The film opens and gets right into the action as a man attacks a girl and knocks her unconscious without even touching her.  As she is on the ground, he drains some of her blood and opens his eyes to reveal nothing but the whites of his eyes.  He has no corneas, pupils or anything!  After the credits roll, the man, or whatever he is, heads to the doctor’s office to get himself a blood transfusion and uses mind control on the doc to get his way.  Once he gets himself home, we also see that he has himself a fridge full of blood.  Why does he have this blood?  To send it home to his home planet as part of his plan to either subjugate or destroy the planet, depending on whether his blood transfusions work.  Of course, he will need more blood.  That in turn will require more human chattel.

As it turns out this was a great little science-fiction/horror film from Roger Corman, the King of Schlock.  Funny enough, most films he did were pretty entertaining, bad special effects aside.  This film thankfully required little, and what there was had been done effectively, namely the eyes of the aliens.  Paul Birch did a great job as the emotionless Mr. Johnson.  Both his speech and his actions were monotonous and created a nice dissociative comparison between him and the other cast members.  Beverly Garland playing Nurse Nadine, did a fine job as our heroine and damsel in distress.  In her scenes with Birch, she played it pretty straight, which was nice as Birch being so emotionless most likely would have elicited some chuckles.

The most intriguing part of the film was some essentially throwaway dialogue between Mr. Johnson and the female alien.  Between them they discuss the state of their home planet and what is happening to the food supply and the repercussions of it, which could possibly end up being a civil war.  More than likely due to budget restraints, it of course was never filmed but it is by far the best part of the movie by screenwriters Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna and it lasts no more than a minute.  If Corman and company could have filmed and explored the situation further, the film might have ended up being far better than it was.

As far as Corman pictures go, this one was short, sweet and actually quite good.  It had a decent script and featured good performances from all involved and while the aliens were human in nature, they were more interesting than others of their ilk found in similar films.  For a not so good remake but one with its own kind of charm, check out the 1988 version of the film featuring Traci Lords.

4 out of 5