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For an undisclosed crime, Martian Ramiel (E. Holman Clark) is sent to
earth by the God of Mars (R. Crompton) to change the ways of the most
selfish man on earth, Horace Parker (Charles Hawtrey), a man who has just
been left by his fiancée Minnie (Crissie Bell) even for his selfishness.
So using some magical powers, the Martian gets Horace out on the streets
to do a good deed, but Horace only does so against his will, to get rid of
the pesky Martian - which of course doesn't work one bit. Ramiel then
takes Horace to a dance to listen in on conversations that are not
entirely in Horace's favour. But while he isn't exactly over the moon
because of that, it doesn't really faze him quite enough to mend his ways.
So Ramiel turns him into a bum, and soon enough he realizes to get through
this rough life, he has to relie on another bum (Hubert Willis) ... and
then the other bum falls sick, and that's when Horace really starts to
care for someone other than himself - so the Martian makes him himself
again, and Horace takes the bum home with him to nurse him back to health.
Then he hears about a fire, and he saves tons of children out of a burning
orphanage and takes them home with him as well. When a constable catches
one of the kids stealing from him, Horace sees to it that the kid is not
punished unreasonably as the boy shows remorse. Finally, Minnie has the
sudden idea that Horace has changed, comes back to him and when she sees
all the poor people in his house he has decided to take care of, she knows
she was right and agrees to be engaged to him once again. And Ramiel? He
goes back to Mars of course, all rehabilitated. One of the
earliest British movies to show Martians, this film (despite the Martians
futuristic outfits) has little to do with science fiction and everything
with fantasy with the Martians being some sort of angels in a story rather
reminiscent of A
Christmas Carol than anything else, with its message hit home
a great deal too bluntly, actually. Aside from (maybe) being the movie
that introduced Martians to British cinema though, this movie has little
to recommend itself: Its story is very simplistic and the outcome utterly
predictable (and as mentioned, everything's hammered home rather bluntly),
the directorial effort is little more than functional, and the acting
decent but by no means remarkable. Still, given its age and everything, a
charming piece of cinema ... but nothing to get crazy about.
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