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Saddled
with a title evoking cheesiness of the highest pungency, I
Married a Monster from Outer Space is actually a fairly
thoughtful '50s sci-fi flick. In the past decade I've seen genre
fans inflate its mild qualities to try to argue it as a minor
classic, but in all honesty it isn't. It is a pretty
good little movie... Lowered expectations are the best way to
approach it for maximum enjoyment.
Traveling home late at night after his bachelor
party, Bill Farrell (Tom Tryon) nearly runs over a man lying
in the road. Jumping out of his car he finds the body gone —
he is then attacked and apparently absorbed by a grotesque glowing
alien creature. The next day Bill shows up hours late for his
wedding, appearing slightly confused, but goes through with
the ceremony. Cut to a year later and Bill's bride Marge (Gloria
Talbott) is deeply concerned about him as he seems to be a different
man from the one she fell in love with. He acts detached or
unemotional, and compounding her fears is the fact that she
hasn't yet become pregnant even though her doctor assures her
she can conceive. One night Bill leaves the house in the middle
of the night and Marge follows him. He walks far into the local
woods where Marge witnesses her husband physically separate
from one of the aliens and then enter their hidden spacecraft.
Horrified, she runs to the local chief of police and he comforts
her with promises to look into the situation. Of course, all
the small town's cops have been taken over by the aliens already
so no help is coming from that quarter. When Bill's buddy Sam
(Alan Dexter) becomes one of the controlled we learn from their
conversations that these weird invaders are trying to find a
way to breed with human females. The females of their race were
wiped out in a disaster and without some form of interspecies
mating they will die out. In desperation Marge tries to contact
the FBI but finds every avenue of communication cut off; she
is even unable to leave town. But when one of the disguised
aliens dies accidentally she thinks she may have found one authority
figure that hasn't been taken over — Dr. Wayne (Ken Lynch).
But how will she be able to find enough uncontrolled men to
stop the creatures?
An odd variation on Invasion
of the Body Snatchers, it shares that film's 'Red Scare'
feel but it's more interesting for its commentary on sexual
politics and marital fears. The film opens with a booze-fueled
bachelor party discussion in which the men's dismissive and
derogatory statements about marriage are pretty harsh and certainly
don't reflect the norm for 1950s genre movies. The movie also
gives us a few female bar denizens who come off as quite slutty,
one of which pays for a poorly timed flirtation with her life.
Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or deemed
unworthy of being alien breeding stock because she's a tramp?
On each of my viewings this murder came off as a disturbing
value judgment not of the creatures but of the movie. These
kinds of ideas bubble around the story as when the film smartly
uses the fear of infidelity to lead Marge to the necessary revelations
of the plot. Her following of Bill on a nocturnal trip away
from home plays like a woman trying to catch her man with a
mistress only to stumble onto something much more sinister.
And, of course, the central idea of the aliens mating with Earth
women can make your skin crawl if one thinks through the implications
of Marge's year of attempting to get pregnant! But even though
the movie slips a few nasty ideas in, our one glimpse into the
married couple's bedroom shows us two separate beds in keeping
with the 'safe' Hollywood version of life.
The film still manages to keep things interesting
by doing odd things, like subverting the common marital fear
of drinking and the abuse that can come with it. When it turns
out that the controlled aliens avoid alcohol because it's deadly
to them, this family fear of the period becomes a danger sign
for a very different reason. The slightly more adult tilt to
the material shows in other scenes as well, such as in the execution
of a barfly that starts sniffing around Marge. He's coldly blown
away when the alien-controlled cops decide that such a lowlife
is of no use to them (just as the female bar tramp wasn't, I
guess). Of course, this all may be a bit too much to ask a first-time
viewer to see in I Married a Monster from
Outer Space, but its certainly
there. And if folks can read a commentary on Communism into
Body Snatchers then I can see social
commentary on the war between the sexes here. Besides, this
film is a little slow at times and these kind of speculations
help keep it fun.
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