EVEN DeepER Blurting!: DBNS: I Now Pronounce You Alien and Wife

[ Post a Response | EVEN DeepER Blurting! ]

DBNS: I Now Pronounce You Alien and Wife

Posted by Kenneth Morgan on 2/15/2008, 11:22 pm

If anyone knows any reason why Kenneth Morgan’s review shouldn’t be posted, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.
*****
I have a pretty good idea of what you’re thinking now. “It’s February 15th, so here’s Morgan with his usual ‘love stinks’ post-Valentine’s Day review.” Well, as it happens, you’re right. (Hey, why mess with a successful formula?) So, without further ado, our romance-dissing subject for today: the ridiculously-titled “I Married a Monster from Outer Space”, released by Paramount in 1958.

The movie opens one day-for-night at a bar where the most boring bachelor party in human history is taking place. The man of honor is all-around nice guy Bill (played by future acclaimed novelist Tom Tryon). Getting away from the drunken “You’ll be soooooreeeee!” warnings of his pals, Bill leaves the party and dives off, hoping to look in on his fiancée. Unfortunately, he gets stopped out in the middle of nowhere and attacked by a pretty grotesque alien.

The next day, Bill’s intended, Marge (Gloria Talbott), is worried; Bill didn’t show up the previous night and is late for his own wedding. But, before the words “breach of promise” can be heard, Bill suddenly arrives. Marge is happy to see him, but we can tell something’s wrong. Bill seems pretty cold and serious, and it ain’t all that difficult to figure out why. (SUGGESTED RIFF: So, shall we check the basement for pods yet?) However, no one else notices, so the wedding goes on as planned. Bill and Marge head off to a seaside hotel for the honeymoon. It doesn’t look like it’ll be all that spectacular, seeing as how Bill (hereafter known as fakeBill) seems oddly distracted and hardly notices his new bride. Oh, and there’s the way a flash of lightning illuminating his face reveals the same face as the alien we saw earlier.

A year passes, and there’s trouble in paradise. RealBill’s boozing buddies are worried that fakeBill doesn’t socialize with them anymore. Marge is also worried. It’s like fakeBill is not the same man she fell in love with; he’s still a pretty cold and distant man. Add to this the fact that Marge is worried that she & fakeBill haven’t had any children yet. A visit to local doctor Wayne (Ken Lynch) confirms that she’s OK, so the problem may lie with fakeBill. (S.R.: He’s suffering from a condition we doctors call “shooting blanks”.) FakeBill, who isn’t eager to explore this idea, has other problems, too. For example, Marge buys them a dog for an anniversary present and it reacts violently toward fakeBill, even though realBill was a dog lover. And, when fakeBill does something that really ticked me off (to be blunt, doggone), Marge begins to really suspect something’s gone wrong.

Later, after fakeBill gets a visit from his old friend fakeSam (Alan Dexter), who was abducted a few scenes earlier, he heads out into the woods that day-for-night. Marge (in her nightgown and robe) follows him and sees him arrive at a concealed spaceship. (S.R.: I knew it! You’re fooling around with Prymatt Conehead, aren’t you?) There, an alien emerges from fakeBill’s body (no, it’s not a chestburster) and goes inside, leaving the inert fakeBill body there. Horrified, Marge runs back into town and tries to tell people, including her godfather Police Chief Collins (John Eldredge) what she saw. As could be expected, nobody seems to believe her. Of course, we soon learn that Collins is actually fakeCollins, and that there are others who are also fakeWhoevers.

Okay, sometime later, Marge finally confronts fakeBill and we learn the truth. It seems the aliens are from some far distant planet. When their planets sun exploded, they were forced to leave and find a new place to live. One problem: somehow, the radiation killed all of the females of their species. So, the remaining males have come to Earth, where they’ve taken over the bodies of suitable human men. (You’re probably far ahead of me on this, folks.) Their ultimate aim, assuming their initial efforts are successful, is to arrive in force, take control and mate with human females, thus perpetuating their species, while more or less wiping out humanity.

Marge isn’t thrilled about this plan. But can she warn the rest of the world before it’s too late? And is “alien invasion” sufficient grounds for divorce in California?

Okay, to be honest, this movie isn’t all that bad. There are some pretty cool visual effects and creature makeup. The movie does brew up a rather paranoid atmosphere that works OK. The script occasionally allows fakeBill to be less than utterly villainous, and some of the acting (particularly by Tryon) is pretty good. In fact, I understand that this movie has a fairly good reputation. I really can’t say I liked it, though.

First, I’m not really a fan of “aliens take over human bodies” movies; I have enough paranoia as it is and don’t need any more. The movie has the usual annoying day-for-night sequences that got ribbed in “Attack of the the Eye Creatures” and ‘this Island Earth”. And there are scenes like the one noted above that made me really dislike this movie.

But, I guess the thing that nags me the most is that people in this movie seem pretty gullible. I mean, nobody seems to notice that the fakeWhoevers are clearly different from the real thing, and they don’t do much about it once they make up their minds. Marge is probably the most obvious example of this. It apparently takes her almost a year before she decides there’s something off-kilter about fakeBill, but she seems to compliantly accept the situation for far too long. And, when the crisis point arises, she takes a chance on finding help from men who may, or may not, be copies, rather than women whom she knows are still human. In fact, she’s the only woman in movie (with one noteworthy exception) who seems to notice anything wrong. Now, I’m sure there’s some essay somewhere about how this is an allegorical comment on women who meekly stay with men who abuse them, but I think it’s just the usual Fifties stereotyping in effect (though I figure Beverly Garland sure as shootin’ wouldn’t have taken such crud from fakeBill).

There is a good amount of riffing material in the movie. For example, in addition to the ones already noted, there’s Marge’s noting of Chief Collins as her godfather (S.R.: He should be back from meeting with Turk Sollozzo by now.). There’s the moment we learn the doctor’s last name (S.R.: So, is that nutty son of yours still wearing a cowl all the time?). There’s the moment we see that fakeBill and Marge sleep in separate beds (S.R.: Uh, may I suggest an alternate reason for why you haven’t had kids yet?). I’m sure you can find room for a Donald Sutherland or Kevin McCarthy reference somewhere. And don’t get me started about that awful title.

All in all, I can’t really recommend “I Married a Monster from Outer Space”. It’s by no means a total loss, but it’s just not a good movie, in my opinion. The negative far outweighs the positive.

So, there you go. I’ve thrown my annual bucket of ice-cold water on any romantic feeling lingering from yesterday. This may make me seem like a curmudgeon on the subject, but, truth be told, I’m a sentimental fool the rest of the year. Movies like this, at this time of year, just rub me the wrong way.

However, if I were to meet the right girl, she had a nice personality and wasn’t planning the alien conquest of Earth and destructive assimilation of humanity, who knows?