I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958)

DIRECTED by Gene Fowler Jnr.

SCREENPLAY by Louis Vittes.

STARRING - Tom Tryon as Bill Farrell,  Gloria Talbot as Marge Bradley Farrell,  Peter Baldwin as Officer Frank Swanson,  Robert Ivers as Harry Phillips,  Chuck Walsall as Ted Hanks,  Ken Lynch as Dr. Wayne,  John Eldredge as Police Captain H.B. Collins,  Alan Dexter as Sam Benson,  Jean Carson as Helen Alexander Benson.

PLOT - On the way home from his stag night, Bill Farrell is apprehended by an alien being. He is taken into the alien ship and the extraterrestrial takes his form. The following day the alien Bill marries Bill's fiance Marge.

One year later, Marge is starting to have doubts about her marriage. "Bill" seems to have grown cold towards her, he appears to hate the puppy that she bought him for an anniversary present whilst previously he had been a dog lover. She has also been unable to get pregnant and desparately wants a child. Marge also notices that the men in "Bill's" group of friends are acting equally distant to thier partners.

One night, Marge follows "Bill" into the local woods and there she sees the alien being emerge from his body and enter a nearby spacecraft. Horrified, Marge runs into town to alert the authorities but nobody will believe her strange tale.

It soon becomes apparent that the menfolk in her town are slowly being relaced by alien imposters, very soon the police force are overtaken by the aliens and Marge finds that she is unable to leave the town to alert the outside world.

What do these sinister creatures want with the women of Earth and why do they want to breed with them ?

DIALOUGE  - Marge - "Your race has no women, it can't have children, it will die out." "Bill" - "Eventually we'll have children with you."

PERFORMANCES  - There is one key problem which lies with Tom Tryon's performance as Bill and it's in no way down to being the actor's fault. Instead its an issue with the script, and that is the fact that we never get to know the human Bill before he is replaced by the alien doppelganger. Human Bill is literally on screen for about the first five minutes of the movie before he is whisked off and replaced. This decision leads to a reduced effectiveness in the story - because we don't know what Bill was like as a person we therefore can't appreciate just how different his alien imposter is acting. This leads to Tryon's performance being a bit one sided, we only get to see the cold, unsympathetic alien version. How much better it would have been if we could have seen both versions of Bill properly, I'm sure Tryon for one would have enjoyed the chance to stretch his acting muscles by portraying this contrast. 

As it is Tryon still gives a good performance - alien Bill is coldly menacing and yet we find ourselves not being unsympathetic to the alien race's plight. They only want to breed so they can save thier dying race, its just the way they go about it that's dodgy.

This lack of screen time for the human version of Bill means that Gloria Talbot playing Bill's wife Marge is left to fill in the gaps. Thankfully she does this very well. We see through Marge's eyes the aloof being that her beloved husband has become. The only problem I have with Talbot's performance is again a script issue. She just doesn't come across as being emotionally jarred enough by some of the terrible events that unfold.

This is most apparent in the scene where "Bill" murders the couple's brand new puppy. Marge hears the dog yelp in pain, runs into the basement and sees "Bill" standing over the dead dog. "Bill" then spins her some bullshit that he just found the dog like that and it obviously wasn't "very strong". Marge emits a brief sob and then goes back upstairs. A few seconds later "Bill" leaves the basement to join her. We see Marge just sitting there calmly flipping through a magazine as if nothing has happened. Wouldn't you be absolutely gutted that your lovely, cute new puppy had just apparently dropped dead for no reason ?  Wouldn't you be wanting to know what happened ? Wouldn't you be emotionally traumatised in some way ? But no, Marge just sits there nonchalantly doing the crossword. It's little things like this that undermine the movie's story and central performances and it's a shame because other than that Tryon and Talbot do a good job.

Perhaps the best performance belongs to Alan Dexter playing Bill's friend Sam. When we first see Sam he appears to have a bit of a drinking problem, he's almost permanently out of his tree. There's some great "drunk" acting in these scenes. A lot of actors in 50's movies when asked to act drunk all too often go down the "comedy" drunk route. You know the score - slurred speech, pronouncing "S" words as "Shhh", rolling eyes and exaggerated stumbling body movements. We've seen it a thousand times before. Dexter instead plays a believable drunk. Yes, he adheres to all the traditional tropes of a drunk but he does it more subtly - he still speaks coherently, his swaying movements aren't too over the top. You can actually believe that this guy is a pissed as a fart.

Eventually, as with Bill before him, Sam is replaced by an alien. It's the contrast between the two Sam's that we see that makes me enjoy Dexter's performance so much. Human Sam is a drunk whilst alien Sam shares the same cold aloofness that we see in the alien version of Bill. In short, we get to see the contrast and character development that we should have seen in the main character being given to a supporting character instead.

It doesn't end there though as "Sam" starts to rather enjoy his human disguise and begins to take on some of human Sam's characteristics, including his enjoyment of a good stiff drink. Once again, it would have been good if we could have seen this development in "Bill's" character, It's hinted at towards the end of the film that "Bill" may have started to feel human emotions for Marge but its never fully confirmed. 

"Sam" later dies after falling into a river and the town doctor accidentally causes his death by giving him Oxygen when he attempts to revive him. Hang on...so the aliens can be killed by breathing Oxygen now ? Isn't Earth's atmosphere full of the stuff ? Haven't they been breathing Oxygen throughout the entire film ? It's like going for a swim in the sea and being absolutely fine and then drowning when you go to wash your hands. It makes no sense.

SFX - For a low budget 50's film the creature effects are very well done. The aliens have a nice creepy looking design with thier twisted, distorted looking faces...

There's a great scene on "Bill" and Marge's wedding night, a thunderstorm is raging outside thier hotel window and a brief flash of lightning causes "Bill's" true alien features to be momentarily revealed. Its a simple enough effect but it must have shocked audiences in the 1950's. In his semi-autobiographical dissection of the horror genre - Danse Macabre - Stephen King cites this scene as being one of the first moments in a film that scared him as a child. I can see why this would unnerve a kid in the 50's...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - We get some nice, albeit brief, moments of alien gore when a couple of aliens are killed by Alsatians. Turns out the invaders are particularly vulnerable to being mauled by dogs. Let's get this straight here - the aliens can be killed by breathing too much Oxygen and now they have a vulnerability to dogs ? Why have they decided its a good idea to invade a planet with an Oxygen rich atmosphere where a large percentage of the population own dogs ? They really haven't thought this through properly have they..

It's great when the aliens die. They dissolve into a pool of bubbling slime. Its quite graphic for 1958...

Quite a lot of people get zapped by lasers as well...

RATING  - I Married a Monster From Outer Space is a fun little body snatching sci-fi flick that is only let down by some truly bizzare script choices that undermine the entire film. Overall I'm going to give this 3 and a half body snatched Bill's out of 5. It would have scored higher if they'd have just tightened up the script a little bit, but it is what it is. Check it out all the same.

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