On the night before his nuptials, Bill Farrell (Tom Tryon) is kidnapped and replaced by an unknown entity.
Bill's wife Marge (Gloria Talbott) grows increasingly disturbed by her husband's changed persona.
One night she follows him into the woods, where she witnesses him enter a spaceship.
Realising what is going on, Marge tries to find anyone who will believe her. But it seems like every man she knows and trusts is suddenly a stranger…
If my review reads like a list of surprises I think it is more to do with the title than the content of the film. I Married A Monster From Outer Space reads like a cheap genre picture or a parody of a cheap genre picture. The fact that the main character is a harried housewife named Marge also makes the title feel more ridiculous (it would be a good title for a Treehouse of Horror segment).
Before I go further, be advised there will be some spoilers.
A low budget programmer from 1958 (released on a double bill with The Blob), this is a more gendered spin on the alien doppelgänger theme popularised by Invasion of the Body Snatchers. On its face, this is an obvious Cold War allegory, but the movies’ focus on marriage points to a different reading.
The movie - intentional or not - feels like a scathing critique of fifties gender roles, and women’s lack of agency. Marge spends the movie trying to find help but she is disempowered at every turn, and slowly realised that not only can she no longer trust the men in her life, but that they have too much power over to begin with.
While the title leans hard toward exploitation, and the movie boasts some effective special effects, the genre-wise the movie looks and feels more like a noir or one of those female entrapment thrillers like Gaslight or Midnight Lace.
Marge is constantly lied to and manipulated - what makes her predicament interesting is that her antagonist does not need to do anything to control her. Societal expectations, peer pressure and trust in patriarchal institutions like the police are enough to keep her trapped.
While this means that the movie is rather low-key, it does boast some effectively creepy moments.
I first heard about this movie through Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, where he described the wedding night scene. The wedding night scene is really effective - Tom Tryon is standing out in the balcony, smoking as a thunder storm rages. Every time lightning flashes, his skin becomes translucent and we see his real face underneath. It’s is a creepy image with some disturbing implications, considering the context.
Another effective sequence is a local woman who, after failing to find a companion at the bar, spots a figure in a trench coat staring into a shop window across the dark, empty street. She approaches and talks to the figure, who turns to reveal its gnarled visage.
As far as the Alien makeup and effects, I Married A Monster From Outer Space is not a bonanza, but the design elements are really well-handled.
While the aliens are not hidden from view, I found it hard to figure out what their faces look like - they kind of resemble the Quarren from Star Wars, with vaguely tendril-like mouths. They are a little rubbery, but the impression I got was that the aliens were wearing organic space suits. One of the most fun effects are the shots of bullets making indents on the aliens' skins but never piercing them.
The effects of the creatures’ weapons and disintegrations are simple laser animations and dissolves, but they work. The matte effects used for the transformations are more original and polished, including a thick plume of smoke which is kind of unsettling.
While the movie is not flashy, the way it approaches certain elements of its story are surprising. One thing I really liked was the way the actors did not drastically alter their approach once they have been replaced. We only get a few scenes from their point of view but they come across as arrogant and dismissive of their flesh cells.
Overall, the acting is good - it is all of a piece with the understatement of the movie, although I wish the screenplay had been more adventurous in how one of those characters developed.
Tom Tryon brings a distance to the husband that is very effective - it is hard to tell what his real deal is, whether his sojourn in human flesh is starting to affect his conscience.
As the only human being in the movie, Gloria Talbott is warm and empathetic, however her role feels the most stuck in the fifties. My reading might be influenced by the archetype of the final girl, but in dramatic terms I found her actions in the latter half of the movie unsatisfying. She spends the whole movie putting her trust in men, who she slowly realises are all aliens, and ultimately the aliens are defeated because she stumbles into a man who believes her and is not an alien.
Marge does try some other tactics to escape - she tries to send a telegram to the outside world, but the telegraph operator shreds it after she leaves; she tries to drive out of town but is blocked by the local cops. However, even after Marge knows what is going on, she keeps talking to men until in the last 20 mins Marge finally talks to a real man who organises a posse to attack the ship. She is treated as an accessory even after the movie has bashed us over the head with how little control she has over her life.
The third act is underwhelming, however it actually makes the movie more interesting, in a skewed way.
In the end, the return of balance to Marge's life feels simultaneously cliche-ridden and weirdly appropriate as unintentional satire. The disquiet of Marge's predicament remains, despite the triumphalism of the ending - if the monsters come back, they will have no trouble re-inserting themselves into fifties Americana.
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