Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 3: sci fi horror movie I Married a Monster from Outer Space,
Speaker 3: directed by longtime Hollywood film editor Gene Fowler Junior, starring
Speaker 3: Gloria Talbot and Tom Tryan spoiler warning. As always, I
Speaker 3: figure we should put that right at the top. If
Speaker 3: you're new to this show. We always end up talking
Speaker 3: about the plot in some pretty extreme detail. So if
Speaker 3: you want to go into this movie unspoiled, go check
Speaker 3: it out. Now. I know it's a few decades late
Speaker 3: now on that, but you know you still have the
Speaker 3: chance if you want to pause here and go watch
Speaker 3: the movie. I don't know where the best place to
Speaker 3: start is, but maybe with the title I Married a
Speaker 3: Monster from Outer Space that the wordiness of the title
Speaker 3: really catches up with you when you're like typing it
Speaker 3: a lot in the notes. It's one of those fifties
Speaker 3: movies with an overly descriptive title, and yet unlike a
Speaker 3: lot of these movies with really wordy titles. It's not
Speaker 3: misleading like It Conquered the World. This one is wordy,
Speaker 3: but as a plot summary, it's right on the money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is exactly how it goes down.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the story is about a young woman named
Speaker 3: Marge who begins to suspect that her very hunky new
Speaker 3: husband Bill may actually be an alien in disguise, and
Speaker 3: he is. This was a new movie for me. I
Speaker 3: just saw it for the first time over the weekend.
Speaker 3: I watched it with Rachel, and I was really pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 3: I kind of picked it because, for one thing, because
Speaker 3: of the funny title, and also because you know, I'd
Speaker 3: read some people online saying it was worth a look.
Speaker 3: I thought it was actually really good. There are definitely
Speaker 3: some dated and goofy elements, and I'm excited to talk
Speaker 3: about those as well. One of the funniest parts of
Speaker 3: it being that you can literally never tell what time
Speaker 3: it's supposed to be in the movie, because it's obviously
Speaker 3: the middle of the night. Characters are asleep and they
Speaker 3: get up out of bed and leave the house, but
Speaker 3: it's shot in broad daylight. But the movie really does
Speaker 3: hit hard on multiple levels. I think it's got a
Speaker 3: quite strong script with pretty tight plotting that is smart
Speaker 3: and interesting in several ways that we can talk about
Speaker 3: as we go on. I think has really good central performances,
Speaker 3: especially by Gloria Talbot and Tom Tryan. It has some
Speaker 3: fantastic for the time visual effects. I'm thinking particularly of
Speaker 3: the blooming smoke which steals men's souls. And I really
Speaker 3: like the creature suits that we see as well. The
Speaker 3: heads are somehow a combination of the Darth Vader helmet
Speaker 3: with a cypress root. Paul It's kind of radiation suit
Speaker 3: meets a vascular plant. So this all comes together and
Speaker 3: makes for I think a really effective little film.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, I Married a Monster from Outer Space is
Speaker 2: really solid. My first exposure to this movie, as with
Speaker 2: a lot of classic B movies, came via nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: two's It Came from Hollywood, which, well, if you're not
Speaker 2: familiar with it, it was a clip field celebration of
Speaker 2: classic Hollywood weirdness and some classic Hollywood awfulness with mild
Speaker 2: riffing and some comedic skits by Dan Aykroyd, John Candy,
Speaker 2: Cheech and Chong and then Gilda Radner they're all to
Speaker 2: varying degrees very funny. No, not all the humors as
Speaker 2: aged super well, but a lot of it is still
Speaker 2: pretty solid, I do.
Speaker 3: As far as the riffing goes, I don't think you
Speaker 3: can do much better than we just sprayed for brains
Speaker 3: last week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some good riffing in here, pre msd riffing.
