This
small oddball obscure British B drama is often referred to as a remake of
The Day the Earth Stood Still, but in fact the films are based on different
sources. This one from a short story by Desmond Leslie (later to invent the
first multi-track recording machine). There are similarities, but also big
differences. What they strikingly have in common is that Patricia Neal is
in both as the sympathetic female and that can't be a coincidence. In these
early sci-fi films, aliens were generally viewed with dread, but as
with TDTESS, there was a more optimistic viewpoint. That aliens so much more
advanced than we were, could be our salvation.
In a small English rural community, Neal
is in a terrible car crash and almost assuredly dead. At a nearby inn where
much of the film takes place a few of the locals are worried that she is
late. One being her fiancé (Derek Bond), some sort of government official.
A man enters the pub and asks for something to drink. He has no money nor
a name. Nor as it turns out, a pulse. He is of course, the stranger from
Venus. On a mission to Earth. Neal shows up without a scratch. She tells
them she was dying till a man came over to the car and healed her. Then she
realizes, the Stranger is the man.
The innkeeper calls in two constables (look
for Nigel Greene), but what can they do. He has broken no law and when he
tells them that he is going to sleep, everyone is fine with that. Ok, he
is from Venus on a mysterious mission, but he wants to go to bed. It is well-acted
with a small cast and pushes forward the idea that it isn't the aliens that
should scare us, but ourselves. This being a British production, it is so
much more low-key than an American production. So low-key that many reviewers
call it incredibly boring. I can see that. But I enjoyed it to some degree.
The Stranger is played straight by Austrian,
Helmut Dantine. He had been in the anti-Nazi movement in Vienna and captured
and sent to a concentration camp. His parents got the 19 year old released
in 1938 and sent him to California where he got into films. He had some small
parts in famous movies; the German pilot in Mrs. Miniver, a pilot in To Be
or Not To Be, the man seeking a visa in Casablanca and Watch on the Rhine.
