Apparently, Mars isn't the only planet that needs women. Nope, aliens from Andromeda ("half way across the universe") are here on Earth, stealing our most precious natural resource -- our females! -- right out from under our oblivious noses.
That's the nightmarish premise of I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), a disturbing Eisenhower-era cautionary tale of marital emotional alienation. On the surface, it's a sci-fi chiller cloaked in genre conventions such as flying saucers, disintegration-rays and shape-shifting alien invaders, but the sub-text is all human.
Written by Louis Vittes and directed by Gene Fowler, Jr., I Married a Monster from Outer Space dramatizes in noir-ish black-and-the-white the sense of horror experienced by young bride-to-be, Marge (Gloria Talbott), when the man she fell in love with, Bill Farrell (Tom Tryon), is replaced by the man she actually marries: an emotionally-distant, extra-terrestrial doppelganger.
This insidious replacement occurs on the night before the wedding. The real Bill spends the evening partying with his marriage-fearing buddies at a local diner. They unleash a torrent of bad jokes about marriage and conclude the only answer to the misery it causes for men is likely "mass suicide."
Bill unwittingly discovers his own escape route from wedded bliss when -- on a late-night drive around a nearby lake -- he experiences a close encounter of the worst kind. He's unexpectedly intercepted by methane-breathing alien invaders. After he is touched by one monstrous alien creature, Bill is enveloped in creepy black smoke (a good 1950s-style effect...) and an interloper takes his place...and steals his life.
The wedding ceremony goes on as planned the next day, but Marge has an unpleasant surprise in store for her on the honeymoon. Bill -- who so assiduously and romantically courted her before their nuptials -- now seems bored, lethargic and uninterested. He isn't even interested in small talk.
"Why do we have to talk?" the doppelganger husband asks Marge before bed time, already bored.
Following the honeymoon debacle, Marge writes a letter to her mom revealing that "Bill isn't the man" she fell in love with and that he's "almost a stranger..."
On Bill's birthday a year later, Marge buys him a present -- a little puppy -- and Bill relegates the new pet to the basement...where he promptly strangles it. Understandably, Marge is disturbed by this anti-social behavior, but she has an agenda too. "We've been married a year..." she tells Bill, and they still haven't had children. Again, Bill's feelings about the matter seem...impenetrable.
Marge grows ever more desperate about her domestic prison and soon learns conclusively that an alien is inhabiting her husband's body. Marge confides in various (male) authority figures, but all the men in her life (including the police chief...) are already alien doppelganger, and therefore entirely unsympathetic to her pleas.
Finally, Marge is able to enlist the help of her family doctor (Ken Lynch), who comes to believe the specifics of her crazy story. With several new fathers-to-be in tow (men who are clearly human beings, because the "alien" men can't yet successfully reproduce...), Marge and the doctor attack the alien spaceship. The Earth mission "fails" and the aliens decide to continue on to "another galaxy." Bill and all the other men once replaced by aliens are freed from enslavement on the spaceship and return to lead happy lives with their wives and girlfriends...
Despite its unfortunately exploitation-style title, I Married a Monster From Outer Space succeeds as a horror film because what it actually concerns is us; not "them" (the aliens). Indeed, the film offers some subversive commentary about the very nature of men and women in that time (and perhaps even more universally).
Although the alien invasion plot specifics clearly reflect the fear and excitement involved in the rapidly emerging space race of the late 1950s (Russia had launched Sputnik and Sputnik 2 in late 1957...), more earthbound matters dominate I Married a Monster From Outer Space.
The late 1950s, for instance, represented the the cusp of second-wave feminism in America, as many women began to see their status in society as unfairly secondary -- and needlessly subservient -- to men. A whole new world would open up soon with the availability of the birth control pill in 1961, but in the late 1950s women depended entirely on men for economic stability and had few opportunities in terms of career advancement and placement.
You can see this notion implicitly played out in I Married a Monster From Outer Space as Marge ping-pongs from male authority figure to male authority figure, desperate for someone -- anyone -- to listen to her fear that something is deeply wrong with her husband. However, the men in her life -- all aliens -- are more interested in preserving the status quo than in helping Marge achieve marital independence. They listen politely to her ramblings about Bill, but when Marge threatens to step outside her assigned purpose/role in the invasion, she is threatened with the possibility of psychiatric incarceration. Warning to women: accept your lot.
Every possible method of communication with society-at-large in the film is controlled by aliens (again, read: men). The phone-lines to Washington D.C. are always busy, and Marge can't get a warning telegram out of her town (Morrisville) to the FBI because the male worker at the telegram office crumples up her message and throws it in the garbage before her very eyes. Marge can't even leave the city because there's a police roadblock. Escape -- like divorce -- is literally not an option. All avenues are closed to Marge. The aliens -- the men -- control absolutely everything.
