3: played by Patricia Lafon.
Speaker 1: That's right, she plays Naya. This is our martian visitor. E.
Speaker 1: Lafon lived nineteen nineteen through twenty fourteen. And yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is a really fun role of our vamping
Speaker 1: space lord here. And it's fitting because herr biggest film
Speaker 1: role outside of this, and I guess, probably being fair,
Speaker 1: probably her biggest screen role period was playing Empress Pompeia
Speaker 1: in MGMs Sword and Sandal blockbuster Quovadis from nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: That was a film that had Robert Taylor Peter Euston
Speaker 1: Off in it, and also an uncredited role as a
Speaker 1: chariot driver. We have Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee is just
Speaker 1: in the background, creeping around, uncredited with a goatee I learned,
Speaker 1: sometimes credited in at number of pictures from this era.
Speaker 3: This movie, I don't know if it's primarily about Nero,
Speaker 3: but it's Nero is a major character in an Emperor
Speaker 3: Nero and I think she plays a Queen of Rome.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, she's queenly. Yeah, you can look up footage
Speaker 1: and stills from it. She's in that. She's decked out
Speaker 1: in gold and this elaborate hairdoo. But she has that
Speaker 1: look on her face. She's got that smirk and those eyes.
Speaker 1: And I do have to say, like, if you look
Speaker 1: up images from Devil Girl from Mars, there are probably
Speaker 1: any of her performances. Yes, stunning outfit, stunning screen presence,
Speaker 1: but you're missing it. You're missing out on all the
Speaker 1: nuances if you don't see her alive in the scene.
Speaker 1: Because her her sneer has a life on its own.
Speaker 1: She's using her her eyebrows in very expressive ways. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a wonderful performance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in some ways you would say it's
Speaker 3: a it's a very emotionally flat performance, like she's supposed
Speaker 3: to play like a very like unfeeling, like a cold, imperious,
Speaker 3: unfeeling creature. But she is very expressive in like the
Speaker 3: way she raises her eyebrows at the pathetic attempts at
Speaker 3: heroism by earth men.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like sometimes you hear a criticism
Speaker 1: of a villain role and say, well, this is a
Speaker 1: real mustache twirling villain role, meaning that, yes, it's leaning
Speaker 1: into a whole bunch of stereotypes and and tropes regarding
Speaker 1: you know, the particular classic cinematic villain.
Speaker 3: And this over the top evil. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is very much similar case. But the
Speaker 1: thing is when a mustash is twirl just right on screen,
Speaker 1: it's satisfying. So this is definitely a performance that satisfies.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a pencil thin, eyebrow twirling role.
Speaker 1: Yes. So. Lafon also appeared in twenty three Paces to
Speaker 1: Baker Street in fifty six that had Van Johnson and
Speaker 1: Estelle Winwood in it. She was an actor of stage
Speaker 1: and screen, and she also seems to have had some
Speaker 1: connections to the London, Paris, New York fashion world.
Speaker 3: I love her every time. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 3: like Pooci. It's like every time Nya was not on screen,
Speaker 3: character should be asking where is Naya? When is she
Speaker 3: coming back?
Speaker 1: I felt the same way. Yeah, all right, I'm going
Speaker 1: to mention some of these male performers, though again they're
Speaker 1: the least interesting part about the film. For the most part,
Speaker 1: you have Hugh McDermott playing Michael, a journalist. This actor
Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh six through nineteen seventy two, Scottish actor,
Speaker 1: also known for Pimpernel's Smith from forty one in The
Speaker 1: Flying Swan from nineteen sixty five. Not familiar with either
Speaker 1: of those pictures.
Speaker 3: He plays a loudmouth journalist who I think is supposed
Speaker 3: to be likable, but he is not. He comes off
Speaker 3: as an absolutely insufferable jerk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but hey, now we have another of the female
Speaker 1: players in this film, and it's a really good one.
Speaker 1: We have Hazel Court playing Ellen, a fashion model.
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't introduced this concept yet, but the
Speaker 3: beginning of this movie is sort of like the prologue
Speaker 3: to the Canterbury Tales, where it's just a gathering of
Speaker 3: all of these randos into an inn somewhere and finding
Speaker 3: out all about like why is this person here? Oh,
Speaker 3: it's a surprise that they showed up. And she is
Speaker 3: also like sort of an odd puzzle piece amongst all
Speaker 3: the others here. She's like a fancy London fashion model
Speaker 3: who's all glitz and glam. She drinks tomato juice notably,
Speaker 3: and people repeatedly point this out throughout the movie. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think they even refer to her sometimes as Tomato
Speaker 3: juice Girl, and I think she's meant to be taken
Speaker 3: in the situation of the film as sort of a
Speaker 3: gem amongst the rough pebbles.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's fun. It's a fun performance. I feel
Speaker 1: like she breathes a lot of life and character into
Speaker 1: this role, probably more than was necessary, and also in
Speaker 1: a way that lets it gives you a hint of
Speaker 1: what's to come. Because a British actor here, but also
Speaker 1: essentially a horror queen of the late fifties early sixties,
Speaker 1: she'd go on to become a star of Hammer horror films,
Speaker 1: and she also worked with the likes of Roger Korman.
Speaker 1: Her credits include The Curse of Frankenstein from nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: The Mask of the Red Death from sixty four, The
Speaker 1: Man Who Could Cheat Death in nineteen fifty nine, Doctor
Speaker 1: Blood's Coffin in sixty one, and also nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: Is the Raven. On TV, she appeared on both the
Speaker 1: twilight Zone and Thriller, and I suspect we'll discuss her
Speaker 1: once again in an upcoming Halloween selection for Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: The final film was nineteen eighty one's The Final Conflict,
Speaker 1: in which she had basically a cameo. But this was
Speaker 1: the OMEN picture that had Sam Neil playing a grown
Speaker 1: up Damien.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, it's called The Final Conflict, but it's the
Speaker 3: Omen three, right, It's like the OMEN three colon the
Speaker 3: Final Conflict.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or sometimes I think it's just called the Final Conflict.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: You're right, Yeah, it's both. I think the demonic Sam
Speaker 3: Neil becomes President of the United States.
Speaker 1: I think something like that. I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: saw that one. I think I always saw the first one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, But she's not the only exciting female presence
Speaker 1: in the picture. We also have Adrian Corey, who plays Doris,
Speaker 1: a bar maid. So Corey lived nineteen thirty one through
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, Scottish born actor known for her roles, probably
Speaker 1: best known for roles in Doctor Schivago and A Clockwork Orange,
Speaker 1: along with such films as nineteen sixty five's A Study
Speaker 1: in Terror. This is a film that had John Neville
Speaker 1: as Sherlock Holmes taking on Jack the Ripper. And then
Speaker 1: she's also in a film that I know you've seen,
Speaker 1: but I haven't. I remember you talking about this one
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four is Mad House, starring Vincent Price and
Speaker 1: Peter Cushion.
Speaker 3: Looking this up, I don't know have.
Speaker 1: I seen this? Maybe you haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: Maybe if I said I've seen it, I don't remember
Speaker 3: seeing it now.
Speaker 1: Okay, well maybe we just will see it in the
Speaker 1: future at some point. But Corey was also in the
Speaker 1: fun Hammer Space Romp Moon zero two from nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: in a film from seventy two called Vampire Circus that
Speaker 1: I don't know much about, but with a title like
Speaker 1: Vampire Circus, you know that there's got to be something
Speaker 1: interesting in there.
Speaker 3: I would say that both Hazel Court and Adrian Corey
Speaker 3: do more with the roles they have in this movie
Speaker 3: than is actually there on the page.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they both like clearly, these are two actors
Speaker 1: who would go on to have much bigger roles and
Speaker 1: bigger pictures, and you can see why.
Speaker 3: Oh you know. I would also actually say that about
Speaker 3: mainly because this is just a really underwritten movie for
Speaker 3: the just you know, delicious weirdness of all the scenes
Speaker 3: where Nya is explaining her home planet, their and their
Speaker 3: plans and stuff. But other than that, it's it's the
Speaker 3: characters are kind of underwritten. But the guy who plays
Speaker 3: the Professor also does a little bit more with the
Speaker 3: role than you might have expected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's played by and acted by the name of
Speaker 1: I think I'm saying his last name Ryd could be wrong.
