lemon_magic Filled with odd, quirky performances and lines of dialog by the supporting cast and some nicely understated performances by Talbott and Tryon, this movie turned out much much better than I expected. You can tell the director and crew are making every last bit of their obviously tiny budget count and finding setups and shots that pump the energy into what could have been just another rip off of "Body Snatchers".Talbott is an especially good choice for the part of the unlucky bride - I've seen her in other movies (like "Leech Woman") and her screen persona is always pretty tightly wound; she brings wide-eyed anxiety and fretfulness to the part without having to overplay it - you always believe this character is full of doubts, fears, and regrets without the screenplay having to turn her into a shrill hag.The movie also distinguishes itself from the run of the mill "secret invasion" science fiction movie by helping the audience understand the alien's reasons for being on Earth, and making them more human (or influenced by their human shells) as the movie progresses. Tryon's character's last few moments before his end are well done and wistful - he's never been more "human" and has become human just in time to realize what he's lost. That's pretty chewy stuff for a cheap sci fi B movie.By no means a classic, but still well done and worth seeing for fans of the genre.

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tries to inform the authorities about the alien invaders but discovers that the most important men in town have all been replaced by alien doubles including the Chief of Police.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.

dougdoepke The competition of course is fiercer than the top spot on American Idol. But, in my warped view, I Married a Monster from Outer Space stacks up as the goofiest movie title from an era when goofy movie titles were thicker than scales on Godzilla's monster neck. Naturally, there was a reason for those goofy titles. They immediately signaled "teen movie", which usually meant a drive-in special where teens tended to congregate and waste their allowances. But then, kids at drive-ins didn't expect much from their movies, because (surprise, surprise) they were too busily engaged in their own hormonal development to catch up with more than bits and pieces.Okay, so I didn't see the movie all the way through until years later. But (surprise, surprise, again) it's a really good creepy movie that even adults like. And, I'm told, movie heavyweights catch up with the aliens and their body-snatched humans for all the symbolism they think they see, like "does a marriage ceremony turn all husbands into unromantic zombies". I guarantee no teen of the time saw anything on screen other than a good scary movie.Anyway, I liked Gloria Talbott then and still do, especially when she runs around in her low- cut nightgown, chest heaving. However, I think she made a really bad life choice running into Slapsie-Maxie's all night bar in that same gown since it sort of gives the male barflies wrong ideas. But then, she's not getting any romance at home because her hubby Tom Tryon is, shall we say-- not of this earth. No, instead he's been taken over by a creeping gas cloud that dissolves people for later reassembly in, you guessed it, a space ship. Talk about bad gas! On the other hand, I was really turned off by that scene where the popsicle monster gazes at the doll baby in the window because you know what he/she/it /whatever is thinking. I don't think sex ed' in highschool prepares you for what to do in case of a randy space creature.So, all in all, this is a good, even if slightly kinky, movie that manages to come up with some interesting ideas. Too bad I don't know what they paid dear Gloria, but whatever it was, she deserved a lot more. She's that good. But pity poor Tom Tryon. He had difficulty giving up his zombie act even in movies where he was supposed to be human. So, being the really smart guy he was, he put down the actor's part and picked up the writer's pen and became a best-selling author. Okay!— so maybe the bad gas was not that bad after all. Anyway, if you haven't caught up yet with this slice of 1950's nonsense, please do. It's even good enough to watch all the way through.

Neil Doyle The surprise of this little sci-fi epic is GLORIA HENRY, who manages to convey all the right expressions as the wife who comes to realize that her husband is no longer the man she married. TOM TRYON is the man who early on is attacked by an alien who takes over his body. From then on, Tryon's robot-like acting fits the demands of his role beautifully, since he only has one expression on his impossibly handsome face at all times. Talk about one-dimensional! He looks like a department store mannequin come to life--almost. It's a good thing he had a career as a Gothic writer ahead of him.However, it's the tight script, the crisp B&W photography, the jagged bits of music, and the eerie plot that bears more than a slight resemblance to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" that is guaranteed to keep you awake--even though it is obviously a B-film with no big pretensions to be anything else.***** Possible SPOILER Ahead*****It's another one of those tales where the poor wife dares not trust any of the citizens of a small town--since any one of them might have turned into an alien, like her hubby. The plot builds to a nice climactic shootout and her husband is returned to her. We know he's assumed his own body again because he actually breaks into a grin before the fadeout.Summing up: Brisk, entertaining little sci-fi tale, the kind that was popular with audiences in the '50s.