Carte-De-Visite of the Week #5 Friese-Greene

Posted on February 22, 2015February 1, 2018 by James

This attractive portrait was the work of William Friese-Greene (7 September 1855 – 5 May 1921), whose business as a portrait photographer has largely been eclipsed by of his fame as a pioneer cinematographer.

He was born plain William Green in Bristol on 7 September 1855 and became an apprentice to photographer Maurice Guttenberg at the age of fourteen.

Plaque commemorating Friese-Greene’s birthplace, erected in 1955.

He spent six years at Guttenberg’s premises at 67 Queens Road before branching out on his own, opening his own studios in Bristol, Bath, Plymouth, London and Brighton. In 1874 he married Swiss girl Helena Friese and added her maiden name to his own to give it a more distinctive ring. Between 1875 and the mid 1880s he produced a number of elegant designs for the back of his CDVs:

In Bath he met John Roebuck Rudge, a manufacturer of magic lanterns who had been experimenting with ‘animated photography’ since the early 1870s. He and Rudge began collaborating on a ‘biophantic lantern’ that produced the illusion of moving pictures by projecting a series of glass slides in rapid succession. In 1885 he moved to London and opened two photographic studios with Alfred Esmé Collings. Here he continued his work on motion pictures, trying out his ideas with oiled paper and celluloid film. His growing obsession with the work led him to neglect his photographic businesses, and he was declared bankrupt in 1891. Undeterred, he pressed on with devising further prototypes including a twin-lens projector and a two-colour process that was later developed as Biocolour by his son Claude Friese-Greene (1898-1943) a successful cinematographer.

Ray Allister (Muriel Forth) wrote a rather romantic biography Friese-Greene: Close-up of an inventor (1948) which was adapted for the screen in 1951 with Robert Donat playing the photographer. The release of The Magic Box coincided with the 1951 Festival of Britain and the movie is full of patriotic fervour, portraying Friese-Greene as the inventor of moving-pictures (as distinct from any French pretenders such as the Lumieres or Auguste Le Prince) and showcasing an amazing cast of British stars including Richard Attemborough, Laurence Olivier, Dennis Price, Margaret Rutherford, Michael Redgrave, Sybil Thorndike, Peter Ustinov…etc etc. It’s sentimental and uncritical, but an enjoyable watch for all of that – and no doubt Friese-Greene himself would have savoured the lush Technicolor tones of Jack Cardiff’s cinematography.

By way of contrast (the sepia tones of all three images are rather faded with time) , here are a few more of my Friese-Greene cartes-des-visites as a final reminder of his earlier career:

Scattered Thoughts on ‘The Elephant Man’

Posted on January 28, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

Poster for ‘The Elephant Man’ (1980)

It has been many years since I last saw The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980), and a considerable time too – although somewhat less – since I last sat in a cinema with tears in my eyes. Last night I revisited both experiences, thanks to a special screening of the film as part of Exeter University’s Screentalks series. What follows below is just a series of scattered thoughts and impressions, written without the usual care applied to my blog posts.

Sometimes The Elephant Man is described as an anomaly in Lynch’s oeuvre, its period setting, factual basis and star-studded cast distancing the film from the highly original and darkly surreal narratives of his other projects. Such an opinion seems convincing on paper, even in conversation, but when watching the film on the big screen one cannot fail to be impressed by the powerful motifs familiar from other David Lynch movies: the bleak monochrome industrial landscape and off-screen synthesised drones of Eraserhead (1977), the use of dream sequences and visions reminiscent of Wild at Heart (1990) or an anxiety about the infernal worlds that lie beneath and behind the respectable facades of society, disturbingly portrayed in Blue Velvet (1986.)

In her introductory talk, Corinna Wagner drew attention to the Gothic elements of the film, including the preoccupation with dark secrets, with what is hidden behind the surface. Episodes during Merrick’s early period in the hospital evoke Gothic tropes, such as the ‘madwoman in the attic’ of Jane Eyre or the ‘horror behind the door’ of Bluebeard.

