Ever watched a film and been constantly distracted by the thought “I bet that actress received more than her fair share of kinky fan mail on account of this role”. Such is the case with Devil Girl from Mars, a characteristically cheapo production from quota quickie merchants The Danziger brothers (check out how many plant pots went on making the arms of the robot henchman). Devil Girl contains possibly the most quintessentially British line ever uttered in a sci-fi movie (“while we’re still alive we might as well have a cup of tea”), but really deserves cult immortality on account of the high camp spectacle that is Patricia Laffan’s merciless villainess Nyah, a female space invader intent on abducting earth men for breeding purposes. Resplendent in black leather with matching cape and helmet, and dishing out cruel but hilarious put downs (“It amuses me to watch your puny efforts!”), Nyah anticipates the leather and fem-dom obsessions of 1960s fetish mags like Bizarre Life, at the same time I wouldn’t even begin to speculate how many young women first realised they were gay while watching Patricia Laffan in this film.
Devil Girl from Mars beats Mars Needs Woman (1967) to the punch when it came to taking a gay lead, dressing them up in leather and casting them, somewhat ironically, as a character hell-bent on heterosexual procreation. Devil Girl’s leather boots also kicked the doors open for Spaced Out, Lifeforce, Species, and all the other sci-fi movies paradoxically enamoured with, yet terrified of, female sexuality.
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