Speaker 1: Joseph Tomalty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 1: Tomalty. He lived nineteen ten through nineteen ninety five, Northern
Speaker 1: Irish novelist, playwright and character actor, and he was in
Speaker 1: at least I don't know the extent of these roles,
Speaker 1: but he is credited as having appeared in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight Tonight to Remember I Believe that's a Titanic movie,
Speaker 1: and nineteen fifty six is Moby Dick.
Speaker 3: So he plays Professor Hennessy. Yes, that's right, and he
Speaker 3: had I think, despite the fact that the movie is
Speaker 3: all really all Nya. The line that Rachel and I
Speaker 3: kept quoting back and forth at each other is one
Speaker 3: of his lines, the part where he says, I am
Speaker 3: a scientist. I believe what my brain tells me to believe.
Speaker 1: Oh that's not how it works. I love it.
Speaker 3: I also believe what my brain tells me to believe.
Speaker 3: I really have no choice.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see another I'm not including all of
Speaker 1: the because here are at least a half does another
Speaker 1: male characters?
Speaker 3: Way too many characters in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there is another one by the name of
Speaker 1: David who is a handyman, and he's played by James Edmund.
Speaker 1: James Edmund was a Canadian actor, probably best known for
Speaker 1: this film, but he was also in nineteen seventy four's
Speaker 1: Black Christmas, alongside one kind of forgets that. That had
Speaker 1: a pretty good cast. Black Christmas. It had Olivia Hussey,
Speaker 1: it had Ker Delay, Margo Kidder and John Saxon. I
Speaker 1: saw it many years ago.
Speaker 3: I remember it did not leave a good impression.
Speaker 1: But now it's kind of a kind of a nasty film,
Speaker 1: as I recall. But there's no argument with that cast.
Speaker 1: That's a good cast. Oh yeah, all right. On the
Speaker 1: music front Edwin Astley did the music. British composer of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety eight, worked in a
Speaker 1: lot of British action TV shows, such as The Saint.
Speaker 1: That's probably what he's most known for. He also did
Speaker 1: music for The Hammer adaptation of The Phantom of the
Speaker 1: Opera from sixty two starring Herbert Lohm, and a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight Jack the Ripper TV movie starring Boris Karloff.
Speaker 3: Now, one name that caught my attention from the credits
Speaker 3: for the wrong reason was it said that Patricia Lafon's
Speaker 3: costume was by Ronald Cobb, and I was like, Ron
Speaker 3: Cobb like from Alien and Raiders of the Lost Ark. No,
Speaker 3: it is a different ron Cobb, but also a second
Speaker 3: excellent Ron cob This world has at least two genius
Speaker 3: ron Cobbs in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a lot of fun to dive into
Speaker 1: because of Initially, when I did the scan of the
Speaker 1: people involved, I saw that credit too, and I saw
Speaker 1: this guy, Ronald Cobb, and I saw that he had
Speaker 1: no other film credits, so I thought, well, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a one off, but it's worth mentioning, and because
Speaker 1: the costume is great and clearly is one of the
Speaker 1: selling points of the whole picture. But looking into it
Speaker 1: a bit more, Yeah, this is a Ronald Cobb who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh seven, through nineteen seventy seven, and this
Speaker 1: guy worked primarily in theater and especially in cabaret during
Speaker 1: this time period. I ran across some of his watercolors
Speaker 1: for various costumes that he designed over the years, several
Speaker 1: of which seemed to be in the collection of the
Speaker 1: Victoria and Albert Museum. I included a link here for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: and also include these links in the blog post I
Speaker 1: do for this at im mutamusic dot com. I didn't
Speaker 1: find anything that looked like a sketch that he had
Speaker 1: put together for Devil Girls specifically, but oh wow, there's
Speaker 1: some really wild, imaginative, dark and ahead of their time
Speaker 1: I think kind of designs that he put together for
Speaker 1: these costumes.
Speaker 3: Right, So, these he has a lot of costume designs for,
Speaker 3: like it appears to be burlesque clubs of some kind
Speaker 3: in London in like the sixties and seventies. But they
Speaker 3: are not just your your standard sexy outfits. They are weird.
Speaker 3: Like one is kind of grim Reaper themed with like
Speaker 3: a big gallows and I don't even know what it
Speaker 3: has bats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's another one that has this like a
Speaker 1: flag with a pentagram on it, Like this really wild
Speaker 1: stuff that seems that, you know, you wouldn't expect to
Speaker 1: be emerging from this time period necessarily unless you're you know,
Speaker 1: really into I guess too, you know, or less costume
Speaker 1: design of the period. There's also a headdress that has
Speaker 1: something that looks like a like a kind of like
Speaker 1: a muppet goblin on top of it. It's really really cool,
Speaker 1: kind of almost it also looks almost like a camera.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's weird. I can't really put it
Speaker 1: all together. But you can find all these images online
Speaker 1: and the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. There
Speaker 1: are also some images. Apparently he did some of his
Speaker 1: designs for Murray's Club and SOHO back in the day,
Speaker 1: and so if you go to the website for Murray's Club,
Speaker 1: they have some of these watercolors as well for other
Speaker 1: designs that he did. Some of these are not as
Speaker 1: weird as the ones we're describing here, but they're still
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Now. The costume that that Naya has on
Speaker 1: in this picture, it's not nearly as as revealing as
Speaker 1: these various cabaret designs, but still you can see you
Speaker 1: can see some of the connections to this world, you know,
Speaker 1: like That's why it is perhaps a little more alluring
Speaker 1: than what you would normally see going on with costuming
Speaker 1: in pictures from this time period.
Speaker 3: No, the Devil Girl from Mars is dressed kind of
Speaker 3: like a cross between the astronauts in Planet of the
Speaker 3: Vampires and Batman, but with a burlesque TWI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, I read that writer John mather We referenced
Speaker 1: earlier later claimed in an interview that the suit was
Speaker 1: actually constructed by John Sutcliffe, a British fashion and fetish
Speaker 1: designer and photographer who worked a lot with leather and
Speaker 1: rubber and PVC, so lots of like catsuits and gas masks. However,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything of anything firm about his connection
Speaker 1: to this film, and there do seem to be some
Speaker 1: misconceptions about film projects that he is sometimes said to
Speaker 1: have been involved in. For instance, I think sometimes it's
Speaker 1: been said that he designed the cat suit that m
Speaker 1: appeal We wears in The Avengers. That doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be the case. But he did design the cat suit
Speaker 1: that Maryanne Faithful wears in nineteen sixty eight's The Girl
Speaker 1: on a Motorcycle, and I think that inspired the cat
Speaker 1: suit worn by him appeal, So I don't know where
Speaker 1: the truth lies and all of that. It seems like
Speaker 1: maybe it's a situation where yeah, Cobb designs it, and
Speaker 1: then they're like, well, somebody needs to build this thing,
Speaker 1: and someone's like, well, I know this guy named John,
Speaker 1: he's really into this stuff. He can make it come
Speaker 1: to life.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 1: Let's dive into the first twenty minutes of The Devil
Speaker 1: Girl from Mars.
Speaker 3: Really, I feel like the first twenty minutes of this
Speaker 3: movie is going to be more fun to discuss than
Speaker 3: to watch. And then it's a flip side once Naya
Speaker 3: shows up.
Speaker 1: What starts with the bank?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he starts with big Ben. I mean, how
Speaker 3: could you deny that? We see that, you know, there's
Speaker 3: like a title card a London film's international release, and
Speaker 3: then we see an airplane coasting through the clouds, then
Speaker 3: a whistling sound growing higher in pitch, and then boom,
Speaker 3: plane explodes in a stupendous fireball, and we see the
Speaker 3: title It's Devil Girl from Mars in block letters. Now,
Speaker 3: there were several things I thought were funny about the credits.
Speaker 3: There was seeing the name Ron Cobb, even though it
Speaker 3: was a different one. There was seeing that this was
Speaker 3: based on a play. But then the other funny thing
Speaker 3: that caught my attention is the producer credit screen. The
Speaker 3: producer get their own screen, and the screen makes it
Speaker 3: look like we're supposed to already know who the producers are.
Speaker 3: It says produced by the Danzigers, and then it's got
Speaker 3: two little signatures, like in handwriting Edward J. Danziger and
Speaker 3: what does it say Harry Lee Danziger. I have no
Speaker 3: idea who those people are, but like it it presents
Speaker 3: it as if they're like the Osman's or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I looked at it into them briefly. They apparently
Speaker 1: were very active producers at the time, American born brothers
Speaker 1: who produced many British films and TV shows in the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties. I'm not sure most of the titles
Speaker 1: they were involved with really resonated beyond their time, so
Speaker 1: I think it's it's unless you're really into pictures of
Speaker 1: this time period that you probably don't know who the
Speaker 1: dan Ziggers are. Devil Girl seems to be one of
Speaker 1: the best remembered productions from everything they put out. For example,
Speaker 1: along with perhaps The only film that maybe is a
Speaker 1: little more famous than this one would be the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six sci fi movie Satellite in This Sky. This
Speaker 1: one had Kirian Moore in it, who many out there
Speaker 1: may remember as the actor who played Pony in Darby
Speaker 1: O'Gill and the Little People. He was also in Crack
Speaker 1: in the World and Invasion of the Triffets.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen any of that.
Speaker 1: So ah, you haven't seen Darby Ogill. No, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a fun one. When St. Patti's Day rolls back around,
Speaker 1: you should watch that one.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, all right, Well, after the credits wrap up,
Speaker 3: we establish the setting of the movie, which is the
Speaker 3: Bonnie Charlie. It is a rustic country inn nestled upon
Speaker 3: the Scottish more, supposed to be somewhere in Inverness Shire,
Speaker 3: which is up in the highlands. And it's said to
Speaker 3: be wintertime, so it's cold, and this is a you know,
Speaker 3: a lonely, cozy little country house and inn. And the
Speaker 3: first thing we hear is a radio going so we
Speaker 3: go inside and the radio is saying, this is the
Speaker 3: BBC Home Service. Here is the news. It was announced
Speaker 3: by the Home Office today that the mysterious noise heard
Speaker 3: over a lonely part of Inverness Shire yesterday was caused
Speaker 3: by a supposed meteor falling to Earth. And here we
Speaker 3: meet a couple of characters. We meet Tommy the annoying Kid,
Speaker 3: and we meet Doris the barmaid. And of course she
Speaker 3: is going to be very busy in this movie because
Speaker 3: a major theme of Devil Girl from Mars is needing
Speaker 3: a drink.
Speaker 1: And granted, the characters in this film are put in
Speaker 1: exceptional circumstances, but it's still their intake of scotch suggests
Speaker 1: a daily, regular intake of scotch that seems a bit
Speaker 1: beyond what I would be comfortable with.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and the excessive intake of scotch begins long
Speaker 3: before any aliens appear on the.
Speaker 1: Same right, Yeah, they're already hard drinking before anything supernatural
Speaker 1: or out of this world occurs.
Speaker 3: So, you know, the radio's blabern on with exposition about
Speaker 3: an unidentified white aircraft seen floating in the sky over
Speaker 3: the Hebrides, and Tony the Kid is like, OI, what's
Speaker 3: a meteor? And Doris says, I don't know, but you know,
Speaker 3: let's say good job to the media for not landing
Speaker 3: on us. And then here comes Missus Jamison, who is
Speaker 3: Tommy's aunt, and she is the proprietor of the inn,
Speaker 3: and she kept reminding me of Maggie Smith. But her
Speaker 3: main characteristics are being suspicious of strangers, which is a
Speaker 3: very good quality for an innkeeper, and scolding her husband
Speaker 3: for having his seventeenth dram of Scotch. I can't remember
Speaker 3: if I've already flagged this or not. Maybe I have,
Speaker 3: but I just want to emphasize again. The owners of
Speaker 3: the inn are named Jamison, and the husband is apparently
Speaker 3: named Jamie Jamison.
Speaker 1: Wow, that'd be like if you had a character named
Speaker 1: Jack Jack Danielson.
Speaker 3: Jack Jack Danielson, or I think the professor's character name
Speaker 3: is Henny Hennessy. So anyway, Tommy the kid, he's sent
Speaker 3: to bed and Doris and Missus Jamison discussed the medior.
Speaker 3: Doris thinks it mighty romantic that it came all the
Speaker 3: way from outer space to land in their sleepy neck
Speaker 3: of the woods, and Missus Jamison is not impressed. She's
Speaker 3: just like, oh, a bit of rock from the sky.
Speaker 3: But after Missus Jamison leaves, Doris, the barmaid surreptitiously turns
Speaker 3: the radio back on. It's like she has a secret
Speaker 3: science news habit. And the radio says, Professor, Oh, okay,
Speaker 3: it's not Henny Hennessy, it's Professor Arnold Hennessee. The radio says,
Speaker 3: the well known astrophysicist has traveled north today to investigate
Speaker 3: the mysterious object, and we'll give a detailed report to
Speaker 3: the Home Office. So we've got the Jamisons, so we
Speaker 3: got the Hennessy's, and we know that their paths are
Speaker 3: going to collide. And you cut from here to two
Speaker 3: guys in a car in the dark. One is Professor
Speaker 3: Hennessy himself, and the other is a fast talking, wise
Speaker 3: cracking journalist named Michael Carter played by Hugh McDermott. Michael
Speaker 3: Carter is such an insufferable lout. I guess they've been
Speaker 3: driving around all day to find the mediaite. But now
Speaker 3: they are lost in Scotland, in the land of perpetual darkness,
Speaker 3: and they are unable to figure out the map that
Speaker 3: they're consulting. And then there's some really clunky expository dialogue
Speaker 3: where Carter says something like, you mean to tell me
Speaker 3: you spend your whole career plotting stars millions of miles apart,
Speaker 3: and yet you can't read a road map of Scotland.
Speaker 3: I really think they should have inserted a prize in there,
Speaker 3: like he should have said, you mean to tell me
Speaker 3: you won the Nobel Prize for plotting stars millions of
Speaker 3: miles apart. But Professor Hennessy reveals that he believes the
Speaker 3: whole investigation is a waste of time. Anyway, He says
Speaker 3: he doesn't believe it will turn out to be a meteor.
Speaker 3: He thinks it will be more probably turn out to
Speaker 3: be the engine cowling of an airplane.
Speaker 1: Well, let's hope he's wrong, because that sounds like that.
Speaker 1: That would be terrible for this film.
Speaker 3: That would be boring. Yes, we also get more exposition
Speaker 3: via the radio. The radio announcer says Robert Justin, who
Speaker 3: earlier today escaped from Sterling Prison, is still at large.
Speaker 3: His description is as follows, height five feet ten inches,
Speaker 3: fair hair. And then what do you know? Next thing
Speaker 3: we see as a guy, presumably the escaped prisoner, darting
Speaker 3: around between hiding places in the dark beside the road
Speaker 3: as the professor and the journalists passing their.
Speaker 1: Car, and he's so unremarkable looking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well when we first see him, he's got kind
Speaker 3: of a wild look in his eye. But he's also
Speaker 3: he's kind of blandly handsome, so you could probably tell
Speaker 3: he's going to turn out to be the hero.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't look he doesn't look menacing. So that's
Speaker 1: the that's the key, that's what that's the tail here.
Speaker 3: Do you think it's possible all these characters will make
Speaker 3: their way over to the Bonnie Charlie the end? Anyway,
Speaker 3: next thing is we see Doris the barmaid, and then
Speaker 3: mister and Missus Jamison doing some chores around the house
Speaker 3: while mister Jamison is trying to sneak off into the
Speaker 3: other room and she's like. Miss Jamison is like, where
Speaker 3: are you going? And he says, oh, I'm just going
Speaker 3: into the lounge and she says into the lounge bar
Speaker 3: you mean, well, you'll stay here if you're thirsty. There's
Speaker 3: plenty of water in the tap. So this is the
Speaker 3: ongoing dynamic between mister and Missus Jamison. He is always
Speaker 3: getting caught in an attempt to sneak away for draft
Speaker 3: of Scotch and Missus Jamison forbids it. Though I will
Speaker 3: say starting about halfway through the movie, he just starts
Speaker 3: getting away with consuming scotch and she just sort of
Speaker 3: like laughs about it, like, oh, there he goes again.
Speaker 1: He sees the opportunity. It's like alien visitation. This is
Speaker 1: my chance to just drink scotch NonStop without being fussed at.
