Stranger from Venus

An alien craft is spotted, barnstorming the countryside. While traveling home, Susan North (Patricia Neal) encounters a strange phenomenon. Soon, a mysterious man (Helmut Dantine) shows up at a rural pub, seeming to have odd ideas and prescient knowledge, some of which is about Susan, who has gone missing.

He also has no pulse!

When the authorities attempt to make him talk, they find it... difficult. Things only get weirder when Susan reappears. Of course, the government / military gets involved, and nearly makes a pig's breakfast of it all.

STRANGER FROM VENUS, like its -very similarly themed- cousin, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, is a more cerebral bit of cautionary sci-fi. No laser battles, monsters, or spaceship chases here. Dantine downplays his role, making the "miracles" he performs, and the words he speaks seem all the more believable. Ms. Neal is just as good in this as in that other, better-known film. Due to its budgetary constraints, most scenes are rather small in scope, making the dialogue quite important. This movie delivers excellent discourse and actually makes one think. Imagine that...

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.

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.

Helmut Dantine stars in the title role and sleepwalks from scene to scene looking like he's just had extensive back surgery. This film is basically a ham-handed ripoff of "Day The Earth Stood Still" and "The Cosmic Man" only not as good as either. The running time is padded out with endless shots of slow-moving cars interrupted occasionally by in- action in the plotline. The direction as well as the not-so-special effects is amateurish (look for the shadow of the boom mike in one scene)and the whole thing comes across as one big bore. In short, this is the kind of film one should show to a blind date if one wanted to get rid of him/her. Why Patricia Neal (who co-starred in the excel- lent "Day The Earth Stood Still") decided to star in this lifeless yawner is a mystery. "Stranger From Venus" makes "Devil Girl from Mars" play like "Ben-Hur". 'Nuff said.

Basically British variation on The Day Earth Stood Still, which Neal also starred in. It tries to overcome it's low budget limitations but just falls short of the mark. A for effort; C for execution. British sci-fi would take off the following year with the arrival of Professor Bernard Quatermass.