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The intergalactic agent (Paul Birch) wears black suit and fedora and carries aluminum suitcases, he might be Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution but for dark glasses concealing blank orbs. The "conquest, subjugation and pasturing" of Earth is his mission, he sees the inhabitants as "sub-human, weak and full of fright" but necessary. (The alien has dust in his veins due to radiation, his fridge is well-stocked with beakers of blood from unlucky locals.) Necking teenagers and merry winos are among his victims, the salesman-hepcat (Dick Miller) turns up with vacuum-cleaner in hand and is fed into the incinerator, though not before shooting an unbelieving glance at the camera. Live-in nurse (Beverly Garland) and wiseguy houseboy (Jonathan Haze) grow suspicious. "No one in this wide world can guarantee life." "Nor in any other, I fear." Roger Corman's space vampires, a suggestive and saturnine and ultimately tragic lot. The inter-dimensional teleporter is a blinking mirror in a walk-in closet, the foil-wrapped larva grows into a pulsing carnivorous lampshade, plein-air filming is of particular note. The visitor's solitary compatriot is a doleful brunette (Anna Lee Carroll) whose deadpan crumbles at last following a transfusion of rabid plasma. "No undue dread" for death, the persistent theme of vision, cf. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Trip... The heroine kicks off her heels for the chase in the woods, a roadside spill breaks the trance. "That is an emotional statement." "It is an emotional time." The closing view in the cemetery includes a little invocation of The Third Man. With Morgan Jones, William Roerick, Pat Flynn, Roy Engel, and Tom Graeff. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |