“He makes you feel like a moron, but I like him.”
A flying saucer is seen in the sky above the countryside. Susan North (Patricia Neal) is driving along a dark road. The bright light from the ship blinds her and she crashes.
A man walks into an inn. He is a stranger (Helmut Dantine) with no name. He looks like a regular person, but right away people realize there is something different about him. The local doctor thinks that he may be ill and tries to take his pulse. He doesn’t have one. Soon they learn that he is from Venus. When Susan enters the inn it is revealed that the man from Venus cured her from the accident injuries. Susan’s fiancé Arthur Walker (Derek Bond) is a government official. He calls the war ministry. The government cordons off the area. The war mongers are salivating.
Government officials assemble at the inn to meet with the stranger. They have many questions for him. He tells them that his superiors will be coming soon on a peaceful mission. To bring them a warning about the dangerous technologies mankind is playing with. He warns that using hydrogen bombs could affect the earth’s place in the solar system and if that should happen it could affect the other planets. They want Earth to stop their dangerous ways. He says that Venus is willing to share some of its superior scientific knowledge if Earth stops its dangerous pursuits. Due to the hubris that is displayed by the humans the stranger determines that the Earth is not ready for advanced knowledge.
The government officials decide to set a trap for the Venusian ship that is returning to both collect their alien and have their conference. The war mongers want to capture the alien craft when it lands. They have learned enough from the stranger to come up with a workable trap. They steal the stranger’s communication disc so he can not contact the alien ship. They mean to take the technology they want by force.
The alien warns Walker that should the Earth people try to capture the ship, the mother ship, which is outside the Earth’s atmosphere will immediate retaliate. The mother ship will incinerate the Earth’s atmosphere and destroy everyone.
“Stranger from Venus” was released in 1954 and was directed by Burt Balaban. It is an English and American produced movie. It is best known as a British version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. The themes between the two are similar. Space man comes down and warns Earth to behave. Plus the fact that Patricia Neal is in both movies. The movie was not released in theaters in the US but only to TV and under the title “Immediate Disaster”. This is due to 20th Century Fox threatening legal action. There are of course differences. And by that I mean, no robot.
The movie is a far cry from “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and a little sappy. Somehow the space man finds time to romance Susan. It’s also a little slow and disjointed in the beginning but it picks up at the end. Keep in mind that a lot of aliens from space movies deal in similar plots to that of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. Whenever the aliens are the good guys the Earth people, especially military people are assholes. I don’t think will ever learn that lesson.
What was interesting was the combination of cultures in the movie. It looked like it takes place in Britain, but there are subtle things that were more global. Some American accents, uniforms that were not exactly British, European names, a president not a prime minister, ministers in posts that are not part of British parliament. Little things that made the setting feel more like Brigadoon than an English pub. Just a little out of time and place.