I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

Friday means another fifties movie, so I thought it was about time for me to watch and review I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Before I start, I have to admit to never liking this one that much. It has a decent reputation with fans and the title is very well known, as is the alien. It just never connected with me. It has been years since I’ve watched it so maybe that will change.

Bill is in a bar with his friends the night before he is to get married. They regale him with stories of how much having a wife sucks, but Bill is having nothing of that talk. He is in love with Marge and will have none of that running away talk. He leaves early to see her before the wedding. Along the way home he runs over a body in the road, but it disappears, and we see something off screen attack him. The next time we see Bill he isn’t himself. That is because an Alien has taken his place, but why?

Using the plot device of Marge writing a letter to her mother we find out it has been a year since the honeymoon. She is frightened by Bill, who again simply isn’t himself. We watch as more suspicious things happen including a puppy getting killed (dick move), Marge not getting pregnant, and eventually Bill heading off to a ship to check in with his fellow aliens. That last one really throws Marge for a loop! Of course, no one believes her. Who would? Though someone finally buys it and recruits a bunch of guys to grab guns and go after the alien ship in the woods. Aliens are killed, and the world is saved.

Things that I learned from I Married a Monster from Outer Space. First is that people in the fifties were way too trusting. For no explainable reason an authority figure hears Marge’s story and thinks ‘Hey I might be a respected Doctor, but this story makes sense. Let me grab a gun and some friends to go out into the woods and get to shooting’. Even crazier it takes him all of an hour to get a bunch of guys to arm up and go alien hunting. Second is that Aliens design bullet proof suits that can only be defeated when a German Shepperd grabs the dangly hose and pulls on it. Far be it for me to criticize a highly advanced alien race but that sounds like a serious design flaw. Finally, Aliens can’t swim. They fall in the water and they die. Either they didn’t know or didn’t care about that fact because one of them goes out on a boat and dies.

Next let’s move onto things that bugged me when I was a kid about I Married a Monster from Outer Space. There is only one, but it is a big one. Much of the movie consists of Bill and Marge having relationship issues. They argue, talk about their feelings for one another, and Bill broods a lot. Damn it I want an alien invasion movie not a romance flick! Things are really annoyingly and horribly boring. Nothing happens until the very end when the posse shows up, the dogs kill the two guards, and then the humans wander into the unlocked ship. End of story.

The creature is decent looking

Now let’s talk about what younger me never caught onto and it is creepy as hell if you think about it. The aliens are here because their planet died and took all their females with it. So that is why they only replace the men. But a year into things they are still working on a way to modify human females to give birth to alien babies. One would think replacing the men so they can cohabitate with women is a bit premature given their science is still working on it. Since they have a scene where Marge is talking to the doctor wondering why she hasn’t had kids yet that proves one thing. Alien Bill has been getting his freak on with Marge. Why? Do the aliens enjoy human ladies? Are they just being creepy? When Marge figures out that it isn’t Bill but some scary looking alien she doesn’t seem as upset as you would think about all the interspecies nookie she has been unknowingly getting. Really movie what the hell?

This review is coming off as funny and sarcastic. In no way am I trying to make the movie sound appealing or fun. I still don’t like I Married a Monster from Outer Space and I can’t recommend it. Steer far away from this boring and creepy mess.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer