Patricia Laffan as Nyah in the kinky sci-fi classic
Devil Girl from Mars (dir. David MacDonald, 1954)
"They're scared of girls in the war of the worlds ..."
I.
Some films you have to see to believe; and Devil Girl from Mars (1954), starring Patricia Laffan, is one such ...
II.
A black-and-white British sci-fi, produced by the famous Danzinger Brothers [1], Devil Girl from Mars tells the story of Nyah, a stern but alluring alien dominatrix dressed in a shiny, black PVC costume [2], whose mission is to acquire Earthmen for breeding puposes; her home planet's male population having been severely depleted during a war of the sexes.
Whilst open to the idea of a rational negotiation, Nyah is prepared if necessary to use advanced technological force - rayguns and robots - to accomplish her mission and thereby secure the future of her race.
Intending to land in London, damage to her spacecraft - caused when entering the Earth's atmosphere - obliges Nyah to land instead outside a remote Scottish village, surrounded by moorland. Making her way to the public inn, she encounters a small cast of colourful characters, including an astrophysicist, a journalist, an escaped convict (in love with Doris the barmaid) and a fashion model [3].
The inn's landlord is played by everybody's favourite Scottish actor, John Laurie, who is perhaps best remembered today (despite a long and impressive film career) as Private Frazer from Dad's Army (1968-1977); sadly, he doesn't anticipate his later TV role and declare the above to be doomed, even when Nyah is threatening to kill them all, with the assistance of Chani, her menacing automaton.
To cut a long story short - although, actually, the film is only 77 minutes in length - the escaped convict proves to be the hero of the hour, successfully sabotaging Nyah's flying saucer after take off and sacrificing himself in order to save the men of Earth from a fate worse than death; i.e., becoming sex slaves on Mars to a race of cruel superwomen, with a penchant for PVC and BDSM ... [4]
III.
Obviously, almost everything about this film - made on an extremely low budget - is poor; the acting, the dialogue, the sets, the special effects, etc. And yet, paradoxically, as one critic said at the time: "There is really no fault in this film that one would like to see eliminated. Everything, in its way, is quite perfect." [5]
And its way is - to use the slightly tiresome trio of words that have been central within critical discourse for some time now - queer, kinky, and camp. In their discussion of the film, Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane emphasise the perverse dynamic [6] at play within the film and how such has (supposedly) political implications.
Nyah, they claim, is a "genuinely shocking figure in the staid world of British film-making of the time"; one who imparts an "eroticised threat to a patriarchy that was increasingly troubled in the post-war years", which is why Devil Girl from Mars is, therefore, "not only a camp classic but an ideologically significant moment in 1950s British cinema [7].
Notes
[1] Edward and Harry Lee Danzinger were American-born brothers who produced many British films and TV shows in the 1950s and early '60s, thereby having a significant role in shaping the popular imagination of movie goers and TV viewers during this period.
[2] I'm guessing it wouldn't be leather, as it's hard to imagine Martian cows, but I'm not sure and it could well be that Patricia Lafflan's costume - designed by Ronald Cobb - features both leather and vinyl elements.
[3] I appreciate that readers who have not seen the film or checked out the IMDb page - click here - will think I'm making this up, but I can assure them I'm not. And as it says in the trailer, this is a story that might yet be true!
[4] Whether this atones for the (accidental) killing of his wife for which he was convicted, is debatable. As is whether all Earthmen would thank him for his actions; I know quite a few who would have happily returned with Nyah to Mars and submitted of their own free will to a life as stud males servicing nubile alien females.
[5] Gavin Lambert, review of Devil Girl from Mars, in The Monthly Film Bulletin, Vol. XXI, No. 240 (1 January 1954), p. 83.
[6] The 'perverse dynamic' is a theoretical concept developed by Jonathan Dollimore in Sexual Dissidence (1991). It refers to the production of perversion from within the very social structures that often seek to deny such. The pervert is thus revealed not to be a remote alien being, such as Nyah, but one of us after all.
[7] Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane, The British 'B' Film (BFI / Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 212. Readers will rightly detect my scepticism about such claims of 'ideological significance' and sexual radicalism.
To watch the trailer to Devil Girl from Mars, click here.
And for those who simply must watch the whole film, it's available on YouTube: click here.
Musical bonus: Bow Wow Wow; 'I Want My Baby on Mars', Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980): click here.
