Back in November of last year, Barry at Cinematic Catharsis accepted a challenge from a fellow blogger to write about his five favorite movies from 1978. At the end of that post, he issued new challenges to several bloggers, including yours truly. Picking up the baton, I decided to go with my top five underrated/overlooked ‘70s sci-fi TV movies.

At first I intended to just devote a single post to the five, but of course, being congenitally verbose (and a little masochistic), I found myself regurgitating paragraphs and paragraphs on the first movie, so I decided to turn the single post into a five-part series. I’ll pass on the challenge to a new set of bloggers in part five, but until then, on with the show!

This Aaron Spelling-produced TV movie is as bare bones as they come, even for an era known for its low-budget TV productions. Lloyd Bridges plays an alien operative from the planet Argon who has traveled to earth along with two colleagues to fight a team from a rival planet for control of the planet. All the aliens have assumed human appearances and identities, and we eventually learn that the contest is strictly regulated by an interplanetary “War Arbitration Control” board - each side gets three representatives, and the team with the last man/alien standing wins. However, as we also soon learn, that doesn’t preclude one side or the other from cheating.

The movie starts out with Bridges tracking down a rival alien at the Los Angeles train station. For the mission, he’s outfitted with an energy gun that looks like a wand candle lighter, a communicator that is nothing more than a translucent plastic stick, a tracking device that looks like a small pill box with red and white flashing lights, and weird wrap around glasses that he uses to see his rivals in their real form (shades of They Live!) Again, it doesn’t get any more basic than that, and probably cost Spelling all of $20 to outfit the whole cast.

The biggest effect is quickly trotted out. Bridges somehow manages to blast the enemy operative without attracting any attention, and then attaches a small detonator to the body, which within seconds causes it to glow green, then disintegrate in a ball of orange fire.

But that’s only the preliminaries. For some obscure reason, the final battle is to take place in a small California town south of Fresno (!). Bridges must get there pronto, but has missed the only train of the day, so he takes the bus… (Okay, he travels light years to fight in a battle for the earth, and he has to take the bus to get to his appointment? Really?) Enter Angie Dickinson/Sandy, who provides the love interest in The Love War. She hops on the bus enroute to Fresno, plops down in the seat next to Bridges, and (apologies in advance) chats him up like a call girl at an aluminum siding salesmen's convention.

Not used to interacting with earth women, Bridges (who introduces himself as Kyle) is very awkward at first, but then quickly warms up to the beautiful woman who has such an avid interest in him. Subsequent developments require an entire suspension bridge of disbelief on the part of the viewer.

Bridges allows Sandy to follow him to an old hotel at his destination, where he sedates her and reveals his true form and mission as she struggles to stay awake. Apparently the stakes are ultra-high: If the Argons win, they will invite humanity to join their interplanetary federation; if the other side wins, they will eliminate human beings and take over the planet. Enamored with Sandy to the point of imbecility, Bridges takes her with him to the final battle over the objections of his Argon teammate (Daniel J. Travanti of Hill Street Blues fame).

The Love War goes into action movie mode with shoot-outs, car chases and even a Wild West-style showdown in a ghost town. Along the way, Sandy remains an enigma -- will she be a help or hindrance in the battle for the earth? (Also, if Kyle somehow wins, will he be called to account for being a love-struck idiot who needlessly endangered the supremely important mission?)

The best thing going for The Love War is that Bridges and Dickinson keep absolutely straight faces throughout, even as they’re throwing off lines like “I haven’t felt this way in 150 years” or “I’ve never felt so alive -- kiss me Kyle!”

I remember as a teenager being intrigued with The Love War when it first aired, and somehow the “magician’s act” of the bodies disappearing in a puff of flame and smoke made a particular impression on me. (And yes, I was old enough to be impressed by Angie as well!) I also recall thinking the idea of pitting small teams of soldiers against each other to decide the fate of a planet, versus fighting a war that would get a lot of people killed was a cool one (especially living at the height of the Vietnam war).

Seeing it 50+ years later, it’s hard not to smirk at the hackneyed premise (even for its time; see below), the bare bones production, the clunky dialog, the logic lapses, and the indifferently staged action scenes. Still, there’s something endearing about these old TV movies that, due to limited budgets, had to be more about ideas and characters than effects, even if they ultimately fell flat.

Lloyd Bridges would go on to appear in a number of notable sci-fi, fantasy and suspense TV movies during the decade, including The Deadly Dream (1971), Haunts of the Very Rich (1972), and The Force of Evil (1977), among others. Angie Dickinson appeared in The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971), the short-lived supernatural anthology series Circle of Fear (1972), and the Dan Curtis TV movie/pilot The Norliss Tapes (1972), before reaching the zenith of her fame as the star of Police Woman (1974-78).

Where to find it: An okay streaming copy can be found here.