bkoganbing Tom Tryon before he became Walt Disney's Texas John Slaughter starred in this camp science fiction film, I Married A Monster From Outer Space. Only he isn't in the title role that dubious distinction belongs to Gloria Talbott.Some methane based creatures whose planet was dying and it took all their women have arrived from the Andromeda galaxy looking for male bodies on a planet with life to take over. They land in the typical American 50s suburb of Norrisville and the first guy they take over is Tryon and on his wedding day. Pretty soon Talbott discovers Tryon just ain't the guy she married.Over on planet methane there's sex, but no romance. That's what Tryon and the others are trying to get the hang of. Not easy for an alien to do. After this film just becomes a dime store imitation of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers where the citizenry learns and becomes outraged. They decide to deal with the methane guys on their own. The final confrontation led by the town doctor Ken Lynch is a hoot.You'd think they'd find some other methane planet like Jupiter to invade though.

Paul Andrews I Married a Monster from Outer Space starts as Bill Farrell (Tom Tyron) drives home after a night out with his friends, Bill is due to marry his fiancé Marge (Gloria Talbot) the following day but is abducted & replaced by an alien creature that takes Bill's form & place. Bill & Marge marry as planned but Marge become suspicious of her new husband Bill, a year later(!) she decides to follow Bill one night & sees him turn into an alien & enter it's hidden spaceship in the woods. Shocked Marge tries to inform the authorities about the alien invaders but discovers that the most important men in town have all been replaced by alien doubles including the Chief of Police. Marge confronts Bill who admits that he is part of an alien race that is dying out & they have come to Earth to mate with women to save their race from extinction, Marge sets out to stop them & make a disbelieving world take notice of her...Produced & directed by Gene Fowler Jr. this Paramount Pictures production has one of the more memorable titles for a 50's sci-fi alien invasion film & while I wasn't expecting too much from it I did like it, it's not amazing but if your a fan of these old black and white 50's alien invasion flicks then you could do a lot worse than I Married a Monster from Outer Space. There's a bit more going on here than usual, there's the whole subtext about the communist threat which was so prevalent in films back then, the fears about marriage & the problems that can arise, the strength of human emotions & at only 77 minutes long it's pretty brisk & doesn't hang around. While the script isn't deep or has much substance it does try to touch a few ideas like paranoia & a stealthy invasion based on replacing people & fitting in as normal rather than an all guns blazing attack. The film has dated somewhat, a married couple sleeping in twins beds after a year of marriage yet are still together? Surely one of them would have expected a little bit of action after a year? Couples have divorced for less. The quaint small town paranoia feels old & the aliens don't seem to have any great plan, it's been a year & they haven't managed to get any ladies pregnant yet so why are they still hanging around? The script tries to paint the aliens as sympathetic, despite being ugly aliens in their true form when in human form they try to reason calmly & are presented as a desperate race on the verge of extinction although kidnapping men, replacing them & trying to get our women pregnant isn't the way they should have gone about things...The special effects here aren't that bad, the smoke effect that covers the men when they are being abducted is good while the alien monsters themselves look alright with a strange glow to them. I am not sure about the long dangling arms or the three fingers but they look OK for the time. Well shot with the odd creepy bit here & there the ending features some quite gory alien meltdowns as they are killed off & even some blood spurting. While watching I Married a Monster from Outer Space I realised that bachelor parties & the attitudes towards marriage sure have changed in the past fifty years!With a supposed budget of about $175,000 this was partly filmed at the ever popular Bronson Canyon in Los Angeles, surely one of the worlds most used film locations. The acting is alright if a little wooden as expected, nothing great but not terrible.I Married a Monster from Outer Space is a fun little 50's sci-fi horror about the importance of marriage the idea of conforming to society, it's outdated & silly but overall I quite liked it for what it is. Remade as I Married a Monster (1998) which is apparently terrible.

Scarecrow-88 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.

McQualude I wasn't overly thrilled with this paranoia thriller. The slow paced meandering storyline really never goes far and takes the whole movie to get there. Aliens, who cannot breath our atmosphere decide to take over small town America so they can find a way to breed our women. Unfortunately a whole three-quarters of the movie concerns Gloria Talbot learning that her husband, played by Tom Tryon, is an alien.The pace was too slow with too much time spent on the wife discovering that her husband is not the man she married. (in movie time it takes her over a year to discover the truth) By slow pace I don't mean a lack of action scenes, I mean that for one, the actors move unnaturally slow on screen. There are times when an actor will start a scene normally and abruptly slow in midstep as if reminded off camera to slow down. I also mean that the things that do happen lack substance for the most part, scenes of the alien demonstrating his superior strength by crushing a can or glass. The music is thankfully sparse since when they do play music it often contradicts the mood on screen... light upbeat music during tense, suspenseful moments confuses the mood. The motivation behind the invasion is kept from the audience for most of the movie, I think it was meant to be a shocking reveal and it probably was in the 50's but audiences now will be too jaded. The ending picks up a bit but it's rather late in the movie, by which point Tom Tryon's wooden acting, pouting facial expression, slow movements and slow dialog had worn me out.With no tension, no drama and little suspense I recommend skipping I Married a Monster from Outer Space and watching or rewatching any one of the better sci-fi films of the fifties.