The threat of ‘what lies beneath’ is depicted quite literally in several sequences, where the camera appears to drop beneath the streets of London to glimpse a labyrinthine network of tunnels and serpentine pipes, shadowy chambers in which we occasionally spy blackened half-naked men slaving away in fiery pits or labouring over mysterious Victorian machines, the purpose and function of which remain obscure. Again, these sequences recall the lady in the radiator in Eraserhead but also the unnerving opening shot in Blue Velvet when Lynch shows us the subterranean horrors that lurk beneath the white picket fences and smiling firemen of small-town America.

One might argue that there was enough horror within damp, dank, smoke-filled squalor of industrial London, without the need for any further Gothic mystery – but it was growing anxiety about such urban nightmares that encouraged authors to use cities as their setting for ghastly tales. Eighteenth century Gothic stories contrasted the civilization of the city with the dangers of the countryside, a place under the sway of strange customs, primitive superstitions, lawless brigands and feudal tyranny, not to mention unmapped forests, inhospitable terrain and wild animals. Technological progress in the Victorian era may have brought a degree of enlightenment, but at what cost?

Near the beginning of the film, we see Dr Treves (Anthony Hopkins) operating on a man who has been injured in a machine accident – another sign that modern technologies brought new dangers as well as benefits. He remarks to his colleague that they will be seeing many more of these injuries in the future, one fatal drawback of machines being that ‘you can’t reason with them.’ There is a sense here that man is caught between two contrasting, inhuman threats: the irrationality of primitive nature (darkness, wild beasts, madness and the like) and the irrationality of modern technology. Despite his attempts to master them, ultimately he cannot claim to control either. Many of the classic Gothic tales contemporary with the period in which The Elephant Man is set – The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1885), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Dracula (1897) blend modern science and the supernatural within contemporary urban settings. Darwinian theories about evolution may have seemed daringly progressive, but they were backward-looking too: for if modern man had evolved as part of a long and gradual process, then what distinguished him from animals was a matter of degree rather than a distinction in kind. Surely such a mutation could move in the opposite direction as well?

The Pig-Man (Buster Brodie) in ‘Island of Lost Souls’ (1932)

The title The Elephant Man is an obvious indication of anxieties about transgressing boundaries between man and beast. Similar fears played out in H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), in which a crazed scientist attempts to create humans through surgical operations on animals. Characters included The Dog-Man, The Leopard-Man and The Ape-Man. It was made into a film, The Island of Lost Souls (Erie Kenton, 1932), starring Charles Laughton as Dr Moreau and also featuring Bela Lugosi – emphasising Paramount’s wish to link the film with Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein movies from the previous year. The possible fusion of man and beast is further alluded to in The Elephant Man by the animal costumes worn by the performers in the theatre show attended by Merrick. While playing with the notion of the ‘noble savage’ there is an obvious contrast made between Merrick’s gentle, civilised soul trapped in a deformed body, and the bestial, inhuman behaviour of porter Jim (Michael Elphick) and his able-bodied friends. This is also paralleled in the kindness shown Merrick by the dwarves and ‘circus freaks’ in Belgium, who join forces to free him from his cage and help him return to England. It’s all very reminiscent of Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932) – which incidentally starred Leila Hyams from Island of Lost Souls – in which the murderous deceptions of the able-bodied trapeze artist and strongman are defeated by the humanity and kindness of the deformed performers (dwarves, amputees, a ‘bird-woman’ and Siamese twins – played by Violet and Daisy Hilton who feature in my book A Carnal Medium.) Lynch’s films, of course, have frequently included characters with physical disabilities – such as the main character in The Amputee, the radiator-lady in Eraserhead, Ed (Blue Velvet), Juana (Wild at Heart) or Arnie (The Lost Highway.)

I wrote a little about Victorian freakshows in a previous post, and The Elephant Man makes the same point as I did: much as we like to distance ourselves from the insensitive vulgarity of those showground spectacles, modern media is not really that different in its commercialisation of all manner of forms of human tragedy, and we as audiences often share equal guilt in our consumption. In the film, Treves’ conscience begins to trouble him after visitors start flocking to see Merrick at the hospital: he recognises the truth of the accusation of hypocrisy made by Merrick’s previous ‘mentor’, the showman Bytes (Freddie Jones) – are not both men, in their own way, exploiting Merrick for their own ends?

