Existence precedes essence (1/17/05)
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Devil Girl From Mars. [Dwight MacDonald, 1954. Written by James Eastwood; from a play by John C. Mather.]
After a catastrophic war between the sexes necessitates an interplanetary raid to kidnap terrestrial studs to replenish a depleted gene pool, Martian Mean Girl Patricia Laffan and her trusty sidekick Johnny — a giant robot! with an electronic brain! —- descend in their flying saucer upon a lonely inn in the wilds of Scotland, where riddling Fate and the exquisite sense of dramatic symmetry of the screenwriters have assembled an Addled Landlady, a Harried Barmaid, an Escaped Convict [yes, he was Wrongfully Accused], a Mysterious Babe Traveling Incognito [the well-traveled Hazel Court], an Absentminded Professor, and a Warweary Journalist to receive her.
Here while the robot rotates her tires and adjusts her plugs and points, the zaftig Ms. Laffan [fetchingly turned out in dominatrix leathers] marches down the gangplank to lord it over the shrinking earthlings, who gape in awe as she drops an impenetrable bubble of invisible adamant around the property, disconnects their telephones, knocks out their power, does some fancy shooting with her rayguns, and lectures them disdainfully [prospective love slaves or no] on the inferiority of the human species.
Their attempts at escape must obviously prove futile, since that would have meant building another set [there’s nothing quite like a limited budget to ensure the enforcement of the dramatic unities], but the company regroups around the bar to engage in an orgy of melodramatic soulsearching: the barmaid is sweet on the con, the woman of mystery falls for the journalist, the professor is torn between the thirst for knowledge and the need to repel this alien menace, the proprietess keeps walking around making pronouncements like “there’s nothing like a good cup of tea in a crisis,” and every few minutes somebody falls prey to Martian hypnosis and starts intoning a dismal zombie speech about Fields of Wheat, or something.
But presently the repairs are completed, and Ms. Laffan seizes the likeliest candidate for a high sperm count [the all-too-expendable con, of course] as a trophy of the chase and takes off to continue barhopping. Alas, before you can say “Klaatu barada nicto,” something goes awry, whether by chance or by design I didn’t quite catch, and the saucer blows up; providing redemption for the con, I suppose, but a major letdown for the male geek population of the Earth, who might otherwise be looking forward to leaving this lame planet and flying through outer space with cool alien babes who like them.
This unpromising summary notwithstanding, the flick is inexplicably charming: maybe it’s Ms. Laffan and her Buck Rogers meets Bondage Barbie costume, maybe the goofy giant robot, maybe the cool Caligari interior of the flying saucer [where was that steam coming from?], or maybe just that there’s a little Zoltan in all of us, I don’t know. I do, however, find myself wondering what happened to the scenes in which Ms. Laffan lounges in the bathtub smoking fat Havana cigars and forces the humiliated Earthmen to sing torch songs a capella before she allows them another drink; and, indeed, why a saucerload of Martian critics didn’t land in Hollywood, take a bar full of inebriated screenwriters hostage, and lecture them sternly on the dire consequences that await if we continue to allow our radio and television transmissions to pollute the interplanetary ether and our old gangster movies to escape into outer space. The devil from beyond, after all, is never quite a match for the devil within.
____________Incense and peppermints (1/3/05)
