Rating: **
Review Date: 7/29/23
Cast: Tom Tryon, Gloria Talbott, Valerie Allen
Bill (Tom Tryon) and Marge (Gloria Talbott) are about to get married when a strange thing happens. Visitors from outer space have arrived on Earth and are taking over men's bodies in an attempt to breed with human females. Bill is one of the victims, and Gloria eventually gets wise to him becoming a total stranger. As the town gets more infected, it becomes impossible to tell human from alien, but eventually a handful of brave men (and their dogs) manage to kill the invaders and destroy their scout ship. Typical human behavior.
For whatever reasons, sci-fi horror films in the 50's were overly concerned about spacemen stealing Earth's women, as if that was the most terrifying idea that people could imagine. It's probably just a byproduct of McCarthy era Cold War paranoia, where "aliens" represent "communists," who exist to poison the minds of American men and future generations. The preposterous attitudes about women and marriage are just as alien as the invaders, who are desperately trying to understand human emotions and concepts like love. I have to give the film some slack for its age, but it does feature some brazenly incompetent filmmaking. On the other hand, some of the visual effects are quite impressive. Gloria Talbott gives an excellent performance as a doomed woman pushed to the edge of sanity, but it's Valerie Allen who steals the show as a bold and beautiful prostitute who unfortunately tries to pick up the wrong stranger. Standard 50's drive-in fare.