Speaker 3: But Doris the barmaid instead goes off to the lounge
Speaker 3: where she hears a strange rapping at the door, and
Speaker 3: she opens it up, and what do you know, it's
Speaker 3: that escaped prisoner we saw earlier. And he comes in
Speaker 3: and she says Robert, and he says, no, it's not
Speaker 3: Robert anymore. It's Albert, Albert Simpson. Okay, so he was
Speaker 3: Robert justin but now he's going by Albert Simpson. And confusingly,
Speaker 3: this is how everyone will refer to him for the
Speaker 3: rest of the movie, even though they first introduced him
Speaker 3: by a different name. Okay, so what happened, Well, we
Speaker 3: find out quote Albert Simpson escaped from prison and Doris
Speaker 3: and Albert already have a relationship. In fact, they were
Speaker 3: in love, and while he was in prison, she promised
Speaker 3: to wait for him to get out, and she took
Speaker 3: the job in Invernesshire to be close, I guess to
Speaker 3: Sterling Prison where he was being held. But he escaped
Speaker 3: and here he is. Why was he in prison? We
Speaker 3: find out it is for murdering his wife, but he
Speaker 3: maintains that it was not murder, it was an accident.
Speaker 3: This is never really resolved. He just says it was
Speaker 3: an accident, and that's as much as we ever find
Speaker 3: out about it.
Speaker 1: That red flag just remains hanging there the whole time,
Speaker 1: flying in the breeze.
Speaker 3: I think we're meant to understand that he's telling the
Speaker 3: truth and he didn't really murder her. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like the film should have put in
Speaker 1: a little more leg work on that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least explained, like it doesn't go into how
Speaker 3: it was an accident or like why it was he
Speaker 3: was falsely accused. Yeah, maybe that would sell it a
Speaker 3: little better. I don't know, but anyway, Okay, so he's
Speaker 3: convicted of murdering his wife. He escapes from prison. He
Speaker 3: finds his old girlfriend at the end and he's like,
Speaker 3: hide me. But in the middle of them talking about
Speaker 3: how she needs to hide him, O, here comes missus Jamison.
Speaker 3: You know, Maggie Smith comes in basically, and and they've
Speaker 3: got to come up with a ruse really fast. So
Speaker 3: Doris is like, oh, this is a hiker. His name's
Speaker 3: Albert Simpson. He was out hiking, you know, in Scotland,
Speaker 3: and he dropped his wallet in a stream while he
Speaker 3: was trying to look at a fish. They say, and
Speaker 3: now he is lost and he needs to stay at
Speaker 3: the end and he will work for his keep. And
Speaker 3: Missus Jamison accepts this, but she's very suspicious of him.
Speaker 3: She says, I'm counting the spoons. Oh and you know
Speaker 3: what does Doris do? First thing? She's like, would you
Speaker 3: like a drop of something? So she pours him a
Speaker 3: scotch and she's got all these questions about his time
Speaker 3: in prison. She just keeps asking, like did you read
Speaker 3: a lot? You used to love to read? What was
Speaker 3: it like inside? And you can just see the pressure
Speaker 3: building up. He's like, stop, stop asking. Yeah and so
Speaker 3: and then Albert Simpson's like, okay, well, I got to
Speaker 3: know who all's here while I'm hiding out And Doris
Speaker 3: tells him this is confusing. She's like, the only people
Speaker 3: here are mister and Missus Jamison and their nephew Tommy.
Speaker 3: But then the rest of the scene is other people
Speaker 3: like coming in who she didn't list. So the first
Speaker 3: guy is this guy David, who appears to live and
Speaker 3: work at the end. He's kind of he's the tor
Speaker 3: go of the inn, you know, he's carrying wood around
Speaker 3: and stuff. And Doris confides that David gives her the creeps.
Speaker 3: But then she also says, oh yeah, and there is
Speaker 3: somebody else here. It's miss Prestwick. She is a gorgeous
Speaker 3: model from London. What she's doing in a place like this,
Speaker 3: I don't know. This, of course is Hazel Court playing
Speaker 3: Ellen Prestwick. And then we see her come down to
Speaker 3: the lounge where Jamie Jamison tries to flirt with her.
Speaker 3: He's being very inappropriate. He's like, oh, you're always pretty
Speaker 3: as a picture, and she's like doing a little fashion
Speaker 3: show for him in the hall. I don't know, it's weird.
Speaker 3: She's like, she's like talking about the outfit she's wearing
Speaker 3: as if it's in a fashion catalog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's kind of fun. Like he's,
Speaker 1: like I said, she's breathing a lot of life into
Speaker 1: this character. Yeah, fully inflating the character here.
Speaker 3: And then more hotel high jenks ensue Jamie keeps sneaking booze,
Speaker 3: and he says, my wife has the most unpatriotic contempt
Speaker 3: for her national beverage, and miss Jamison, Missus Jamison says,
Speaker 3: you should see him when he has a patriotic head
Speaker 3: in the morning.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, the professor and the journalist, they were the ones
Speaker 3: lost in the car. Well, they're done being lost on
Speaker 3: the road. They see a sign for a pub and
Speaker 3: they're like, let's go get a drink. So they pull
Speaker 3: up outside and they run in talking about how they're
Speaker 3: going to get quote, a couple of big scotches, and
Speaker 3: then they come in and there's more like can we
Speaker 3: accommodate them type hand ringing like we got with Albert
Speaker 3: Simpson earlier, and eventually missus Jamison informs them, was like, well,
Speaker 3: we're supposed to be closed for the enter right now.
Speaker 3: The rooms aren't ready, they're not in ship shape, but
Speaker 3: you can sleep there. She says the beds are good,
Speaker 3: and Rachel and I both reacted to that, like something
Speaker 3: about the Bonnie Charlie does not seem like it would
Speaker 3: have good beds. My impression is this place would have
Speaker 3: beds that are basically a piece of flagstone wrapped in
Speaker 3: wool that feels like barbed wire. And I don't know
Speaker 3: if you also got the same just uncomfortable vibes from
Speaker 3: the setting. Like I think inside this building, it's one
Speaker 3: of those places that feels like it would be somehow
Speaker 3: cold and stuffy at the same time, like it's too
Speaker 3: cold and too hot simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of those situations where you know that
Speaker 1: wooden bar that it probably has that situation going on
Speaker 1: where you have like the dust and the grime have
Speaker 1: kind of they're kind of one thing. Now this kind
Speaker 1: of like sticky like black film over everything, like you
Speaker 1: know that has to be the case here.
Speaker 3: Well, missus Jamison offers them something to eat, but Michael
Speaker 3: Carter says, what I need most is a drink. So
Speaker 3: they go and they get drinks and Jamie is trying
Speaker 3: to serve them, and there's more bickering about whether he
Speaker 3: will serve them drinks or not. As they settle in,
Speaker 3: Michael Carter, the journalist, begins obnoxiously hitting on Miss Prestwick.
Speaker 3: He's commenting on the fact that she's drinking tomato juice
Speaker 3: and he's like, not many girls drink tomato juice unless
Speaker 3: they're afraid of putting on weight. So he's like trying
Speaker 3: to do some kind of nagging pickup artist routine. And
Speaker 3: I was just thinking, when will the Martians kill this man?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately never he turns out to be one of the
Speaker 3: heroes of the movie. But then Professor Hennessy introduces himself
Speaker 3: and they decide to have another we scotch. And I
Speaker 3: think this is the scene where in the span of
Speaker 3: thirty seconds they like, go get a drink three separate times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gosh, there's just so much scotch drinking. And occasionally
Speaker 1: other liquids are suggested as possible beverages, possible liquids that
Speaker 1: could be andsumed, but generally everyone seems to be of
Speaker 1: the opinion and no scotch is the best.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They do sit down to have some dinner, to
Speaker 3: have some supper, which for which they're having scotch broth.
Speaker 3: And know, if you're not familiar, that is actually a
Speaker 3: type of soup. It is not just a term for
Speaker 3: hot scotch in a bowl. And one of the things
Speaker 3: they talk about at dinner is Jamie Jamison giving a
Speaker 3: passionate defense of the lockness monster. He's like, I will
Speaker 3: not have anyone speak ill of that fine creature. Yes,
Speaker 3: but can we explain the scene of Michael Carter blowing
Speaker 3: Albert Simpson's cover. So the escaped convict comes in, he's,
Speaker 3: you know, working for his stay. So he's like serving
Speaker 3: bread at the table, and then the journalist recognizes him.
Speaker 3: He's like, do you know who that is? That's not
Speaker 3: Albert Simpson, that's this other guy. And unless I was mistaken,
Speaker 3: I think we're supposed to believe that he recognizes him
Speaker 3: based on the description that was given on the radio earlier.
Speaker 1: I guess, though that is a very vague description. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess Michael Carter is a journalist though, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe he's seen a picture through journalism.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Oh, he just happened to cover this
Speaker 3: guy's trial or something.
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean, it's it's not explained anyway.
