I Married a Monster from Outer Space dating history

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They say if you can get passed the sensationalist film title and accept the premise for for what it is, I Married a Monster from Outer Space is one of the classic alien invader films from the 1950's. The basis of the script is hair-raising. Alien monsters from outer space invade Earth to mate with human women! The aliens are hideous and supersationalistic they use ray guns and came be out-witted by familiar faithful pets. The aliens can be seen as being somewhat cliched in that they are basically unemotional and ruthless, caring little for the people whose lives they disrupt, and even less for those they kill. The screenwriter Louis Vittes script was a model economy and intelligence, he deals with the preposterous happenings of the story with empathy and responsibility. Despite the story, the script is, in fact, one of the best-developed and most logical of the 1950's. Director Gene Fowler, Jr. developed the film as best as possible considering the budgetary limitations, Fowler, Jr. is not quite in the same class as Directors Jack Arnold (It Came From Outer Space and the Incredible Shrinking Man), William Cameron Menzies (Invaders From Mars), and Donald Siegel (the original Invasion Of The Body Snatchers), these respective directors of the aforementioned classics. Fowler is much more pedestrian and workmanlike. But, the film is shot beautifully, for starters. Excellent use is made of shadow and contrast in the black and white film, and the shot compositions are marvelously put together. If you walked into this film and missed the credits and didn't know about the aliens, you would think it was a solid Noir film. Marge (Gloria Talbot) and Bill (Tom Tryon) get married. Uh oh, the day before the wedding Tom was abducted by ugly aliens and his body taken over by one of them. The honeymoon doesn't go well. Marge wants passionate sexual intercourse, as suggested by her frilly white lingerie, and Bill (alien Bill) has no clue. Over the next year, Bill acts like a zombie and even strangles the family dog. Ah, but wait! Sex does come, as we see alien Bill may actually be enamored with the sultry Marge. No pregnancies result, however and Marge begins to get suspicious, especially after she follows Bill into the woods and sees him leave his human body and board a space ship. Marge tries to warn the authorities, but most of them have been taken over, too. It turns out the aliens come from a dead planet where all their women have died. Experiments are ongoing to figure out a way to impregnate human women to produce alien babies. Alien Bill starts feeling weird as he becomes sexually attracted to Marge. But, Marge isn't so forgiving and is bent on wiping out this alien race for ruining her wedding night. The aliens are about to get a brutal lesson that Earth-women came be determined and tenacious as Marge mounts an offensive that will decide the future of the human race. The plot of I Married A Monster From Outer Space is frequently compared to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956, Allied Pictures), and undoubtedly that film inspired Vittes and Fowler. But the essential themes differs somewhat. In the Body Snatchers, the pods duplicate Earth people with their own memories and personalities; in essence, the pod duplicates are the people themselves, but with their emotions removed. The aliens in I Married A Monster From Outer Space remain aliens at all times, merely masquerading as human beings. I Married A Monster From Outer Space is a much less sophisticated concept, though probably more logical. It is less believable, however, because of the production values and because of the dream-logic of the earlier film. I Married A Monster From Outer Space is one of those rare science fiction films that relies on character. In fact, not only are the human characters given dimension, so are the aliens; unlike so many films of its type, the aliens are not all of one mind. The film is helped by fine acting, particularly from Gloria Talbott as the wife who is trying to cope with the situation, but from Tom Tryon and all the other actors as well. I hardly recognized him, but that’s Maxie Rosenbloom as the bartender, and he does a fine job as well. I Married A Monster From Outer Space marked a step up in prestige for its leading lady, Gloria Talbott. Gloria Talbott is excellent as Marge she's convincing throughout and considering the circumstances, that's a major accomplishment. However victimized and helpless she may appear at the start of this science fiction classic, she will man-up pretty good and just may save the planet single-handily. In the Sci Fi magazine Cinefantastique one film critic stated that Talbott "performs more capably as a most unconventional heroine. Talbott displayed a rare combination of strength and vulnerability she is both convincingly frightened, and still believable when she decides to act against the aliens. I Married A Monster From Outer Space belongs to select few that have a more subtle alien invasion taking place during the 1950's there were a few psychological alien invasion stories – that included: It Came from Outer Space (1953), Invaders from Mars (1953) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), among others. These are films where the invasion takes place in people’s minds that induce a state of paranoia, more so than they do any physical manifestations of saucers and monsters. Gloria Talbott was born in Glendale, California (her great-great grandfather was a co-founder of this suburb of Los Angeles) had just come off of work on the low-budget horror film The Cyclops (1957) and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957) where she appreciated the relative luxury of Paramount's back-lot. Gene Fowler Jr, who previously directed I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), is not quite in the same class as Jack Arnold, William Cameron Menzies or Donald Siegel. Fowler is more pedestrian and workmanlike – I Married a Monster from Outer Space is an alien invader film rendered on a B-budget and with the linear, prosaic style of directors associated with the B-budget studios of the 1940s. There is nothing here of the eerie film noir tension and nightmare-like imagery that Donald Siegel gave Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the physically alienating exaggerated perspectives of William Cameron Menzies’ Invaders from Mars. I Married a Monster from Outer Space was intended by Paramount to headline a double bill filled out by Irvin Yeaworth, Jr.'s The Blob (1958), an independent, filmed on location in Pennsylvania, which the studio had acquired. When test audience scores of the two-fer suggested that moviegoers preferred the vibrantly Technicolor The Blob to the noirishly monochromatic quality of I Married a Monster from Outer Space became a stand-alone film. That said, there are definitely times when Gene Fowler transcends the material with a fervid pulp imagination. The initial sight of the aliens is eerie – a body appearing on the road in front of Tom Tryon’s car, having vanished when he gets out, followed by the appearance of a glowing claw that touches him on the shoulder as he is enveloped in a fog, later a sinister shape watches him along the lakeside as he departs. The film’s one directorial sublime moment is when Tom Tryon who is standing outside on a terrace turns toward the camera and just then a flash of lightning reveals alien features beneath his face. There is also a fine scene in the middle of the film where Gloria Talbott follows Tom Tryon into the woods, seeing a glowing alien emerge from his body and entering the spaceship, leaving his body a dead husk (effectively demonstrated by a bug crawling across it). There seem few films that reveal more aptly than I Married a Monster from Outer Space the fearful beliefs that ran through 1950s science-fiction of there being a force out there that lacked and could steal emotion away from ordinary people. The critics of the day were mostly enthusiastic at the time of the film's release in September of 1958. "Strong supporting fare," trumpeted Variety while the Hollywood Reporter found the piece "fairly interesting" and Film Daily allowed that it was strictly "satisfactory... competent..." I Married A Monster From Outer Space has a memorable title and a plot that is too conventional for its own good. With screenwriter Louis Vittes and film director Gene Flower, Jr. working with an excellent leading lady Gloria Talbott, excellent productions for a budget level of film with much intelligence, imagination and insight. Having a film that could perhaps stand the test of time.