Stranger from Venus * (1954, Patricia Neal, Helmut Dantine, Derek Bond, Cyril Luckham) – Classic Movie Review 3755

Producer-director Burt Balaban’s amateurish independently made 1954 British black-and-white science fiction film about first contact with aliens stars a down-on-their-luck Patricia Neal and Helmut Dantine.

Neal plays Susan North, an American woman who crashes her car in the British countryside after being blinded by the landing lights of a flying saucer and deafened by its loud propulsion system. A stranger (Dantine) walks up to the car, checks her out and later enters a nearby country inn.

He says he has no name but is able to read people’s thoughts, and claims he has saved the life of Susan, who the arrives at the inn dazed, but healed. When the stranger explains he comes from Venus, Susan’s fiancé, inn guest Arthur Walker (Derek Bond), a high-ranking government official, calls the War Ministry…

It was shown on TV in the United States as Immediate Disaster and also as The Venusian.

Also in the cast are Derek Bond as Arthur Walker, Cyril Luckham as Dr Meinard, Willoughby Gray as Tom Harding, Marigold Russell as Gretchen Harding, Arthur Young as Scientist, Kenneth Edwards as Charles Dixon, David Garth as First Police Officer, Stanley Van Beers as General, Nigel Green as Second Police Officer and Graham Stuart as Police Chief Richards.

The story is by Desmond Leslie and the screenplay by Hans Jacoby. It is supposedly suggested by events in the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), which has a similar premise and Neal also starred in.

See also Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), in which a small flying saucer leaves its larger mothership.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3755

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

A small flying saucer leaves its larger mothership in Plan 9 from Outer Space.