Speaker 3: The tension of this confrontation, when it's at its peak,
Speaker 3: it's suddenly interrupted by a cataclysmic event. There's like a
Speaker 3: shaking of the house, and it is the approach and
Speaker 3: landing of a flying saucer, which when they go outside
Speaker 3: they can't even get close to it because it's too hot,
Speaker 3: and this flying saucer, I'm gonna say the effect looks
Speaker 3: a little too good for the movie that it's in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is way better UFO, way better flying saucer
Speaker 1: than you might expect from this film, a film that
Speaker 1: is often One of the things that's often written about
Speaker 1: it is that it had a low budget. It's not
Speaker 1: a high budget affair. And also, you see enough films
Speaker 1: from this area, you see enough films with flying sauce
Speaker 1: in it, you get used to a certain level of cheapness.
Speaker 1: You know, you can have like some sort of a
Speaker 1: dinky model and some large tripods for characters to stand around.
Speaker 1: That's essentially all you need. And it can be fun,
Speaker 1: it can, but there's sort of a standard level of
Speaker 1: quality that you kind of accept things to hover around,
Speaker 1: and I feel like this flying saucer goes beyond that.
Speaker 1: It's it's got this, you know, it's got plenty of
Speaker 1: the elements of a standard's fifties, standard fifties flying saucer
Speaker 1: that you might come to to expect, but it also
Speaker 1: has this kind of different energy to it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's described as being hot, it portrayed as being hot.
Speaker 1: It has this kind of industrial atomic sensibility to it,
Speaker 1: and it has these like telescopic legs that come out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it has moving parts, and it seems to emit
Speaker 3: its own light.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's this is a really cool flying saucer model,
Speaker 1: I have to say.
Speaker 3: All right, So they all react to that in various ways.
Speaker 3: Mister Carter, the journalist runs to the telephone and I think,
Speaker 3: quite hilariously, just keeps like screaming into it, Hello hello, hello, hello,
Speaker 3: hello hello. And meanwhile Doris gets her convict boyfriend to
Speaker 3: hide in the attic. Others scramble around trying to get
Speaker 3: a car working or define a functional telephone, all to
Speaker 3: no avail. We get our first action scene. In our
Speaker 3: first scene seeing Patricia Lafon is NYA when the ship
Speaker 3: opens up and a ramp extends down out of the
Speaker 3: hull and we see Nia come out. She hasn't said
Speaker 3: anything yet. She's just silent and wearing all this shiny
Speaker 3: black leather with the skull cap. She looks very dangerous
Speaker 3: and she comes down the ramp and uh, oh, there's
Speaker 3: you know, there's David the ends the Bonnie Charlie's torgo
Speaker 3: wandering around outside and he collapses outside the ship and
Speaker 3: she just vaporizes him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is not a specimen that she thinks is
Speaker 1: going to help Mars out at all. So intantly vaporized
Speaker 1: leaves nothing but smoke and a pair of spectacles.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's just like a steaming patch of sod
Speaker 3: and the major tote glasses. But it's hard facts of life.
Speaker 3: She's looking for hunks and torgo here does not make
Speaker 3: the cut.
Speaker 1: This is in stark contrast to a ship of monsters, remember,
Speaker 1: because in that one, our females from Venus arrive. They
Speaker 1: encounter our male hero and they're like, oh, it's a
Speaker 1: male and they ask him. It's like, are you the
Speaker 1: prime specimen? Are you like the peak specimen for your species?
Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, I am.
Speaker 3: And they believe him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they may believe him in this She's like, no, now,
Speaker 1: this isn't it vaporize?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: What this is nineteen fifty four. I guess she'd be like,
Speaker 3: where is rock Hudson? Take me to your Rock Hudsons.
Speaker 1: Though interestingly, this film has no Rock Hudson caliber actress
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 3: So no, So that unfortunate thing happens to David, and meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the Professor and Michael Carter have been trying to fix
Speaker 3: up the phone in the car, but to no avail.
Speaker 3: It says if all of their Earth technology has been
Speaker 3: magically disabled, And so they come back inside and they're like, hey, Doris,
Speaker 3: fix us up a couple of big scotches, will you.
Speaker 3: That is a direct quote. But Doris can't fix them
Speaker 3: big scotches because she has been hypnotized. And this is
Speaker 3: something that will happen to multiple characters throughout the movie. Later,
Speaker 3: the escape convict, it gets hypnotized. The Martians appear to
Speaker 3: have some kind of like mind control ray and when
Speaker 3: somebody suggests do you think her catatonic state could have
Speaker 3: anything to do with the flying saucer outside, the Professor
Speaker 3: for some reason, is just categorically opposed to the idea
Speaker 3: that the flying saucer could have anything to do with it.
Speaker 3: He goes, I tell you that's absurd. But this is
Speaker 3: the scene where we meet Patricia Lavon. She suddenly throws
Speaker 3: the doors to the room open and comes inside, and
Speaker 3: here she is, folks. The alien commander is standing between
Speaker 3: the French doors, you know, cold and imperious, and this
Speaker 3: scene just rocks. There is something so unusual in a
Speaker 3: simultaneously funny and kind of spellbinding way. About the rhythm
Speaker 3: of the dialogue and this scene, the way it mostly
Speaker 3: consists of fairly short questions and answers, like the Earthlings
Speaker 3: will ask a question of the Martian and then she
Speaker 3: will answer in a short form, and the way she
Speaker 3: delivers her lines. I don't know if you know what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about, rob, but it just establishes this amazing
Speaker 3: rhythm that's so consistently weird and funny.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the rapport here is pretty great. And
Speaker 1: I also have to say the scene where suddenly she's there,
Speaker 1: Naya is there, emerging through these the French doors. There
Speaker 1: was something about this that, I mean, it's a visually
Speaker 1: captivating a scene, but it was tingling something in my memory,
Speaker 1: and then I realized what it was. It's Jim Henson's
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six film Labyrinth. Pretty early on when we
Speaker 1: encounter Jareth the Goblin King, he is standing. It's not
Speaker 1: exactly the same, but it's very similar, like these terrestrial
Speaker 1: door French doors or something, or windows that have been opened,
Speaker 1: and inside this opening you have this just exquisite character
Speaker 1: from another world in this amazing costume. That's, you know,
Speaker 1: bold and confident and sexy.
Speaker 3: I see exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So she comes in and the guys in the room
Speaker 3: ask her who she is. She says her name is Nia.
Speaker 3: They ask her where she's from. She says Mars. Professor
Speaker 3: Hennessy objects that it is preposterous that she could be
Speaker 3: from Mars. No way, and then she says, you men
Speaker 3: on Earth are not as we expect it. She's very disappointed,
Speaker 3: and Professor Hennessy says, we scientists were always skeptical about
Speaker 3: the possibility of life on Mars, but certainly nothing so human.
Speaker 3: And she asks him you are a scientist. He says yes.
Speaker 3: Then she says you are a very poor physical specimen,
Speaker 3: so cold, so mean. But then she just sort of
Speaker 3: shoves the professor out of the way, presumably because I
Speaker 3: don't know, she's trying to get a look at Michael Carter.
Speaker 3: I guess he's a better physical specimen. But Michael Carter's like,
Speaker 3: you speak English, and she says, of course you are English,
Speaker 3: aren't you. What other language should I speak? And then
Speaker 3: she does this weird hand gesture. I don't know what
Speaker 3: this is all about. I think maybe she's like turning
Speaker 3: off the hypnosis mode on Doris. And then she says
Speaker 3: that she in fact speaks all languages by picking up
Speaker 3: Earth Radio. They ask her, is this the first time
Speaker 3: Martians have landed on Earth? And she says yes. They
Speaker 3: ask why did she land here, and she says, it's
Speaker 3: a miscalculation. You see, she was trying to get to London,
Speaker 3: presumably to locate the stud district of London, but Earth's
Speaker 3: atmosphere was thicker than the spected and part of the
Speaker 3: ship was torn off and they were forced to land
Speaker 3: in Scotland, and the part of the ship being torn
Speaker 3: off explains the meteor from earlier. She says repairs are
Speaker 3: going to take about four earth hours and in the meantime,
Speaker 3: I guess she's probably just going to toy with them
Speaker 3: very cruelly. Now they ask her is she alone in
Speaker 3: the ship, and her answer is, according to the version
Speaker 3: I was watching in the subtitles that came with it,
Speaker 3: the answer is Johnny is with me. I have read
Speaker 3: elsewhere that the character she's referring to is actually named
Speaker 3: Chohnnie spelled Ani, but it sounds like they're every time
Speaker 3: she says it it sounds like Johnny, and the subtitle
Speaker 3: spelled it Johnny, so I don't know what to believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I read it somewhere as Chawnny, but when she's
Speaker 1: saying it in the picture, it's really hard to hear
Speaker 1: anything other than Johnny. But Chawnie would be a more
Speaker 1: fitting name, I think for an off world robot.