What sort of man was Treves? There is actually a copy of his December 1923 obituary in the scrapbook that I wrote about in last week’s blog post. Reference to ‘The Elephant Man’ appears in the second half of the tribute.

Treves and Merrick first met in November 1884, and it is not hard to equate his rapid rise thereafter with the publicity generated by their association. By 1902 the respectable doctor had been granted the rank of baronet, and this surely shaped his perspective on the events of the 1880s. The film claims to be based on Treves’ 1923 memoir, The Elephant Man and other Reminiscences, and the depiction of London’s ‘lower’ classes is far from flattering. Recently I came across Raphael Samuel’s essay ‘Modern Gothic: the Elephant Man’ in Theatres of Memory (1994) which dissects the use of class stereotypes in the film, and argues that Lynch has in fact created a ‘fairy tale in documentary form.’ The Elephant Man is unashamedly moralising and sentimental, playing with our emotions sometimes in ways we might associate more with the director of E.T. than Eraserhead, and the fairytale element is impossible to deny. One cannot watch the scene with Merrick and famous actress Madge Kendal (Anne Bancroft) without being reminded of Beauty and the Beast…

...which reminds me that the next Screentalks event is a screening of Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête (1946) on Monday 9th February. I’m looking forward to that already.

Piper Laurie – Happy Birthday!

Posted on January 22, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

It is hard to equate the photograph below with the puritanical character of Margaret White in Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) with her negative opinions about ‘dirtypillows.’ Today’s blog post looks at the career of Piper Laurie, who was born in Detroit on this day in 1932.

Piper Laurie making her debut in Universal’s family comedy ‘Louisa’ (Alexander Hall, 1950) in which she played Ronald Reagan’s daughter

Born Rosetta Jacobs, she moved with her family to LA when she was six, and her acting career began with a few bit parts at Universal Studios, to whom she was eventually contracted in 1949. After the studio changed her name to Piper Laurie, she had her first big success with Louisa (Alexander Hall, 1951) in which she starred opposite Charles Coburn and Ronald Reagan.

Another Universal publicity photograph

Several other supporting roles followed in the early 1950s, including pairings with the likes of Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, but dissatisfied with the work she was getting, Piper upped sticks and moved to New York. Here, she spent three years at drama school, developing greater depth as a character actress. Her experience and maturity was further boosted by appearing on stage and in live television dramas on Playhouse 90 and Studio One.

She was lured back to Hollywood to play Paul Newman’s depressed girlfriend Sarah Packard in The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961.) Her strong performance as the tragic alcoholic short-story writer – blending sadness, bitterness, fragility and a sense of desperate inner strength – earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress – the first of three Academy Award nominations, none of which (to the everlasting disgrace of the panels) she would win.

As Sarah Packard in ‘The Hustler’ (1961)

Despite the critical success of The Hustler, Laurie stayed off the big screen for the next fifteen years, moving out to live in Woodstock with her husband – film critic Joe Morgenstern – and limiting herself to television and stage work while raising a family. She returned in 1976 with Brian de Palma’s Carrie, delivering another intensely theatrical performance that – as with Sarah Packard – gave much-needed depth and vulnerability to a character that could easily have been a two-dimensional caricature. She was nominated for an Oscar, but once again was unsuccessful, while Sissy Spacek – who played Carrie – went off with the award for Best Actress. The two actresses were reunited almost twenty years later in The Glass Harp (Charles Matthau, 1995), playing sisters Dolly and Verena Trumbo in Truman Capote’s gentle tale of small town life in the 1930s.

With Sissy Spacek in ‘Carrie’ (1976)

Unsurprisingly, offers to play maternal roles came in thick and fast after Carrie. Although some of these were for domineering or scary mothers, such the Agatha Christie mystery Appointment with Death (1988) and the giallo thriller Trauma (Dario Argento,1993), more serious work was also on offer: she got her third Oscar nomination for her performance as the mother of deaf girl Sarah Norman in Children of a Lesser God (Randa Haines, 1986.) As one might expect from a film about deafness, even though Laurie’s character can hear, she expresses an inordinate amount of meaning and emotion through subtle body language.

As Mrs Norman in ‘Children of a Lesser God’ (1986)

As the years flowed on, Laurie graduated to playing grandmothers in films such as The Dead Girl (Karen Moncreiff, 2006), Hounddog (Deborah Kampmeier, 2007) – both of which are rather too reminiscent of Margaret White repeat performances – and Hesher (Spencer Susser, 2010), as well as finding time to direct a short film, Property (2006)

Although the above survey gives some idea of the range of her talents, none of her performances was as bizarre as her role in the first two seasons of David Lynch’s television drama Twin Peaks. The first season was normal enough (relatively speaking of course – this was Twin Peaks), with her playing the part of Catherine Martell, the vengeful wife of Peter Martell (Jack Nance) who found the body of Laura Palmer. At the end of season one she disappeared in a blazing timber mill, and when the second season opened in September 1990 without Piper Laurie’s name on the credits, most people assumed her character had died and Laurie had left. However, in a characteristically Lynchian twist, kept secret from both the audience and cast, both were in fact present. On the set was an actor named Fumio Yamaguchi who spoke barely a word of English, and was playing the part of Japanese businessman Mr Tojamura. This was in fact Piper Laurie, dressed in a suit and disguised in heavy make-up including a black wig and moustache.

Twin Peaks will be back on the small screen in 2016, with stars including Kyle McLachlan and Sheryl Lee confirmed as returning for a new nine-episode series to be co-written and directed by David Lynch. There has been no mention of Piper Laurie returning, but then again – the same could be said of season two…

Many Happy Returns!

Camille Clifford (1885-1971), Gibson Girl – A Trio of Postcards

Posted on December 19, 2014February 1, 2018 by James

Postcard #1

I’m always drawn to postcards showing old cameras or photography, and it was the image above that got me collecting postcards of Belgian-born theatre star Camille Clifford. Her acting career was brief – barely four years (1902-6) – and it was her association with the popular ‘Gibson Girl’ image that made her famous.

In the 1890s, sketches of young women by Charles Dana Gibson began appearing in periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly, Life and Scribner’s, creating an instantly-recognizable image that was replicated in advertising, postcards, modelling illustrations and other merchandise. The ‘Gibson Girl’ look combined bouffant hair, a curvaceous figure, delicate facial features and fashionable clothes, as well as a streak of independence and confidence that resonated well with the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ and the Suffrage movement. The look was said to have been inspired partly by Evelyn Nesbit (below) and Gibson’s wife Irene Langhorne.

Evelyn Nesbit, photographed in 1903 by Gertrude Kasebier

Sketch by Charles Dana Gibson, showing the characteristic ‘bouffant’ hairstyle. As well as being elegant and voluptuous, the ‘Gibson Girls’ suggested intelligence, spirited independence and a degree of emancipation – an idealised (and non-threatening) version of the New Woman

In 1905 Camille won a modelling competition held to find the perfect embodiment of the Gibson Girl, and images of her quickly began to be published in fashion and society magazines. Many of these photographs were taken by Lizzie Caswall Smith (1870-1958.) The pictures below show off her hourglass figure, which boasted an 18″ wasp waist.

Postcard #2

Despite the British-sounding surname, Camille was born in Belgium in 1885 to Reynold Clifford and Matilda Ottersen. After the death of her parents she was raised by relatives in Scandinavia before moving to America where she lived in Boston. She made her stage debut in 1902 and travelled to England two years later with Col. Henry Savage’s theatre company, performing a minor role in their musical comedy The Prince of Pilsen. When the rest of the cast returned to America, she remained behind, obtaining the part of Sylvia Gibson in Seymour Hicks’ play The Catch of the Season.

Postcard #3

This postcard shows Camille with her fiance, Captain the Hon. Henry Lyndhurst Bruce, eldest son of the 2nd Baron Aberdare. Their engagement was announced at the end of August 1906 and they were married at Hanover Square Registry Office in London on 11 October 1906. The above photograph, therefore, was probably taken in September 1906. It was a busy time for Camille, who was now playing the Duchess of Dunmow in the musical comedy The Belle of Mayfair at London’s Vaudeville Theatre. Everyone knew that she was cast for her beauty rather than her musical talent, and her voice – even thinner than her waist – was barely adequate for her number ‘I’m a Duchess’, even after receiving singing lessons from Ivor Novello’s mother, Madame Clara Novello Davies. As one theatre critic put it, ‘The voice of Camille Clifford is not strong, but she wears such beautifully cut clothes and moves so elegantly up and down the stage that her turns is sure to be popular.’ [The Times, 12 April 1906, p.6.] And it was: audiences flocked to see her in the show nonetheless, including many wealthy male admirers such as Lord Aberdare’s son. After their engagement, Camille was going to resign from the show, but the producers enticed her to remain by offering her greater publicity and another musical number – a song entitled ‘Why do they Call Me a Gibson Girl?’

I walked one day
Along Broadway
When I was in New York.
And friend of mine
Said “My, you’re fine!
You have got the Gibson walk!
You have the pose
And Gibson nose
And quite the Gibson leer.
You’ve surely heard of the man called Gibson.”
(He meant the fellow called Dana Gibson.)
What he meant was not quite clear
Until I landed over here.

But why do they call me a Gibson Girl? (Gibson Girl?) Gibson Girl!
What is the matter with Mister Ibsen? (Mister Ibsen?) Why Dana Gibson?
Wear a black expression and a monumental curl,
And walk with a bend in your back,
Then they call you a Gibson Girl.

Just walk round town,
Look up and down:
The girls affect a style
As they pass by,
With dreamy eye,
Or a bored and languid smile.
They look as if
They had a tiff
With Hicks or Beerbohm Tree;
They do their best, for they’ve seen the pictures.
(They’ve missed the point of the Dana pictures.)
They’re intended, don’t you see,
For all a perfect type to be.

The Hon. Henry Lyndhurst Bruce served as a Captain in the Royal Scots Regiment. They had one child, Margaret, who was born in August 1909 but only lived a few days. Captain Bruce was killed in action at Ypres in December 1914. She married her second husband, Captain (later Brigadier) John Meredyth Jones Evans in 1917 and retired from acting after the war. She took up golf and competed in the game at a high level, but by the late 1920s was better known for running a successful stable of racehorses. Their names became familiar at racing events over the next three decades – Alliteration, Claudine, County Guy, Exemplary, Grass Court, Holyrood, Longstone (winner of the Newbury Cup in June 1955), Misty Cloud, Puissant, Rackstraw and Sidi Gaba, to name a few. She devoted considerable sums of money on building up a strong stable: sometimes she was able to pick up a promising horse for a few hundred guineas, but in 1938 she paid 6,500 guineas for Royal Mail, who had won the previous year’s Grand National. Alas, the horse proved unable to repeat his success at Aintree, although he did go on to win a few cups at Cheltenham in the 1940s. Camille caused a further stir in 1949 by paying 17,000 guineas for two year old Hedgerow. Her husband died in 1957, fourteen years before Camille, who passed away on 28 June 1971.

Devil Girl from Mars (1954)

Posted on July 14, 2014January 30, 2018 by James

Thirteen years before Mars Needs Women, the red planet was apparently running drastically low on the other sex. To balance the numbers, a female Martian named Nyah – clad in black leather and accompanied by a giant robot – travels to earth on a mission to round-up suitable males for breeding…

This is the premise of Devil Girl from Mars (David Macdonald, 1954), a curious movie that certainly fits the ‘accidentally hilarious’ category, but also one that possesses some unusual quirks which set it apart from other science fiction B-movies of the decade. Distinctly British in its approach and execution, Devil Girl from Mars is played with a seriousness that contrasts starkly with its low-budget effects and stage set.

The basic concept was by no means unique, for the early 1950s saw a wave of Hollywood movies about alien intruders, including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Man from Planet X (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), Invaders from Mars (1953) and The War of the Worlds (1953.) Without denying that these films may have had some influence, Devil Girl from Mars was a British production and feels very different from the American science-fiction movies it might have imitated. There are elements of the ‘country house mystery’ in the way disparate characters are drawn to the remote inn, a concern for matters like social class, moral behaviour, justice and redemption – plus a very British appreciation for tea and other beverages. Some of these elements betray the film’s radio play origins, although I have been unable as yet to trace any broadcast details. In structure and pacing the film remains stagebound, with its limited locations, excessive speechifying and over-reliance on dramatic entries and exits.

None of this can be anticipated from the film’s opening shots, however, in which an aircraft is mysteriously destroyed in mid-air. The mystery is not just in the mode of destruction, but also in its relevance to the story: it is never explained what this has to do with Nyah’s mission.

Following the plane explosion and the title credits, the scene switches to the Bonnie Charlie Inn ‘in a lonely part of Inverness-shire,’ which will be the setting for the rest of the film. Despite being closed for the winter, there are four staff in residence – Mr and Mrs Jamieson (John Laurie and Sophie Stewart), barmaid Doris (Adrienne Corri) and handyman David (James Edmond) plus Mrs Jamieson’s young nephew Tommy (Anthony Richmond). They have only one guest, glamorous model Ellen Prestwick (Hazel Court), who has come here to hide from her married lover.

This small household is soon bolstered by the arrival of escaped convict Robert Justin (Peter Reynolds), who was actually Doris’s lover before he was jailed for killing his wife, although her death appears to have been accidental: (and as Doris points out in his defence, ‘she was bad’.) Doris took the job at the Bonnie Charlie in order to be nearer Robert, although one wonders why she didn’t choose a pub nearer Stirling, which must be at least a hundred miles away. She might have been safer too, given the apparent pickpocketing powers of fish in the Highlands:

Isn’t it awful, Mrs Jamieson? He’s lost his wallet, he’s just been telling me…There he was crossing the stream, and he..he looks over to see a fish that’s in the water, and the next thing he knows…his wallet’s gone.

Mrs Jamieson will not withhold the Highland tradition of hospitality, but she gives Robert a suspicious look and warns him, ‘I’m counting the spoons.’

Next to arrive are Professor of Astrophysics Arnold Hennessy (Joseph Tomelty) and reporter Michael Carter (Hugh McDermott) from the Daily Messenger, who got lost in their car on their way to investigate reports of a meteor.

With all the characters now assembled, it is time for the Devil Girl to arrive. The spaceship lands right outside the inn in a cloud of fire and smoke, disturbing the group just as Carter reveals Robert’s real identity. Mr Jamieson declares that the craft ‘looks like a flying saucer’, using the term that had become popular since Kenneth Arnold’s encounter with UFOs seven years earlier. Professor Hennessy is reluctant to believe it could be a spaceship, but he and Carter head off to try and find a phone to inform the Home Office.

Miss Prestwick looking forlorn when Carter leaves the room. ‘I know it sounds silly, but I don’t like to be left here on my own.’

Viewers might agree that Ellen’s anxiety was justified when they receive their first sight of the ‘flying saucer’ pilot. After a dramatic stride down the landing ramp and a close-up of her face, the Devil Girl meets David and is unimpressed by his poor sight and limping gait.

All that is left of what Nyah judged ‘a hopeless specimen’

The Devil Girl’s agenda is not yet apparent, but this scene leaves no doubt as to her ruthlessness and capacity for cruelty. However, most viewers were probably still goggle-eyed at Nyah’s costume, with her skin tight helmet and full length cloak of black PVC. Once she enters the inn, the inner part of the costume is revealed as a black mini-skirt and tights.

Nyah explains her mission to Hennessy and Carter: on Mars, ‘the war of the sexes’ was literal, and after a bloody conflict the women emerged victorious, leaving only a handful of enfeebled male survivors with which to breed. Faced with the demise of their race, the Martians have sent Nyah to earth to bring back some virile men to help repopulate their planet. Before anyone asks why the Martians chose a remote part of Inverness-shire for their harvest of men, Nyah blames it on her sat nav: her spaceship was programmed to land in London, but having underestimated the thickness of the earth’s atmosphere (i.e. Scottish weather?), the spaceship was damaged on entry and forced to land in the Highlands for repair.

Nyah’s explanation of the repair process introduces the first of several technical discussions: we learn that the spaceship is made of organic metal that repairs itself by regeneration. The concept of a ‘living spacecraft’ was, I think, quite original at this time. A short while later Professor Hennessy quizzes Nyah on her spaceship’s power source:

N: A form of nuclear fission, on a static negative condensity
H: A negative condensity?
N: Exactly. Your atomic bomb is positive, it can cause an explosion to expand upwards and evaporate; our force is negative and explodes atomic forces into each other, thereby magnifying the power a thousand fold.
H: And the fuel?
N: Self-propagating

The science may be flaky in the extreme (don’t ask about the ‘perpetual motion chain reactor beam’), but there is something impressive in the deadpan seriousness with which it is presented. Despite its campy and unintentionally comic elements, this is an ambitious little film.

How many earth men could Nyah have fitted in here?

The notion of the self-repairing spaceship is crucial to the plot. Nyah is stranded at the Bonnie Charlie for ‘four earth hours’ until her ship is ready to fly again, forcing her to kill time with the inn’s residents while she waits. Viewers of the film start to feel much the same way, as an inordinate amount of time is spent watching characters wander backwards and forwards between the spaceship and the inn. Did Nyah travel 200 million kilometres for this?

The purpose of her one-woman invasion of earth is really to test the capabilities of the organic spacecraft, in preparation for a much larger ‘man-hunt’ that will follow shortly. Nyah therefore shows little interest in kidnapping any of the five males at the inn. She takes little Tommy, but then is persuaded by Carter to let him swap with the boy. After Carter has wandered back to the inn, Hennessy strolls out for a look around the spaceship and offers to accompany Nyah to London to act as a guide. She agrees, but he is soon back in the Bonnie Charlie as well. When the ship is repaired and she is ready to leave, everyone is hiding down in the cellar except Robert….

The three women may not be at risk of being whisked back to Mars, but they are as determined as the men are about stopping Nyah’s mission. When Carter introduces the Devil Girl to Mrs Jamieson, the landlady is given one of the best lines in the film:

– ‘Mrs Jamieson, may I introduce your latest guest, Miss Nyah. She comes from Mars.’
– ‘Oh, well, that’ll mean another bed.’

The earthlings face the alien threat with the sort of stiff upper lip and cheeriness typical of British wartime movies. Mrs Jamieson exemplifies the spirit of the Blitz with her down to earth remark:
‘While we’re still alive, we might as well have a cup of tea.’
Tea is not the only beverage drunk at the inn, and copious amounts of alcohol are drunk by Mr Jamieson and Carter in particular. I find it quite refreshing when films of this era depict heavy drinking in such a matter of fact way, without either moral judgment or any suggestion that large and frequent tipples are indicative of a problem.

Carter orders ‘A very large Scotch and a very small soda’

‘Has the tomato juice girl got any Scotch?’ ‘No, but I have some brandy.’

The free-flowing whisky and the Highland setting are not the only Scottish elements in the film; the director and four of the main actors were Scottish. The name of the inn might even be a subtle joke – ‘Bonnie Charlie’ refers to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, who landed in the Western Highlands in 1745 seeking to gather an army of men to support his cause – Nyah might have done well to reflect on how well that turned out.

Patricia Laffan was best known at this time for playing Nero’s vixenish wife, Queen Poppaea, in Quo Vadis? (1951), a film in which Adrienne Corri had a minor role. Laffan excelled in long-legged imperious arrogance.

Devil Girl from Mars actually has a pretty good cast compared to similar B-movies of the era:

The lovely Hazel Court had enjoyed starring roles in several dramas and thrillers during the 1940s, and was even considered for the role of Vicky in The Red Shoes (1948), but following Devil Girl she moved into horror after playing Peter Cushing’s young fiancee in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957.) Her ‘scream queen’ career saw her appear in a number of Hammer horrors and Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe tales. In 1990 she said of Devil Girl: ‘I think it only took about two weeks to shoot and it was made on a shoestring. We got paid next to nothing.’

Shades of Dad’s Army – ‘Shoot, man, shoot!’

Although he is best known for his role as Private Frazer in Dad’s Army, John Laurie’s distinguished film career began way back in 1929 and he appeared in two Anton Walbrook films as well as Fanny by Gaslight (1944.) Sophie Stewart had appeared in two H.G. Wells adaptations, Things to Come (1936) and The Man who could Work Miracles (also 1936) while Hugh McDermott had a role in another Wells tale of space travel, First Men in the Moon (1964).

Experienced, talented actors like these deserved a better script, but unlike many B-movies in the genre, the film appears to take itself quite seriously, and the cast do their best with the cornier lines and contrived situations. There is, unfortunately, one stand-out leaden performance, and that is from Nyah’s companion Chani.

‘I can control power beyond your wildest dreams! Come, come and you shall see! Now earthmen look, watch the power of another world…’

Chani is Nyah’s robot companion, whom she parades before the inn’s residents after Carter’s ill-advised attempt to shoot her with Jamieson’s revolver. The robot is operated by a handheld remote control device, and Nyah clearly enjoys demonstrating her robot’s powers as he destroys a tree, broken-down tractor and a barn using a light beam fired from his head. The muskets used at Culloden were probably quicker to aim and fire than Chani’s head-beam, but Nyah is blind to his flaws; the only time she shows any emotion in the film is while watching her robot perform before the awestruck earthlings.

Proud mum. Nyah is clearly bursting with pride as she shows off Chani’s abilities at walking and blowing up tractors. Such human touches give the film a curious charm.

Mind that branch… Chani may not be the most frightening robot in cinema history, but for entertainment value he beats anything in the Transformers franchise

Devil Girl from Mars is probably best remembered for two costumes: Nyah’s black PVC dominatrix uniform and Chani’s cardboard fridge & styrofoam coffee-cup arms. These Martian invaders make an odd couple, and though they were clearly inspired by the pairing of Klaatu and the robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still, they fall far short in terms of effective teamwork and combined resources. Despite her impressive robot, powers of hypnosis and ability to enter the fourth dimension, Nyah’s mission turns out a spectacular failure. At the end of the film, is there a moral as to why?

The inability of the Martian women to procreate is symbolised by Nyah’s pairing with the mechanical Chani; furthermore both of them show a total absence of feeling throughout the film. In contrast, the Bonnie Charlie is a hotbed of romance and warm emotions, even in the depths of winter: Doris and Robert are reunited and both show willingness to sacrifice everything to protect the other; Ellen falls for Carter, finding the strength to break away from her married lover while succeeding in breaking through Carter’s cynicism and gruff exterior. Behind the Jamiesons’ constant bickering banter, there seems to be a steadfast relationship and a tender devotion to their young nephew. The cheesy dialogue and over–wrought domestic dramas may well amuse modern viewers, but they show that Devil Girl from Mars was looking in the opposite direction from most of its contemporaries. This is not another Cold War metaphor or guilt-ridden nightmare about atomic power. Devil Girl borrows the trappings of 1950s science fiction while exploring some fairly old-fashioned British themes about love, duty, altruism and moral principles. The similarity between Nyah’s black-booted outfit and the Nazi uniform is surely no coincidence; this is a flying saucer movie that looks to the past as much as the future.

This blog post is part of the ‘Accidentally Hilarious’ blogathon, and there’s some brilliant pieces on other classic films – including silent movies, the work of Ed Wood, more monster/alien flicks and all sorts of wonderful weirdness – to be found here. Enjoy!