1950s SF film

[peteryoung]

I Married a Monster from Outer Space, 1958, USA  DIRECTED BY GENE FOWLER JR.
Doomed to extinction because of their unstable sun, a race of memorably weird extraterrestrials from the Andromeda "constellation" are here to abduct human males and used them to create alien doppelgangers in a bid to mate with human women. Everything you need to know about I Married a Monster from Outer Space is right there in the title: Louis Vittes's screenplay reliably riffs on the paranoia of Don Siegel's classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers from a couple of years earlier, though it's a shame this aspect is eclipsed by nothing more than actor Tom Tryon's deliberately flat and wooden performance as the alien husband, and he delivers an acting style later perfected by Roger Moore. He often just looks like a bad actor who can't keep up with the rest of the film, and this is its biggest flaw. As a result it quickly gathered a reputation as a lesser B-movie you can safely ignore (before release Paramount themselves believed it would flop), although there are plenty more hallmark clichés of ’50s SF films here to be witnessed: small-town paranoia, conspiracy, strained domesticity with several dead pets, some decent atmospheric shots and an obligatory alien-hand-on-the-shoulder scene. There's more good stuff present in this film than it's usually given credit for, but like the far inferior Plan 9 From Outer Space you now have to be a little post-modern about how you enjoy it.

Comments

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

omg, how is it possible that I haven't seen this film?!