Starring John (THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN) Neville, Philip (THE SHINING) Stone, Gabriella (CASINO ROYALE) Licudi, Patrick (VAMPIRA) Newell, Jean (RETURN TO OZ) Marsh and Warren (THE TROLLENBERG TERROR) Mitchell. Script written by Rex (BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE) Carlton, based on an idea by Jeffrey Stone. Directed by John (OUT OF THE DARKNESS) Krish.
A group of British scientists work on a way to project their minds to other worlds (this is never shown or explained) but it turns out that aliens have already learnt how to project their minds to our planet.
The main protagonist is Dr. Mark Davidson (Neville), who is married to Julie (Licudi), a pretty Swiss woman with some odd traits, including the habit of sleeping with her eyes open and being able to hold hot objects like oven dishes with her bare hands.
Mark seems rather too unwilling to accept that his wife is not human (even though he is at first suspicious), but he’s so in love with her his judgement is clouded. Finally it is revealed that Julie is, in fact, the physical ‘creation’ of an alien’s mind projection: she is actually flesh and blood whilst the alien focuses on keeping her ‘real’, but the alien’s concentration can falter, which is why she forgets to blink and sleeps with her eyes open, etc.
UNEARTHLY STRANGER is a nicely-shot, inexpensive, b&w, low key British science fiction movie with some memorable moments, most notably when the wife ‘Julie’ cries with emotion because Earth children can sense she’s alien… and her tears eat into her skin like acid. This is an effectively-handled sequence, a striking visual idea that illustrates how the alien Julie is so upset she is physically scarred by her own tears. But some viewers might ask why the tears are so corrosive? One could argue that the distraught alien intelligence momentarily forgot what tears were made from and caused acid tears to flow. Or did the alien, which was sent here as a would-be assassin, hurt itself because of guilt? Whatever the reason is, this is a sublime scene that wedges itself in your memory.
There are other examples showing what happens when the aliens lose their focus. For instance, when the aliens decide to cease keeping their projections ‘alive’, these ‘people’ simply vanish, leaving behind empty, discarded clothing.
We never see the actual aliens, who are all presumably still residing on their home planet, we only see the human-looking simulacra/projections that the extraterrestrial minds have created.
Warren Mitchel, who became famous as the bigoted Alf Garnett in the television series TILL DEATH US DO PART, appeared in a whole bunch of genre films, including UNEARTHLY STRANGER, where he plays the doomed Prof. Geoffrey D. Munroe. Garnett was also in THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (1958), THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961), THE NIGHT CALLER (1965), MOON ZERO TWO (1969) and JABBERWOCKY (1977).
Patrick Newell is effective as the callous Major Clarke, John Neville is fine as the nervy & distraught hero, and Gabriella Licudi manages to be both rather exotic and sweet-natured at the same time, as the alien who cannot bring herself to kill her designated victim because she has fallen in love with him.
UNEARTHLY STRANGER is low budget but highly unique.
Let’s finish with a poster from Italy, which tries to trick potential viewers into thinking the movie might feature aliens with sucker-tipped fingers and tentacles…
Monster Zone 