The Love War

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.

George McGowan must have liked this plot, as he did a second movie along a similar theme that same season for ABC MOVIE OF THE WEEK. That film, THE CHALLENGE, had Darren McGavin in the Lloyd Bridges role. Both films had the same premise-- rather than an all-out war between two forces, a select group of champions is chosen to fight it out, winner take all. McGowan obviously did not care for the final version of THE CHALLENGE, as he attached the dreaded Alan Smithee name to its directorial credit. Maybe THE LOVE WAR is closer to how he wanted to end that other film?

Lloyd Bridges had a great deal going during those wonderful days of the MOVIE OF THE WEEK series. He got a wide range of roles, from action roles like this to horror flicks like HAUNTS OF THE VERY RICH to dramas like SILENT NIGHT LONELY NIGHT. In terms of number of films made, I'd say he and Darren McGavin were the most prolific actors (Bridges= 14, McGavin = 11), with Christopher George and Doug McClure fighting for 3rd and 4th places.

I was fourteen when I saw these and man, did that ending take me by surprise! 31 years later, I'm still not sure what happened after the film's events ended..... Talk about a "Lady or the Tiger" ending!

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.

I feel as though an angel has smiled on me. After years of wanting to see this movie I finally saw it. This was one of the ABC movie of the week deals that I learned about in high school back in the 80's. Unfortunately I was born a scant 5 or 6 months before it aired on ABC, which meant my parents were probably enjoying it whilst I was napping in my crib in another room. I can't remember how I found out about it back in 1988 but I did, and had a nice enough of a working idea of the plot to attempt a remake of my own. That became my senior video project in my Mass Media class and while it got me an "A" in the class, it didn't garner me much recognition. I even built the props in addition to making the script! The producers needn't get their lawyers ready as I have long since lost the footage of me and my friends running around reenacting what was poorly but cogent rendition of their movie. However it would be nice if someone would remake the movie for a more modern retelling. A good made for TV movie with a nice twist-ending.

I saw 'The Love War' more than 30 years ago on Australian television, while I was working double shifts in a Sydneyside slaughter-yard. I found this low-budget TV-movie deeply enjoyable, for two reasons: firstly, it was science fiction at a time when I was starved for even half-decent SF. Secondly, I've always maintained that science fiction is about *ideas*, not hardware and special effects. 'The Love War' has no ray guns, no spaceships: if you watched this movie with the sound off, you'd barely realise it's science fiction.

The film begins in an airport jetty. We see Lloyd Bridges come hirpling along, with an extreme limp. We never do learn the precise explanation for how he got the limp ... but we learn very shortly that he's an extraterrestrial, or at least that he claims to be one. This raises a lot of questions that never do get answered: if the aliens are able to equip themselves with human bodies, then why has Bridges got a body with a gimpy left ankle?

Anyroad, it soon turns out that there are two different alien species on Earth. Two planets are at war with each other, and their best soldiers have decided to duke it out on Earth rather than on their homeworlds. Sucks to any humans who get hurt. Apparently, the two rival sets of aliens are able to disguise themselves so perfectly as humans that the only way they can rumble each other is through sunglasses with special lenses. (Why don't they get contact lenses?)

Bridges is on the run from the aliens, although it's not immediately clear whether he's on the run from the aliens on the *other* planet -- his enemies -- or whether he's on the run from his own people, because he wants to defect to Earth and live as a human. This raises still more questions that never do get answered: if Bridges successfully goes to earth on Earth and lives out his days as a human, what will happen to this body he's wearing -- presumably not a genuine human body -- when he eventually dies? Will he just self-combust, like the dead aliens in 'The Invaders'?

Well, Bridges crosses paths with gorgeous blonde Earthwoman Angie Dickinson, who falls in love with him surprisingly quickly. There is a 'surprise' ending which I saw coming from about twelve parsecs away, but I enjoyed the trip it took to get there. The actors give such earnest performances that I accepted them as extraterrestrials, despite very little evidence. At the very end of the movie, we get a glimpse of two of the aliens through a pair of sunglasses. Still, this movie might have been more interesting if the actors and director had played it for more ambiguity, making Bridges's haggard protagonist more like the enigmatic character played by Kevin Spacey in 'K-PAX': is he a genuine alien, or is he a deluded human who has convinced himself he's an alien, as a defence mechanism against insanity?

Part of the problem with 'The Love War' (besides its irrelevant and generic title) is that this story didn't really have to be science fiction: it would have worked much more credibly if the two rival sets of aliens had been human all along: two rival mafia clans, for instance, or modern incarnations of the Hatfields and McCoys. Or the Jets and the Sharks. Worse luck, this TV movie bears a strong resemblance to a science-fiction story by Kris Neville that was published about twenty years earlier: anyone who's read that story will have no trouble guessing the end of this movie.

I enjoyed 'The Love War', but would like to have seen the same premise without the science-fiction garnishes. I'll rate this TV movie 7 out of 10. It doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence, and that's a rare achievement indeed.