The night before his wedding, the groom is abducted on a lonely country road by something alien. After a year the new bride is increasingly concerned: why can't she get pregnant? Why does her husband seem like a stranger, how is it he can see in the dark, and why do dogs suddenly hate him?
His friends change too and they have a secret cabal hiding in plain sight. When alone they talk about the coming takeover and how the human body, although poorly constructed, does afford some pleasures. Our bridegroom is troubled: stirrings of love are unsettling to an alien invader.
After so many lies, it is finally a relief when the husband and wife come clean and tell the truth. She knows and he tells her the plan.
Low budget but much better than it's cheezy title would suggest. Efficient at only 77 minutes: we get right to it. It was actually pretty well liked at the time and since.
I love the 50s ambiance, with the convertibles, country supper clubs, men in sport coats and women with those hefty armored brassieres (or maybe that's all Gloria Talbott).
Bullets won't stop the glowing invaders, but the dogs know just what to do and are eager to tear at that exposed anatomy, as if they've been waiting for this moment. The aliens die ugly.
This is a surprisingly rich story because of several themes running in parallel:
- A woman's marriage paranoia, of a husband turning cold and unloving. On the other hand: he is strong and mysterious, which is kind of exciting, right? But what if he should turn into one of those terrifying space aliens during an intimate moment: yikes!
Strange to say: she's having sex outside her species when movies couldn't even show interracial dating. - The political metaphor of infiltration by foreign influences: fascists, communists, could be anything. See Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It Came from Outer Space (1953) for more on that.
And yet, we don't like the sleazy drifter (the always dangerous James Anderson) who is stalking our bride, so don't we have a sneaking admiration for the cop-aliens who dispatch him in an efficient police-state manner? - Hints of a crypto-gay subculture: childless, unhappily married men who recognize each other and have secret lives that could get them killed. Note that the town doc knows where to find "real men": at the Maternity Ward.
The town bartender is "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom, a boxer who had a second career playing comical palookas for Hollywood.
Available on DVD. [Later: on Blu-ray from the Australian Imprint label].