When Bill won't talk to her; when Marge can't understand why something has made Bill change into a cold fish, she is understandably depressed. But when society refuses to listen to her fears, Marge feels isolated, powerless. When she can't fulfill the role society expects of her (child-bearer), Marge feels unworthy too. Her life truly seems to be a trap designed to prevent Marge from ever really attaining true happiness or self-confidence.
The creepiest and most disturbing scene in I Married a Monster from Outer Space is directly related to the dominant 1950s view of a woman's "proper" role in decent American society. The scene involves a hooker named Francine, who, late one night, decides to approach a prospective, anonymous John on a street corner.
The camera depicts this strange man from the rear, obscuring his features, as Francine approaches and solicits him for sex. We see only that the man is wearing a slicker with a hood, and we can't make out his face. But he steadfastly ignores Francine's entreaties and seems mesmerized by an object in a storefront window display. It's a baby doll.
When approached by the hooker -- a woman expressing sexuality for purposes other than reproduction -- the man turns to the camera to reveal that he is a horrifying alien invader. He promptly fires his ray gun at Francine and shoots her in the back, disintegrating her. Then, as if nothing happened, the alien male returns his gaze to the object that so consumes and fascinates him: the baby doll.
This scene is pretty clearly a statement on both the alien patriarchy of Andromeda and the American one of the 1950s; how men exerted control over a woman's life, sexuality and reproduction, even meting out punishment to those who transgressed.
As for the men in I Married a Monster From Outer Space, they are portrayed in a pretty ruthless fashion. Sam, Bill's friend, is depicted as an alcoholic louse, one who has kept his desperate fiancee on the hook for years without proposing. Not until he is an inhuman alien invader does Sam decide to marry her. Bill's other friends are all cynics who whine and complain about marriage and women. When one friend complains that he hasn't seen the married Bill in a year, he notes: "even coal miners get time off..."
Of course, Bill is an alien, but the way the story is structured, he loses his romantic "interest" in Marge almost immediately after the wedding. Preceding his statement to Marge that they "don't need to talk," Bill is made to feel small when -- of all things -- Marge criticizes his driving ability (reminding him to turn the headlights on; and showing him where the headlight controls are on the dashboard...).
In fact, one might even suggest that Bill is depicted in the film as something less than, um...fully "manly." When alienated from Marge, he notes wimpily that "there's always the guest room." More significantly, Marge fears that something has "crept" inside Bill, a description of the alien replacement procedure that certainly hints that Bill is in some way rendered feminine or even homosexual.
The longer he is an alien, the more Bill talks about emotions and feelings. "Along with these bodies, we inherited other things. Human desire. Emotions," he states. Even as he dies, the best this alien can muster is "I've just begun to learn..."
By contrast, The film's climax involves real armed men (those plucked from a hospital maternity ward; those who have just fathered children!) attacking the alien spaceship under Marge's direction. You might interpret this scene as a re-establishment of heterosexuality or patriarchy, but in this case, I see a different, more liberated answer: the men have been roused from inaction and lassitude by a woman; by Marge. In getting them to finally act decisively, Marge has at last achieved the power she had been denied as Bill's wife. The human "Bill" is likely to find that, after a year married to an alien, his new wife (now no longer a virgin, by the way...) is a bit more head strong and assertive.
I Married A Monster From Outer Space may not quite be in the class of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), but it's certainly darn close. There are some odd scientific quirks, for example, that mitigate the movie's success. The aliens breathe methane and die from exposure to oxygen. Given that limitation, they certainly picked the wrong planet to invade, no? Also, we see dramatic example of the fact that the aliens can't recognize each other when "wearing" human forms. That sure makes an invasion difficult too; if the invaders don't even know who is on their side. In various incarnations of Body Snatchers, the aliens always knew who was in the club, so-to-speak.
Still, I Married a Monster From Outer Space showcases some terrific visuals. The aforementioned scene at the storefront with the baby doll is pure nightmare fodder, and occasionally director Fowler conjures up other unsettling imagery too. When the unlucky dog is strangled, for instance, Fowler cuts to a point-of-view subjective shot from the puppy's perspective, so it feels like we're being strangled as Bill's groping, alien hands reach out to encircle us. And, from time to time, the Bill doppelganger happens by a table lamp and is illuminated entirely from below. This lighting technique casts long shadows up across his face, and serve as a reminder of his alien nature.
But I Married A Monster From Outer Space is most worthwhile for the things it expresses about the occasionally strained relationship between married men and women. Perhaps marriage does encourage "alienation," and a woman can't just blindly stand by her man.
Or by her alien...
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