Retro Porn Review - Invasion of the Love Drones

There’s something about sci-fi and porn that doesn’t seem to mix well. Perhaps it’s that it usually implies some disconnection with the human side of people, and robotic sounds and features are not something we necessarily relate to sex (most of us, anyway).

Producer and director Jerome Hamlim, under the pseudonym ‘The Sensory Man’, released his only movie, Invasion of the Love Drones, in 1977. Undoubtedly a passion project, the movie follows alien life-forms who are cloning themselves into human bodies by having sex with them.

It all begins when George (Eric Edwards), a normal married man is being chosen as the primary drone by having him have a threesome with two blonde chicks with afros (there have been worse ways to get cloned in other movies.) After being in control of his mind, George’s body is used to recruit other human beings. The first one being his wife, of course. And each on their own, they start spreading the drones with alarming speed.

A researcher named Dr. Femme, in a pretty good performance from one hit porn wonder Viveca Ash, then figured they were turning into “space creatures”, presumably because of their robot-like voice and passion-less tone (also a fantastic way to mask some of these people’s poor acting chops, if you ask me).

The male FBI agents sent to try to stop them were all being turned. When the FBI tried to send Rona, a female agent, to go undercover to the drone headquarters, she gets caught and gang-droned in an awkward scene that proved a bit pointless.

All the drones had started to travel compulsively, spreading as fast as possible, and finding a way to stop them was starting to look impossible. But in the most unlikely turn of events, the seemingly dumbest-looking and worst acting member of the cast, comes through with a Shakespearean quote right as the “planetary orgasm” is in process.

Some of the robot voices are kinda funny and off-putting, but that seems to be no deal breaker for any of their sexual partners, who may have questioned it as odd at first, but probably ended up just saying, “well, it’s just a voice, and I’m here, I guess…”

There are tons of sex scenes/drone clonings, although some are simulated. Still, there’s a couple of fairly redeeming scenes.

The truth is that the soundtrack steals the show in this film. There’s heavy use of analog synthesizers to create a spacier mood, and the grooves tend to grab you right away. Also, you can tell the sound guys had a blast, ring modulating every voice into an odd tonal mix to make them more alien-like.

While the premise is a silly excuse for sex, the narrator does raise an interesting point by the end of the movie: “If this episode seems an unlikely exercise in science fiction, you might ask yourself what better way to dominate men than by subversion of his most basic drive.”

This is very true, but that could have been executed in a much better way.

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