Stranger from Venus (1954)

Aliens seem to have two things in mind when they drop in on planet Earth, subjugating the natives or enlightening them. In this dull tale its the latter.Every expense is spared so don't expect eight-tentacled, six-eyed, poison-spewing monsters. What you get instead is a human-shaped man who is shot from behind for the first ten minutes of the film in a desperate attempt to generate a little suspense. From behind he resembles one of Kraftwerk. Obviously he has no shocking features otherwise those who see him face on would have emitted screams or fainted. The story plods on taking in a hint of inter-species relations, miracle healing and betrayal until it reaches a "dramatic" finale with an appearance of an alien spaceship borrowing its design from a dinner plate.

Some careful thought and preparation is evident in this production but overall it is made in a non-dynamic manner, very deliberate and you might say too slow. The direction seems primitive. Once this director sets his camera for a scene it is seemingly planted in concrete- it ain't gonna move. In some scenes maybe coffee or caffeine would have helped the director. Military personnel just stand around, and even scenes beside a Monet-esque lily pond are flat and unromantic.The British actors are really good, especially the grey haired doctor and young Willoughby Gray who portrays "Gretchen". Helmut Dantine is very focused and is riveting in the lead role. In contrast, Patricia Neal looks as if she would rather be somewhere else and is not effective in her role. The music is mostly of the orchestrated "English pastoral" style popular in the early to mid 20th century but other than providing a classy sound is not lively enough for a sci-fi film. There is a huge early-50's Packard auto that is loaded with chrome and very noticeable but is thoroughly ugly- its too bad because the earlier post-WWII Packard designs were generally more elegant and graceful. I always enjoy looking for mid-century ambiance and trappings in films from the era such as I found in this movie.Some interesting science can be found here such as a proposed landing in a magnetic field area and concepts of interplanetary gravitation.An advanced being lectures us on how stupid and crude we are in routine fashion that has been done in films numerous times before and since, so this aspect of the theme seems rather redundant.

STRANGER FROM VENUS is Britain's answer to THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, and it isn't very good. This is a film which has dated very badly since first release, considering that 95% of its running time consists of middle-aged blokes sitting around in pubs and having philosophical debates.It's all very highbrow and intellectual, of course, but this also has the side effect of making it completely non-cinematic. There's very little incident in this film and no action, danger, or real excitement. All the good bits were done better in the Michael Rennie film, and really, things only pick up in the last ten minutes and then bang, it's suddenly all over. The low budget is always more than obvious.The concept of the film - an alien visits earth to condemn mankind for what they're doing to the planet - is overtly familiar and the script can add nothing new to the debate. Patricia Neal does well in a leading role and there are bit parts for John Le Mesurier and Nigel Green, but the leading cast is for the most part lacklustre, and there's very little to interest even the viewer with an interest in British science fiction of the 1950s.

Which B&W sci-fi film of the 1950s features an alien from outer space who comes to Earth to warn mankind of its warmongering ways and becomes involved with a character portrayed by Patricia Neal? Now, before you smugly respond "The Day the Earth Stood Still," the Hollywood sci-fi classic of 1951, let me add that the film in question is a British production and was made in 1954. That film is "Stranger From Venus," a very subpar knockoff of a great classic, and, what's more, even inferior to another British copy of "TDTESS" that also came out in 1954, the camp classic "Devil Girl From Mars." In "Stranger," the alien from Venus (which is said to be "millions of light-years" away from Earth...patent BS!) is played by Austrian actor Helmut Dantine, who gives a very UNsympathetic performance. The "action," for the most part, is confined to a drab-looking inn somewhere in the English countryside, and the movie is very static and never seems to move at all. Whereas "DGFM" features a Martian dominatrix, a ridiculous-looking and lumbering robot, and a very impressive space explosion to cap things off, "SFV" features virtually no FX at all and little in the way of suspense. The only real "effect" to speak of is a "mother ship" disgorging a space flier, accomplished with what looks like a lamp hood and a wooden disc. I am not hyperbolizing when I say that the FX in Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space" come off looking like those in "The Matrix" by comparison. Furthermore, director Burt Balaban's work is extremely lackadaisical here, and composer Eric Spear contributes a sappy score that is repeated to distraction. Though competently acted, and presented here in a nice, crisp-looking DVD, this film really is for 1950s sci-fi completists only, and even they will be bored and restless. Anyone out there know how to say "snoozer" in Venusian?