There’s one of those persistent urban legends out there that Ed Wood is secretly responsible for this one.
It wouldn’t exactly surprise anyone: it’s inept enough. And strange enough.
Not that Ed corned the market on either of these.
But the truth is that the director, Ronnie Ashcroft, co-directed Ed’s Night of the Ghouls, and he also had Ed on the set of the The Astounding She-Monster as an unofficial and unbilled advisor (a thought which makes my head hurt). So Ed does have his fingerprints all over this thing.
The opening certainly doesn’t do much to allay our Ed Wood fears: there’s a lot of narration over footage without synchronized sound (whether by choice to save money or because of a moment of typically Ed Wood-style stunning ineptitude).
But this settles down by the time we reach the isolated cabin whose one room will be the setting for virtually everything else which happens
A criminal gang tries to kidnap an heiress but it goes wrong and they end and they end up in the deep woods instead, with the police after them. They force their way into a cabin which just happens to belong to a geologist who’s studying the area.
This, however, isn’t complicated enough for Ronnie Ashcroft so an alien chooses this moment to show up and start killing people with her touch.
There’s an amusing bit of exaggerated sensationalism here as the first of the gang to encounter her tells us she’s naked.
Some of you out there may have pricked up your ears a bit at that, but even with the shimmying effects superimposed on the alien it is very clear that she’s wearing a body stocking.
High heels, too.
Not that this awkward fact stopped them from using The Naked Invader as the shooting title for the film. Or doing their best on the posters to suggest she’s naked.
Now, if the plot seems vaguely familiar, it is nearly identical to that of one of Roger Corman’s all time favorite scripts, Naked Paradise, which he recycled again and again in quite a few other films, including Beast from Haunted Cave, a sword and sandal epic, and even Edward L. Cahn’s Voodoo Woman.
You can’t go wrong with the classics, right?
However, to the best of my knowledge, there is no actual connection between Corman and this film, although it is true that it was released by AIP.
But, hey, we know Ed watched a lot of horror and sci fi films. Why should Roger be the only one who gets to “borrow” plots from his old films?
Whatever the case, we know that Ronnie started with a vague idea of where he was going with this one and, well, made it up as they went along.
Which isn’t exactly a surprise if you’ve actually seen The Astounding She-Monster.
I’ll give them some minor points for the ironic twist of what the She Monster is. Not many, but it is at least an interesting notion and more or less new.
That still isn’t enough to rescue this one from it’s impoverished production values. In particular the dearth of closeups and the tendency towards fairly static middle distance setups effectively distances us from the characters.
Which, yes, makes it very hard to get all that excited about what happens to them.
Oh, well. When you’ve got Ed Wood involved, you know what to expect. Even if he was just hanging out with his pal and making a few odd suggestions.
And we know they were odd.
This one isn’t just cheap, it is threadbare. With a little more finesse (and better dialogue) it might have been a more-or-less average sort of Fifties Sci Fi film.
But at least it isn’t as bad as The Creeping Terror. Or The Unknown Terror. Or Teenagers Battle the Thing.
But that’s not saying much.
rivets on the poster 
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