The Love War

Whole decades have passed since I've seen this one. Up until the late-70's, "The Love War" was TV grist for the afternoon just-home-from-school crowd or nightowls on the independent stations. It has since vanished.

Lousy title, but a terrific premise: aliens fight a low-level, unseen war in a U.S. city for territorial control of the Earth. Some neat special effects (for 1970), a starry cast and a twist in the tale make this worth another look. Certainly worth consideration for a re-make.

Okay, first of all, I was very young when I first saw this movie. I must have been all of ten years old. At that time, I thought it was pretty neat... two alien races conducting a discrete little war on Earth, unbeknownst to us mere Earthlings. When an alien agent kills another, they turn a key in the other agent's navel, and *sizzle* the corpse disintegrates. Decent suspense throughout, but remember ... we're talking a made-for-TV movie from 1970, no big-budget special effects.

What I find most amusing now is realizing who was in the movie .. Angie Dickenson, Daniel J. Travanti and LLOYD BRIDGES ... The Late Great Lloyd was very good in this, as an agent trying to protect a human woman (Dickenson) who had gotten caught up in the war, purely by accident.

I have no idea if this movie is available anywhere ... I'd like to see it again. No blockbuster of a movie, but it was fun.

Back in the day, I saw this on a Sunday afternoon syndicated movie(about 1975). Apparently it was a 1970 ABC movie of The Week(Networks did some terrific-but cheaply made- movies of the week, back in those halcyon 70's days.. of a sci-fi or horror nature, like Earth 2, The Stranger Within,Killdozer, The People, Don't Be Afraid of The Dark, The Horror At 37,000 Feet, Gargoyles..way before Sci Fi Channel put on mostly made for TV garbage of recent years. In fact, Sci Fi Channel, in their old days of the mid-90's re-ran many of these old films as well as TNT/TBS back in their retro format years). I think the word "Love" was in style-Love American Style, Love Story, etc all coming out the same year. Lloyd Bridges (who did a lot of made for TV'ers in them days) plays an alien who comes to earth to fight other aliens as the two races have declared the earth their battleground. Bridge's alien claims he's fighting the good fight and going to win the battle and, the earth will be left alone by his race, as he says that if the other race wins, they'll take over earth. Or will they? It's his word against theirs.He falls in love with the earthly Angie Dickinson and reveals his secret to her-you can guess the twist ending to that. Done kind of like a color Outer Limits episode made into a film. Special effects are not bad, for the day, and we only once ever glimpse, quickly, the alien's true visage, from a distance, before it turns... so we know while they look like us, they're quite alien. The aliens can see each other apart from the earthlings via special glasses. Fun stuff for, and of the time.

I saw this movie on TV when I was a lot younger but it impressed me. Mainly because despite the unlikely pairing of Loyd Bridges and Angie Dickinson in a Sci-Fi movie it worked quite well. The plot was complex but while moving quickly enough did not become garbled or incoherent as some movies do when trying to achieve the "unexpected". The partnership between the main characters develops quite naturally although it may seem cliché to some in this day and age. Perhaps much of it's charm for me is that it came before many other similar movies and was in its way a ground breaker in this genre. I would love to see it again but as another commented I have yet to see it on either tape or DVD. Not many resources even list it. The title of lost sci-fi classic is quite appropriate and I feel many sci-fi fans would enjoy it if it were available to them.

Like most of the comments here, I'm working off of my childhood memory. But the fact that I remembered the title after all these years has to count for the quality of the storyline, low-budget or not.

I have several scenes of this film stuck in my brain - which I won't give away here should we actually get a DVD box set of the Best of the Movies of the Week some day (hint, hint). But I have to go on record as saying that Spielberg's DUEL isn't the only TV film ABC produced under the Movie of the Week banner that is worthy of note. I'd venture to guess that there were a dozen of these suspense/horror/sci-fi genre films nearly as good (or better) as much of the summer movies we're seeing in theaters these days (and I'm talking about storytelling, not effects and explosions). That may not say as much about the quality of those TV movies as the lack thereof in modern films. But LOVE WAR in particular, was one I watched every time it was on and has held up - at least in my mind.

I'd love to see it again, if only for the sake of nostalgia.