Sexual and political tension in I Married A Monster From Outer Space

Kevin Brianton

Strategic Communication Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Melbourne: Australia.

I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958) was one of the final efforts in the alien subversion cycle.  The film had many of the elements of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Aliens had been quietly taking over the bodies of people of a small American town.  The central takeover was that of Bill Farell, played by Tom Tryon, who was newly married to Marge, played by Gloria Talbott.  Marge suspected something was seriously wrong with Bill.  She followed him into the woods to find that he was meeting with his fellow aliens.  Marge tried to contact Washington, but the operator told her all the lines were down, and so she then tried to leave town, but was stopped by a police roadblock.  The aliens had taken over the police force and even her godfather had been replaced.  Eventually she convinced Dr Wayne of her story and he formed a posse to enter the woods.  After a brief struggle, they released the real townspeople who had wires attached to their heads to feed the aliens with their memories.  The aliens were destroyed and order was returned.

The plan of the aliens was to mate with earth women and eventually take over the world. There is a clear amount of sexual tension. The above image shows the power less female in the hands of the ugly alien. Again communism is a form of seduction, close to a form of rape.  It was a subtle variation on the themes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  The aliens were once again ruthless and emotionless.  They killed when under any kind of threat.  The alien double for Bill even strangled a puppy.  The key scenes in the film were Marge’s attempts to tell people about the aliens.  She found the authorities overtaken by the aliens.  It was perhaps notable that it was the townspeople who freed themselves without the assistance of Washington.  The pattern was repeated less successfully in a number of other science fiction films and it even spawned a short lived television series called The Invaders.