Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

SYNOPSIS: A Venusian books a room at a British country inn. NOTES: Movie debut of Marigold Russell.COMMENT: The first of six minor movies directed by Burt Balaban, this is probably the best-thanks chiefly to a superior group of players who work wonders with a heavy-on-clichés, light-on-ideas script that was obviously inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still. Oddly, Miss Neal (so superb in Day the Earth...) is not so impressive here as she is forced to struggle against the opposing forces of a flimsy screenplay and too heavily indulgent direction. Helmut Dantine as the aggressive Venusian scores more forcefully, but the audience's real interest is constantly deflected to the minor characters, particularly the lovely Marigold Russell, quietly forceful Cyril Luckham (in only his second film appearance) as the doctor, and Nigel Green (one of my favorite stars) who brings such expertise to his small role as a policeman, he almost makes the film worth seeing on his account alone. Production values are definitely second-drawer, but credits come over as competent enough. Kenneth Talbot's cinematography has its attractive moments, and Eric Spear has contributed a suitably romantic musical theme.OTHER VIEWS: Despite all her indulgent close-ups, Hollywood import Patricia Neal is none too flatteringly photographed. It's attractive newcomer Marigold Russell who walks away with the film's acting honors (though 37-year-old Willoughby Gray, who made a career playing older men, seems too young to be her father. The director should have had enough sense to change this relationship to "brother"). Writers Jacoby and Leslie present some mildly interesting ideas here and there, but there's a lot of obvious padding to build up the parts of the two principals and listless Derek Bond proves a liability rather than an asset in his "other man" role.

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?

Stranger from Venus (1954) * (out of 4) An incredibly bad rip off of The Day the Earth Stood Still, this one here also starring Patricia Neal. An alien lands in a small British town where he tries to warn people and show them his healing powers. This British film isn't ashamed in how much it rips from the Robert Wise classic as we get scenes, which appear the same and even some of the dialogue is the same. Even stranger is that the producer's of this got Neal to pretty much play the same part. It's a real shame that they didn't try to do more with the story because it's just too dry to be entertaining. The Wise film had a number of rips but this one here doesn't have the camp value as something like John Carradine's The Cosmic Man. The performances are all rather bland and that includes Neal who must have known this film wasn't offering much.

Stranger From Venus is a nice little film, but really has not much to recommend it. Obviously it is adapted/stolen from the Robert Wise classic, The Day The Earth Stood Still and even has Patricia Neal as well as the female star. But even for a fifties science fiction film, there is a serious lack of special effects...especially in comparison with the other movie. The few shots of the Venusian spacecrafts look to be very childishly done and do not mesh well at all with the other footage. This film is one of the precursors of the wave of excellent British science fiction that was heralded in by Terrence Fisher, Val Guest and the rise of Hammer Films. The script for Stranger From Venus does have some of eloquence of the films to come, but the ideas just don't gel properly.