Not of This Earth

In his long, long career, Roger Corman produced and directed a holy hell's worth of Grade-B and even lower cinematic rubber monster bilge. Still, not one of them rolls across the screen with as much befuddling yet wholly undeniable charm as Not of This Earth, which is about blood-drinking (actually not) zap-heads from the planet Davanna who march around dressed like MIBs from a John Keel UFO book. (Or maybe as cast rejects from The Blues Brothers who were snorting huge Milky Way galaxy sprawls of space coke right before beaming to Earth. Or maybe Niborg, man!)

The expeditionary force from Davanna is "Mr. Johnson," (Paul Birch) who delivers dialogue robotically. Johnson goes to meet a noted blood scientist (Dr. Rochelle, played by William Roerick) so he can get a blood transfusion and not have blood that turns to gorp or something due to the effects of the nuclear war on his homeworld. (Maybe they should have just gotten him a script for Ozempic.)

Along the way, he hires a blonde-haired, babe-o-licious naughty nurse named Nadine (Beverly Garland) who wears a June Cleaver dress with the collar turned up and a string of pearls that would make Sweeney Todd green (greener?) with envy. She comes over to play house with Mr. Johnson and Jonathan "Seymour Krelboing" Haze, who portrays Jeremy Perrin, who, last we checked, fed all of his blood to a giant talking whatzit in a dirty coffee can named AUDREY TWO. (Cue: "Suddenly Seymour" sung by Ellen Greene.)

Seymour—Haze—is a thoroughly slimy ex-con hired to be the Man Friday for the mysterious Mr. Johnson, who he hasn’t guessed yet is an alien, despite the weird white orbs hidden behind the strange, black, nineties raver sunglasses and the general weird, alien-like demeanor.

Mr. Johnson, much like Mork from Ork, can communicate with The Leader (or whatever he is) through a weird, mirror-like device in the closet (Mork just used his telepathic Ork powers), and The Leader appears as a floating head. A Davanna woman (Davanna Woman, portrayed by Anna Lee Carroll) shows up and mouths some dialogue about something I can’t remember because a flick like this doesn’t require much attention. At some point, we get a sheriff, Sheriff Sherbourne (Morgan Jones). I’m not sure what he’s doing here.

A car chase ensues, but that is rather de rigueur. The real kicker is the alien flying umbrella with sort-of tentacles, which is revealed later flying on the end of some fishing line right before attaching itself John Hurt-style to the head of the blood doctor to suck his blood. And a bloody good job it made of it.

Mr. Johnson and the girl from Davanna reveal themselves to have weird white glowing orbs that shoot death beams that crackle. Unfortunately, we don’t ever get to see them. We do get to see some blood when the blood doctor dies, and it sort of trickles across the floor, but, yawn, I’m not sure how the damn thing ended and don’t care.

Oh yeah, it ended with a tombstone and a dead-on, weird, creepy, dream-like shot of another MIB walking toward the audience as if he’s going to emerge from the screen in the ASTOUNDING THIRD DIMENSION!

He doesn’t, of course. This flick is mildly entertaining. Although it seems underplayed, it does have nice lighting, good-looking dames, and a strangely off-kilter, almost dreamlike bent to it. It was remade in 1988 with the titanic ta-tas of Traci “Tracy Takes On” Lords, and, brother, that’s enough to recommend it in our jaded eyes right there.

So we drink a toast to the late Mr. Johnson, émigré of Davanna. Here’s blood in your eye, guy.

(Ten more… just ten more… ten more… ten more… Aha! I got it!)

Addendum: Dick Miller, legendary Roger Corman actor and all-around B-Movie asset who starred in over a hundred drive-in flicks in his long career, here plays a vacuum cleaner salesman.

Not Of This Earth (1957) Full length Sci-fi movie

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