I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Aliens come to earth in a flying saucer in search of human mates. The women are dying on their planet. The aliens look like hell. They're roughly human in shape. Well, they HAVE to be, since they're really men walking around in aluminum foil suits. But their heads are an insult. No necks at all. The head seems to be planted halfway down into the transverse plane of the shoulders. And their faces, such as they are, lose bilateral symmetry, with ugly fleshy ridges criss-crossing this way and that. No wonder their women died.One by one they take over the male figures in a small California town. The human is engulfed in smoke, then replaced by a alien, with the human bodies being removed to the space ship and kept comatose. They take over the police force. When innocent Gloria Talbott, the bride of a replicant that looks like Tom Tryon, tries to reach outside agencies, she finds that all the telephone lines are busy and the dispatcher throws away her telegram to the FBI.One of the first and most effective of these plots was "It Came From Outer Space," which made evocative use of its desert settings and some of the dialog of which had qualities of folk philosophy. Then came a modest masterpiece, "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," and all the pod people.This one came a little late in the series and lacks the originality of the earlier examples of the genre. And not just that. The acting is mostly wooden. The best performance comes from Valerie Allen as a hooker who has about four minutes of screen time.Gloria Talbott has no more than a modest talent, but at least she's pretty. Her face is full of good bone structure and she wears pointy 1950s brassieres. Tom Tryon, on the other hand, doesn't even strike me as particularly handsome. He has the tall, narrow, broad-shouldered, skinny build of a guy who would be good at hurling a poisoned spear at a giraffe twenty yards away. But his head, from certain angles, resembles a cinder block. I like him anyway because he was a little unusual as a human being. Not just that he was gay but that he went on to a successful career as a novelist, and I've always admired people with enough talent for two disparate fields. Lots of actors write biographies, or have them written for them, but a successful novel is a different order of thing. Meg Tilly did it too. Goethe was more proud of his work in the philosophy of science than in literature ("Faust").The special effects are of the period and even more crude than those in "It Came From Outer Space." The plodding direction by Gene Fowler, Jr., isn't much help. It's all done by the numbers. Talbott is sitting at her desk writing a letter to her Mom. We see the pen write her sad story: "It's been a terrible year since I married Sam. He's not the man I fell in love with. It's like living with a stranger...." The camera cuts to her thoughtful face staring into the air during a longish pause. Now, I ask you, the seasoned viewer of movies, is she going to rip up the note and throw it in the trash or not? Of course she will. Why? Because that's what everybody does in the movies. There isn't any JUICE to the plot or direction, no vatic moment, like Klaatu's visit to Professor Bernhard in "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Nobody says or does anything UNIQUE.It's too bad because stories like this have real potential. Imagine, an alien in human form. Some things Tryon remembers, like how to drive a car, and some he doesn't, like turning on the car lights at night. He doesn't recognize thunder for what it is. There are all sorts of possibilities in this arrangement and though this film has some interesting stuff going on -- Tryon slowly begins to love his wife -- most of the possibilities are thrown away in a typical commercial gesture.

The complications of a most very unusual marriage..a young bride is unknowingly betrothed to a man whose body is host to an alien from another constellation. The alien race needs women to procreate their species or face extinction due to the fact that their sun which destroyed their planet.Solid sci-fi from director Gene Fowler, Jr(I Was a Teenage Werewolf)stars Gloria Talbott as Marge, recently married to Bill Farrell(Tom Tryon), noticing that he's not acting the same before their blessed union. In fact, she discovers, to her horror, that Bill has been taken over by an alien who has invaded his body. Attempting to tell others becomes difficult because many local men in town themselves have become victims as well. Can Marge find anybody to help her? Is Bill lost to the alien forever? Will the aliens succeed in their mission to impregnate females for procreation purposes? Essentially a sci-fi melodrama, I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE is far more mature, intelligent, and literate than the hokey title would suggest, especially well acted by it's competent cast, particularly Talbott who so desperately wants to communicate what she knows regarding the alien threat, yet getting her message out becomes a trial. Talbott conveys to us, impressively I think, the burden such a knowledge has on her character. Meticulously paced, perhaps too leisurely for some;almost like an extended Twilight Zone episode. I'm afraid serious sci-fi fans may be put off by the title(..which I adore by the way;thanks to the title, it remained on my "to see" list until Turner Classics recently showed it)and miss out on a really good movie. I'm attracted to the "body snatching" science fiction very popular during this time, and I think I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE is a classic example of the quality pictures that derived from the canon. Taking the material seriously, Fowler Jr directs the film(..as well as the cast's acting)with a minimalist approach.What was most fascinating to me was seeing Bill's alien(..he and his drinking buddies, also taken over)attempting to coexist(..adapt)to human society, discovering what it was to feel, to love. The aliens subdue the humans, forming a gaseous cloud over the bodies, placing the hosts in their ship while they move about taking their positions in life. Another development is their friction with animals(..particularly canines)who can tell they are not us. Really cool is how canines actually help us where bullets from guns can not. A nice little trick which informs the viewer that certain characters are under alien control is the imprint of the creature's faces overlapping the humans during lightning flashes in thunderstorms.