Speaker 3: Right, because Johnny is a killbot. She explains, john Fani
Speaker 3: is a mechanical man, a robot with many of the
Speaker 3: characteristics of a human. This is hilarious when you see
Speaker 3: him later, because he does he's not very much like
Speaker 3: a human. But she says, yeah, he's a refrigerator with
Speaker 3: arms and legs. But they but she says, oh, but
Speaker 3: he is improved by an electronic brain. And then here
Speaker 3: we got a bunch of voluntary technobabble from Naya. She
Speaker 3: just offers up explanations about how all of her stuff works.
Speaker 3: She says, the metal from which her spaceship is constructed
Speaker 3: can reproduce itself. And then, weirdly, I don't know why
Speaker 3: this is, but we see miss Prestwick outside the door,
Speaker 3: like listening in, like she's spying on them. But eventually
Speaker 3: she gets Fomo and just sort of comes into the room.
Speaker 3: But the professor and everybody arguing about this, do you
Speaker 3: realize what you've said? They've turned the inorganic into the organic. Okay,
Speaker 3: well we're about to get to the main premise. So
Speaker 3: they start questioning her why she's going to London. This
Speaker 3: is what Nia says. She says, many of your Earth
Speaker 3: years ago, our women were similar to yours today. Our
Speaker 3: emancipation took several hundred years and ended in a bitter,
Speaker 3: devastating war between the sexes, the last war we ever had.
Speaker 3: Henny here says, So you've had wars too. I was like,
Speaker 3: why would you ask that?
Speaker 1: Obviously she just said, they just said that.
Speaker 3: She just said that that. Nia says, all inhabited planets
Speaker 3: have had wars. Some have ended by wiping themselves out.
Speaker 3: For every new weapon invented, a defense was perfected until
Speaker 3: the ultimate weapon was developed, a perpetual motion shaane reactor beam.
Speaker 1: God, this has got to be peak technobabble, Like what
Speaker 1: is that even? And then how even I'm failing to
Speaker 1: imagine what that could be? Much less hallid is than
Speaker 1: utilized in an on planet battle. Queen two factions based
Speaker 1: on sex.
Speaker 3: Oh I mean, she explains a little bit. He's the
Speaker 3: Professor's like, tell me more. I want to know about
Speaker 3: the perpetual motion chain reactor beam and she says, as
Speaker 3: fast as matter was created, it was changed by its
Speaker 3: molecular structure into the next dimension and so destroyed itself.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I don't know if that actually helps me any,
Speaker 1: but that she's got more to say.
Speaker 3: The professor his comment on this is so there is
Speaker 3: a fourth dimension. But Nya explains more. She says, you know,
Speaker 3: after the War of the Sexes, women became the rulers
Speaker 3: of Mars, but now the male has fallen into a decline.
Speaker 3: The birth rate is dropping tremendously. For despite our advanced science,
Speaker 3: we still have found no way of creating life. I
Speaker 3: guess she means other than like standard sexual reproduction, which
Speaker 3: we assume is their method, though they're never explicit about that,
Speaker 3: so I don't know. But then Miss Prestwick she kind
Speaker 3: of challenged jiz Nia on this. She goes, so you've
Speaker 3: come here for new Blood, and I love the way
Speaker 3: Hazel Court here has this like defiant tone, like Miss
Speaker 3: Prestwick is feeling territorial, and she's like, you're not gonna
Speaker 3: steal my beloved earth schlubs. You know they belong here
Speaker 3: with us. But Nya just you know, she's not having
Speaker 3: any any defiance. She's like, yes, we're here to steal
Speaker 3: your males. We're going to kidnap your males and breed
Speaker 3: with them. But also we are here to test a
Speaker 3: newly invented organic metal quote of which my ship is
Speaker 3: built on Mars. Some think I will not return, that
Speaker 3: the metal is too unstable, but when I get back,
Speaker 3: we will build more spaceships. Meanwhile, I will select some
Speaker 3: of your strongest men to return with me to Mars.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's it's a dual mission.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's testing out the prototype
Speaker 3: metal and it's collecting Earthmen. And Michael Card of the
Speaker 3: Earthman says, and if I don't want to go with you,
Speaker 3: just assuming he's going to be picked, and Nia says
Speaker 3: there is no if. She says, she will take her
Speaker 3: pick of quote the Man and subdue London with the
Speaker 3: help of a nuclear paralyzer.
Speaker 4: Ray.
Speaker 3: So like the humans start arguing about this with each other,
Speaker 3: Miss Prestwick says to the professor, don't you understand that
Speaker 3: this thing from Mars can destroy all life. And then
Speaker 3: very funny. So most of the earth males don't want
Speaker 3: to go to Mars, but I thought it was funny
Speaker 3: here how the professor is like, well, hold on, now,
Speaker 3: we must think objectively about what is happening. He says,
Speaker 3: this is the turning point in the history of the world.
Speaker 3: Maybe you know, I think he's saying we need to
Speaker 3: hear her out.
Speaker 1: But it's also extra funny given how cold she was
Speaker 1: to him earlier. He's like, yeah, He's like, but but
Speaker 1: maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the one you should go.
Speaker 3: No, you're a very poor male specimen. But then, oh,
Speaker 3: but then one of the funniest parts of the whole movie,
Speaker 3: Missus Jamison comes into the room and she sees this
Speaker 3: lady here just dressed in this like crazy leather spacesuit,
Speaker 3: and Michael Carter says, Missus Jamison, may I introduce your
Speaker 3: newest guest, miss Nia. She comes from Mars. And then
Speaker 3: what does Missus Jamison reply?
Speaker 1: She says, oh, well that'll mean another bed. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it is one of the It's always kind of neat
Speaker 1: when in a film like this you have one or
Speaker 1: two lines that are legitimately intentionally funny. That was some
Speaker 1: good riding there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then she does a double take.
Speaker 1: By the way, Joe, you included here for me a
Speaker 1: screenshot of the of the character standing in front of
Speaker 1: the bar. Do you think those are all scotch bottles?
Speaker 1: Back there on the wall? They have like four, I
Speaker 1: don't know, shelves of liquor bottles, and I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: suddenly wondering, what are we looking at here?
Speaker 3: It's a lot of bottles, and I don't I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not seeing a lot of gin back there. It
Speaker 3: all looks like a brown liquor of various sorts.
Speaker 1: Scotch enthusiasts will have to let us know. I really
Speaker 1: only know my way around a couple of scotches.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though it's funny. I just remembered something when Rachel
Speaker 3: and I were watching this, you know, with all the
Speaker 3: characters that are named Hennessy and Jamison, When when Nya
Speaker 3: first came in and Rachel said, my name is cam PARI.
Speaker 1: That's good. It's a good riff.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 3: Suddenly, at this point in the movie, everybody gets agitated
Speaker 3: that they can't find David, the guy that she vaporized
Speaker 3: out on the lawn and they're like he's missing. And
Speaker 3: then they all turned to her and they're like, miss Naya,
Speaker 3: have you and she says, of course he was no
Speaker 3: stud muffin, so I killed him. And Michael Michael Carter
Speaker 3: gets really mad about this. They have to like him.
Speaker 3: He's like trying to punch her or something, and they're
Speaker 3: all holding him back.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they felt they needed to establish
Speaker 1: that they found him creepy earlier, like that. There was
Speaker 1: no payoff for that, Like, yeah, he never did anything
Speaker 1: that was creepy, there was no Sometimes you introduce the
Speaker 1: stereotypical creepy grounds keeper character because you want to have
Speaker 1: him be a suspect in the you know or something,
Speaker 1: or you know, or he's creeping around and happens to,
Speaker 1: you know, run a foul of the Jason or whatever
Speaker 1: is running around on the on the grounds. But in
Speaker 1: this case, he was just out getting wood. Like, why
Speaker 1: did it matter that he was creepy.
