I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958)

Or, 'I Married a  Homosexual From Outer Space', for never has a film had a clearer subtext than I Married a Monster From Outer Space, (not to mention having one of the greatest ever exploitation titles).  Seen today, it appears obvious that the movie was designed to play on fifties fears of the creeping emasculation of US males by the 'softness' of post-war society, with all that easy living, prosperity and lack of wars turning them all into homosexuals.  You can see it in other popular media of the time - just look at the number of sleaze paperbacks that traded on the idea of 'predatory' gay men preying on innocent straight guys, 'converting' them to their cause.  Damn it, they were as bad as those Commies they were clearly proxies for.  The whole American concept of masculinity and the need for men to be 'real men', is intrinsically tied up with the country's foundation myths: the whole mythology of the old West and the frontier, for example.  The US experience of World War Two only reinforced these ideas of 'real men' being rugged physical types - just look at the emphasis upon outdoor activities like hunting and fishing in the men's magazines of the fifties.

So it should come as no surprise that the alien invaders stealing the images and brides of small town USA should prove to be incapable of having marital relations with earth women, let alone impregnating them.  Indeed, if anything, they seem afraid of women, (the script doesn't go as far as having a female character called 'Fanny', though). They also can't drink alcohol and don't seem to be any good at sports.  They're even afraid of man's best friend, for God's sake, cowering from their pet dogs!  So obviously, when the time comes to fight back, the local doctor has to find some real men - down at the maternity, as expectant fathers clearly can't be pesky space homos, sorry, monsters, in disguise, as they've quite clearly actually done it with a woman.  The resultant angry mob, (straight out of a Universal horror film), live up to the stereotype, preparing to storm the aliens' flying saucer armed with hunting rifles and dressed in typical hunting garb.  While the aliens seem impervious to bullets, they prove vulnerable to dog bites and, once the mob have gained entry to the saucer, they unhook all the earthmen held there, wired up to devices that allow the aliens to maintain the illusion of human form.  Once unhooked, their alien doubles perish.  Deciding that they are no match for those manly earthmen, the alien fleet in orbit around the earth hightails it out of the solar system.  

It has to be said that I Married a Monster From Outer Space is actually a pretty effective B-movie, with its atmospheric monochrome photography and claustrophobic small town setting.  Director Gene Fowler Jr builds up a fine head of paranoia as heroine Gloria Talbot gradually finds that just about every male authority figure in the town has been replaced by an alien.  As well as being atmospheric and suspenseful, the film also boasts some, for the time and budget, effective special effects. The design of the aliens in their true form is impressive as is the way they melt away into foam when they die.  With its small town setting and theme of insidious silent invasion by an alien force, one can't help but suspect that I Married a Monster From Outer Space was inspired by the earlier Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  But whereas the 'pod people' merely wanted our bodies, these alien monsters wanted our sexuality, replacing our 'real men' with characterless, asexual blanks and turning our women into 'baby factories', popping out little aliens.  Ultimately, it presents the worst American nightmare: a patriarchal society where the patriarchs have neither passion, physicality nor sexual drive.