Devil from Mars

Nia, a female alien from Mars , is heading on her flying saucer to London to take a number of men to her planet, as they are almost extinct in her world. On Mars, the emancipation of women led to an open war between the sexes, in which men lost. Now they have all become impotent , and the Martians are facing extinction.

In the atmosphere, her ship collides with an airplane and makes an emergency landing in the Scottish wasteland , near a small village. The Devil from Mars steps on the surface of the Earth, pulled in a tight shiny black suit and armed with a combat emitter; and her companion is Cheney’s robot .

Further, a significant part of the film takes place in the bar of the local Bonnie Charlie Hotel. Nia comes in from time to time, threatens her, then leaves again, leaving the locals to reflect on her words. It is clear that the male half of the village is in no hurry to fly with Nia to Mars, and the female half is not going to give their men without a fight.

At the same time, secondary romantic storylines unfold in this hotel. Model Ellen Prestwick arrives at Bonnie Charlie, escaping from a married man with whom she had an affair, and she makes friends with newspaper reporter Michael Carter. Robert Justin (Albert Simpson) escapes from prison, where he was for the murder due to the negligence of his wife, to meet in “Bonnie Charlie” with the bartender Doris, whom he loves.

Meanwhile, Nia moves on to decisive action. She lured Professor Arnold Hennessy into her ship, promising to introduce him to the wonders of Martian civilization. Then he burns with his emitter the hunchbacked handyman Mr. Jamieson and kidnaps his nephew, Tommy.

The professor makes a deal with the Martian: one man from the bar will voluntarily fly with her if she lets the boy go. At first, the professor himself wants to become this volunteer, but he is too old for the purposes of an alien. Then Carter is called to fly, but in the end, Justin, who wants to atone for his crime, is ahead of him. He receives a briefing from the professor and enters the board of the flying saucer. Following the instructions, Justin, after taking off, arranges a diversion on her. The spacecraft explodes, Nya and Justin die. The Devil from Mars does not threaten more earthly men.

The film was shot based on the play. The tape was low-budget, there were practically no duplicates, except when the film was physically damaged. The filming process took three weeks and took place mainly at night.
Robot Cheney was designed by an inventor named Jack Whitehead. The robot was fully automated, unlike many similar tapes of the time, it was not controlled internally by a person, was not a “special effect” or “combined shooting”. In three weeks of filming, Cheney broke down several times.

• Doug Pratt, Rolling Stone . “Amazingly bad movie. The acting is really bad, but overall it’s so much fun that you want to rush to your local theater and make their troupe put “Devil from Mars” instead of “Brigadun. ”
• Leonard Maltin . "A hilariously serious film, a strong British camp- imitation of American cheap stuff."
• . “The scenery, dialogs, characterization and special effects are of a low level, but their honest unrealism has its own charm. Everything, in its way, is quite excellent. ”
• 12-year-old Octavia Butler , having watched this film, said that "she can write something better" ^[1] . Now she is considered one of the most famous American black science fiction writers.

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