Speaker 3: He didn't actually do anything wrong. Yeah, you kind of
Speaker 3: gotta feel bad for David, Like, for all we know,
Speaker 3: he was a totally nice guy. He had no lines. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But anyway, here Naya leaves and she says, Okay, around
Speaker 3: this house, I've drawn an invisible wall. You can't get
Speaker 3: through it, so I don't even try to leave. I'm
Speaker 3: going to do repairs on my ship and I'll be
Speaker 3: back to kill you all and maybe take some of
Speaker 3: the strongest mans. And then the rest of the movie
Speaker 3: is just people coming and going back and forth from
Speaker 3: the ship like fifteen times. Uh Naya in a quite
Speaker 3: funny manner. In fact, keeps leaving and then coming back
Speaker 3: to the inn. And then there there are some more
Speaker 3: scenes between the humans that are I think trying to
Speaker 3: do character development, Like there is a scene where Michael Carter,
Speaker 3: the the really annoying journalist, and miss Prestwick fall in love.
Speaker 3: Like he ostensibly he comes up to her room at
Speaker 3: the hotel, knocking on the door with the excuse that
Speaker 3: he has come to see if she has any scotch.
Speaker 1: Like like they're old downstairs, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, they're clearly not. It's like, hey, I was
Speaker 3: wondering if there's any air in your room that I
Speaker 3: could breathe. I couldn't find any anywhere else. But if
Speaker 3: she invites him in and he's like, you got any
Speaker 3: scotch and she says no, but I've got some brandy, okay,
Speaker 3: and uh and so, and we get their backstories. Miss
Speaker 3: Prestwick talks about how she's in Scotland. Actually she doesn't
Speaker 3: volunteer this information. He does like a cold reading routine
Speaker 3: where he tells her her whole backstory just by I
Speaker 3: don't know, by like observing her and I guess it's
Speaker 3: all correct, you know. He figures out that she's in
Speaker 3: Scotland because she's she's hiding from a married man with
Speaker 3: whom she is having an affair. I think he is
Speaker 3: the fashion designer and she is his muse. And then meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Michael Carter explains his backstory is like He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've seen all the terrible things in the war zones,
Speaker 3: but now I'm done with all that. And then he says,
Speaker 3: now I'm letting my hair down, which was a laugh
Speaker 3: out loud moment because he does not have much hair
Speaker 3: to let down, right.
Speaker 1: Oh. But then there's also the invisible wall. This was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun because you have a Nya established
Speaker 1: that she was going to set a perimeter, an invisible
Speaker 1: wall to keep people from leaving. And again, these characters
Speaker 1: have been drinking Scotch non stop, and then you have
Speaker 1: the professor bumble in.
Speaker 3: Right, so they look out the window. Actually, before this, sorry,
Speaker 3: before this, Michael and miss Prestwick have a dialogue exchange
Speaker 3: that is so funny. It means nothing, but at one
Speaker 3: point he's just I guess he's just frustrated. He just goes,
Speaker 3: it's that thing out there, and then she says, it
Speaker 3: is there. Michael, Yeah, thanks thanks movie. Yes, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I remember. Now there is a spaceship outside and they're.
Speaker 1: Trying to also an invisible wall though, and.
Speaker 3: That's right, well maybe that's the thing they were talking about.
Speaker 3: I don't know, is it the spaceship or is it
Speaker 3: the robot or the spaceship. But so the professor comes back.
Speaker 3: He's got blood on his head now and they're like, Professor,
Speaker 3: what happened And he's like, well, I went out walking
Speaker 3: and then I crashed into the invisible wall. There really
Speaker 3: is an invisible wall. I thought it impossible by all
Speaker 3: that is known to science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I just found that also hilarious.
Speaker 3: I think this might be the scene with I believe
Speaker 3: what my brain tells me to believe, and.
Speaker 1: My brain ran into an invisible wall.
Speaker 3: Now Here we get the first of a couple of
Speaker 3: times where the people at the end try to figure
Speaker 3: out how to outsmart Naya. Like there's another scene later
Speaker 3: where they set literally set an electrical trap for her,
Speaker 3: like in the Thing from Another World, which doesn't work,
Speaker 3: but in this scene they try to. They find a
Speaker 3: gun and they're like, well, we can just shoot her
Speaker 3: when she comes in, and Naya makes a fabulous entrance.
Speaker 3: She like throws the doors open and steps in. And
Speaker 3: I wish I could like show you the listener out
Speaker 3: there a gif of this because it's it's such a
Speaker 3: wonderful step in move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very jerious from Labyrinth. Again, there's no owl,
Speaker 1: but it has that same energy.
Speaker 3: Yes, And they try shooting her with a revolver, but
Speaker 3: the bullets have no effect. The posture that Michael Carter
Speaker 3: does while he's shooting at her is so funny. He's
Speaker 3: got his non shooting hand tucked behind his back and
Speaker 3: he's just standing up straight with the gun sort of
Speaker 3: at stomach level, just going bang bang, And of course
Speaker 3: the bullets bounce off of Naya because you know, she's
Speaker 3: she's perfect, She's she's literally nothing could.
Speaker 1: Defeat her, absolutely right.
Speaker 3: She says, you pour demented humans to imagine you can
Speaker 3: destroy me with your old fashioned toy. What do you
Speaker 3: know of force? Force as we use it on Mars,
Speaker 3: I could control power beyond your wildest dreams. Come and
Speaker 3: you shall see. So she's going to give him demonstration.
Speaker 3: I love it when aliens give a demonstration of their
Speaker 3: power for a for a crowd of earth onlookers. And
Speaker 3: so they so she takes them out to the spaceship
Speaker 3: to show her robot Johnny, to show them what Johnny
Speaker 3: can do. So Johnny, he comes out. Johnny is gigantic.
Speaker 3: He is a refrigerator with arms and legs. His arms
Speaker 3: are kind of like made out of a stack of
Speaker 3: solo cups. His head is a police siren, and he
Speaker 3: walks around. He's slow moving, and he hates trees and
Speaker 3: he's gonna incinerate them and he vaporizes a bunch of
Speaker 3: stuff with his death ray while people watch. He does
Speaker 3: the tree, he does a car, he does a barn. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't want to mess with Johnny.
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty good robot design. I mean
Speaker 1: it's one of the it's kind of like the the UFO,
Speaker 1: kind of like the flying saucer in this film, where yes,
Speaker 1: it does match up with what you would expect from
Speaker 1: this time period Boxy, you know, sort of lumbering around,
Speaker 1: but overall well executed. I like how it's it's arms
Speaker 1: though you just described him as being kind of like
Speaker 1: stacked silo cups, but they kind of have that telescoping
Speaker 1: energy that matches up with the flying saucer. Well, like
Speaker 1: you feel like these are two things from the same
Speaker 1: design universe.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 1: And again, he's really tall, He's like fifteen feet tall.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, he's powering.
Speaker 3: She's like, he is like one of your Earth humans,
Speaker 3: but with an improved brain. And then Nya, let's see,
Speaker 3: oh oh, Albert Simpson, remember him, the convict. He's been
Speaker 3: hiding in the attic. Well, he sneaks out of the
Speaker 3: window along with Tommy the kid. They both climb down
Speaker 3: a tree and they're running around outside. Eventually Nya comes
Speaker 3: across them and she's like, ah, this Earth, Tommy, I
Speaker 3: will take this boy back to Mars with me. And
Speaker 3: Tommy literally goes goodie. He wants to go to Mars.
Speaker 3: But as you might guess, this turns into for the
Speaker 3: rest of the plot. A lot of it's like various
Speaker 3: adult men trying to find a way to rescue Tommy
Speaker 3: and destroy the spaceship. Again, there's the part where they
Speaker 3: try to set an electricity trap for Nya that does
Speaker 3: not work. At one point, Professor Hennessy tricks Naya into
Speaker 3: showing him the inside of her spaceship, and the way
Speaker 3: he does it by his by like appealing to her pride.
Speaker 3: He's like, we Earthlings also have powerful machines, and this
Speaker 3: makes her really mad. She's like, none equal to those
Speaker 3: of Mars. So she takes him to see the inside
Speaker 3: of the spaceship and he's gonna get a look at
Speaker 3: things to figure out what the weak point inside the
Speaker 3: ship is. And you know what he finds out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's You can imagine him being like like, oh
Speaker 1: you should You should see the self destruct mechanisms we
Speaker 1: have on earth ships and just like those are nothing.
Speaker 1: Look at this self destruct button. Yeah, this mechanism is
Speaker 1: far superior.