The competition of course is fiercer than the top spot on American Idol. But, in my warped view, I Married a Monster from Outer Space stacks up as the goofiest movie title from an era when goofy movie titles were thicker than scales on Godzilla's monster neck. Naturally, there was a reason for those goofy titles. They immediately signaled "teen movie", which usually meant a drive-in special where teens tended to congregate and waste their allowances. But then, kids at drive-ins didn't expect much from their movies, because (surprise, surprise) they were too busily engaged in their own hormonal development to catch up with more than bits and pieces.Okay, so I didn't see the movie all the way through until years later. But (surprise, surprise, again) it's a really good creepy movie that even adults like. And, I'm told, movie heavyweights catch up with the aliens and their body-snatched humans for all the symbolism they think they see, like "does a marriage ceremony turn all husbands into unromantic zombies". I guarantee no teen of the time saw anything on screen other than a good scary movie.Anyway, I liked Gloria Talbott then and still do, especially when she runs around in her low- cut nightgown, chest heaving. However, I think she made a really bad life choice running into Slapsie-Maxie's all night bar in that same gown since it sort of gives the male barflies wrong ideas. But then, she's not getting any romance at home because her hubby Tom Tryon is, shall we say-- not of this earth. No, instead he's been taken over by a creeping gas cloud that dissolves people for later reassembly in, you guessed it, a space ship. Talk about bad gas! On the other hand, I was really turned off by that scene where the popsicle monster gazes at the doll baby in the window because you know what he/she/it /whatever is thinking. I don't think sex ed' in highschool prepares you for what to do in case of a randy space creature.So, all in all, this is a good, even if slightly kinky, movie that manages to come up with some interesting ideas. Too bad I don't know what they paid dear Gloria, but whatever it was, she deserved a lot more. She's that good. But pity poor Tom Tryon. He had difficulty giving up his zombie act even in movies where he was supposed to be human. So, being the really smart guy he was, he put down the actor's part and picked up the writer's pen and became a best-selling author. Okay!— so maybe the bad gas was not that bad after all. Anyway, if you haven't caught up yet with this slice of 1950's nonsense, please do. It's even good enough to watch all the way through.

If I had seen the little-known actors Gloria Talbott and Tom Tryon in a movie titled "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" in 1958, I very likely would not have gone to see it because of the title. However, to ignore this movie is cheating oneself, since it's a dark, creepy, and altogether enjoyable sci-fi about an alien invasion.Bill Ferrell (Tryon) is out drinking before his wedding day, and is overcome by a mysterious dark cloud. Now controlled by aliens, he marries Marge (Talbott) and is determined to populate the earth with alien babies. There's something wrong with the aliens though, and they can't breed with earth women. Soon many of the town's men are also controlled by the aliens, and Marge can't call, telegraph, or even leave town with the dreadful news. Eventually the local doctor (Ken Lynch) has the bright idea to recruit "real human men" among new dads at the local maternity ward, and the aliens are defeated in a pitched battle outside of town.This film has an abundance of wonderful vignettes: a local B-girl tries to pick up one of the aliens; a gangster (James Anderson) is lurking around the Ferrell's house and is eliminated by alien-controlled policemen; an alien-controlled man dies when he is given oxygen by paramedics after an accident; a local bartender punches Bill Ferrell on the jaw repeatedly with no effect; and of course the human men overcome the aliens in the climactic battle in a forest.The special effects are truly good for 1958, and Tryon--who usually had the acting range of a statue--is very convincing. I think Talbott gave the performance of her career, as the woman who is trapped with aliens and has no way out. This film was also the high water mark for character actor Alan Dexter, who convincingly plays a sinister alien. Highly recommended, despite the title.