Speaker 3: But the design of the inside of the spaceship is cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I really liked it as well. It has some
Speaker 1: some cool angles in it. They do some nice things
Speaker 1: with shadow and light, and this leads me to another
Speaker 1: interesting visual connection. This is not one that I made.
Speaker 1: This is one that I ran across when I was
Speaker 1: looking at images from the film Jane Voss of sci
Speaker 1: fiast dot net that's sci sd I guess it looks
Speaker 1: like sciphist dot net anyway. This author made this particular comparison,
Speaker 1: pointing out that that the the inside of the spaceship
Speaker 1: matches up at least a bit with the meditation chamber
Speaker 1: of Darth Vader and the Empire strikes Back. They do
Speaker 1: a side by side comparison here, and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I one hundred percent am convinced. I think
Speaker 1: it's a nifty comparison. The author points out that Lucas
Speaker 1: certainly was inspired by older genre films and the and
Speaker 1: in making the Star Wars films, they did look to
Speaker 1: older cinematic images, so it's I don't know, it's any
Speaker 1: connection of nothing else. The author also points to the
Speaker 1: possible connections between Nia and doctor Frankenforter from the Rocky
Speaker 1: Horror Picture Show. Again, I'm not so sure personally, but
Speaker 1: maybe there's certainly some shared DNA between Nia and the
Speaker 1: likes of Jaff from Labyrinth or Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror,
Speaker 1: And I guess you could also make some comparisons in
Speaker 1: a different way between Nia and Darth Vader. I mean
Speaker 1: they're both you know, stunning characters clad in black, shiny
Speaker 1: you know, garments and armor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they both have the black like the shoulder
Speaker 3: pads and the and the smooth head piece and the
Speaker 3: foot the floor length cape.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know, maybe so at any rate,
Speaker 1: cool ship interior I like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So there's a bunch more intrigue. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to go into detail about everything else that happens,
Speaker 3: especially between the humans. There's one part where like the
Speaker 3: one of the humans gets hypnotized and then they gets
Speaker 3: into a fist fight with one of the other guys
Speaker 3: and they argue about how to defeat the alien in
Speaker 3: the end, but ultimately the movie ends with Albert Simpson,
Speaker 3: the convict, doing a brave act of heroic self sacrifice
Speaker 3: to use the information gained by the professor about the
Speaker 3: weak point on the ship and to save the day
Speaker 3: for Earth.
Speaker 1: It's a fun ending because, on one level, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess we were supposed to think this as well,
Speaker 1: because we see him get on the ship. He boards
Speaker 1: the ship with Naya, and the ship takes off and
Speaker 1: again wonderful flying saucer effect. It feels dangerous and you know,
Speaker 1: almost almost explosive, and it takes off and it's ascending
Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere. It's going to leave her this atmosphere,
Speaker 1: return to Mars, and we know what he is supposed
Speaker 1: to do. He is supposed to hit that self destruct.
Speaker 1: He's supposed to make the ship explode, and we already
Speaker 1: have a built in kind of they don't really dwell
Speaker 1: on this, but she established earlier that the other Martians
Speaker 1: think that the ship won't survive the trip, so there's
Speaker 1: almost like a guarantee if they can only blow this
Speaker 1: ship up, they're not expecting her back. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's like this guy escaped from prison and
Speaker 1: his biggest his plan consisted of, well maybe we can
Speaker 1: I can flee to Ireland. But now like he's got
Speaker 1: a chance to flee the planet, he can flee the
Speaker 1: terrestrial legal system entirely and go to Mars, and yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe he's going to end up in a eating pod
Speaker 1: somewhere with a with a you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: a sensor stuck in his brain, but hey, at least
Speaker 1: he's not in prison or in Ireland doing whatever he
Speaker 1: was planning to do in Ireland. So there's kind of
Speaker 1: this tension building as you watch the ship go up.
Speaker 1: It's like, is he gonna betray everyone out of his
Speaker 1: own self interest or is he going to sacrifice himself
Speaker 1: for Earth? And then suddenly the ship does explode. But
Speaker 1: this is great because again, watching a movie from this
Speaker 1: time period, you have certain expectations for that explosion. You
Speaker 1: kind of expect, you know, a sort of a dynamite
Speaker 1: explosion in the sky, but no, instead you get this
Speaker 1: really cool, kind of like underwater smoke explosion, which is
Speaker 1: extra nice here in black and white, and it looks
Speaker 1: really super creepy, like, indeed, like a dangerous piece of
Speaker 1: advanced technology from another world just blew up in our atmosphere,
Speaker 1: ripped a hole. Perhaps in reality, you know, it looks
Speaker 1: like it's created a stain the sky that's going to
Speaker 1: stick around for quite some time. But indeed, he came through,
Speaker 1: He saved the Earth, and the alien threat has been
Speaker 1: destroyed or maybe just avoided for a little while. The
Speaker 1: Martians maybe won't come back to Earth for a few decades.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I agree that explosion looks really cool, and it
Speaker 3: actually I think the way the explosion looks kind of
Speaker 3: unusual maybe relates to something a scene we didn't actually
Speaker 3: talk about, the one where Naya like folds herself into
Speaker 3: the fourth dimension and disappears.
Speaker 1: She becomes blurry and they're like, ah, the fourth dimension.
Speaker 1: This is another scene where she's like basically just showing
Speaker 1: off how great Martian technology is.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I'd say in the end, Devil Girl
Speaker 3: from Mars is great fun. I do recommend it. I
Speaker 3: would also say stick around at least until Nya shows up.
Speaker 3: It will drag for the first twenty twenty five minutes
Speaker 3: or so, but once Nya's on screen, it's a hoot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one's a lot of fun. Again, some great
Speaker 1: design work in here, some fun performances, you know, some
Speaker 1: surprisingly good effects and costuming that in many ways, despite
Speaker 1: the budget, despite the time period, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it feels very ahead of its time. The ending's pretty solid,
Speaker 1: though part of me still thinks that Scotland should have
Speaker 1: surrendered and become a breeding colony from Mars. I think
Speaker 1: I think Nia ultimately she made a good show of force.
Speaker 1: She was busting out just a lot of just cold
Speaker 1: facts on these poor earthlings. So maybe they should have
Speaker 1: gone in the other direction, but still hard to argue
Speaker 1: with the solid ending.
Speaker 3: That scene where she explains about the negative condensity is just.
Speaker 1: Oh so much quality technobabble in this one. I wonder
Speaker 1: is there still technobabble of this quality in sci fi
Speaker 1: films today?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I feel like, unfortunately the
Speaker 3: direction has gone more into just like not saying as
Speaker 3: much or trying to make it more at least, so
Speaker 3: am I realistic or plausible or just referencing things that
Speaker 3: have no relationship to real words? You know that it
Speaker 3: might as well be magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you just I guess nowadays you can you
Speaker 1: see a lot of the casual invocation of quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: or nanobots, and that explains everything. They're like, yeah, Tony
Speaker 1: Stark's power armor, it's basically magic. It just melts away
Speaker 1: into nothing, It crawls inside of I guess, like a
Speaker 1: little pocket in its skin or something. It comes back
Speaker 1: out again and then it's everywhere and it's shooting rockets.
Speaker 1: Like don't don't, don't worry about it. It's just it's
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics. It's nanobots. It all works out. Don't worry carbs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just carbon nanotudes. That's all you need to know.
Speaker 1: But they didn't have that excuse back in the old day.
Speaker 1: You had to work a lot more to create quality technobabble.
Speaker 3: You had to come up with phrases like a perpetual
Speaker 3: motion chain reactor beam or the negative condensity.
Speaker 1: Oh so good. All right, we'll go ahead and close
Speaker 1: it out here, But obviously we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: everyone out there if you have thoughts on Devil Girl
Speaker 1: from Mars or any of the players in this film,
Speaker 1: or or films in a similar genre. Yeah, right in.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from if you have memories of
Speaker 1: catching this film on TV back in the day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: We're always always interested to hear those stories. And in
Speaker 1: the meantime, Yeah, we're primarily a science podcast with core
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we do
Speaker 1: weird house cinema here. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 1: I do blog posts about these episodes at simmutamusic dot
Speaker 1: com and if you use letterbox, that's L E T
Speaker 1: T E R bo x D dot com. Well you
Speaker 1: can find us on there. Our username is weird House.
Speaker 1: We maintain a list of all the movies we've covered
Speaker 1: so far, and sometimes we'll include a preview of what
Speaker 1: we're about to cover as well.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other two,
Speaker 3: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuffdblow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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