Speaker 2: But there were some clips from I Married a Monster
Speaker 2: from Outer Space in it came from Hollywood, and the
Speaker 2: monsters like really resonating. You're being bombarded with all these
Speaker 2: different space monsters during these segments of this film. But
Speaker 2: there was something about these that really stood out, this
Speaker 2: kind of something about the sublime melding of black and
Speaker 2: white photographic effects, solid costume work really had that kind
Speaker 2: of classic Outer limits vibe to the creatures and so
Speaker 2: much later on. I don't even remember when exactly I
Speaker 2: did seek it out and I watched it in full,
Speaker 2: but it was it wasn't as dedicated to viewing as
Speaker 2: I gave it this week. So I remember watching it,
Speaker 2: digging the effects and being like, oh, yeah, these effects
Speaker 2: are really good, maybe laughing at some of the outdated elements,
Speaker 2: but this time around, yeah, I thought the special effects
Speaker 2: absolutely held up, but I was even more impressed with
Speaker 2: everything else, particularly the lead performances and its thoughtful sci
Speaker 2: fi treatment of distance and alienation within a married relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with all of that. Now, I
Speaker 3: did want to talk about the movie's title a little
Speaker 3: bit more, because it is not just wordy or overly descriptive.
Speaker 3: It's actually an example of a recurring format. It's kind
Speaker 3: of a meme title style, this confessional title that starts
Speaker 3: with the word I. Other examples being things like I
Speaker 3: was a shoplifter or I was a teenage werewolf, which
Speaker 3: is actually was by the same director as today's movie.
Speaker 3: It was from the year before. So I got interested
Speaker 3: in this and I was looking to see if anybody
Speaker 3: had written about where this meme title format originally came from.
Speaker 3: And I found an interesting analysis in an article it's
Speaker 3: actually about this film about I Married a Monster from
Speaker 3: outer Space on Turner Classic Movies by Richard Harlan Smith,
Speaker 3: and Smith explains as follows quote. Tabloid magazines enjoyed a
Speaker 3: veritable golden age in the United States after the Second
Speaker 3: World War, at a time when economic prosperity wetted. A
Speaker 3: ravening national appetite for gossip, whether the subjects were unfortunate
Speaker 3: nobody's or celebrity scandal magnets. Americans appreciated having the inside
Speaker 3: scoop or the illusion thereof, particularly when spilled first person
Speaker 3: singular within the pages of confidential whisper or the National Inquirer.
Speaker 3: In Hollywood, the movies began to reflect this voyeuristic bent
Speaker 3: with brazenly confessional titles along the lines of I was
Speaker 3: a criminal from nineteen forty five, I was a male
Speaker 3: warbride nineteen forty nine, and I was a shoplifter nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3: So Smith is arguing here that it begins in nineteen
Speaker 3: forties tabloids and gossip magazines. It's this phrasing that offers
Speaker 3: a kind of lurid intimacy, like I'm going to tell
Speaker 3: you a secret and it's going to be shocking. So
Speaker 3: first it is a type of tabloid headline, and then
Speaker 3: that format, or that sensibility at least, is brought over
Speaker 3: into the marketing of films. So Smith goes on to
Speaker 3: say that over time these I was a something films
Speaker 3: tend to become more shocking and also more specific, and
Speaker 3: they really start to focus on Weird Secrets about or
Speaker 3: from within a marriage quote. In nineteen forty two, both
Speaker 3: I Married an Angel and I Married a Witch posited
Speaker 3: happy fantasy unions of humans and otherworldly creatures of uncommon beauty.
Speaker 3: By the end of the decade, however, the mood had
Speaker 3: darkened considerably, though their titles would be changed for theatrical release.
Speaker 3: I Married a Communist aka the woman on Peer thirteen
Speaker 3: from nineteen forty nine. That's a film noir. And also
Speaker 3: I Married a dead Man aka no Man of her
Speaker 3: Own from nineteen fifty broached a connubial incompatibility of epic proportions,
Speaker 3: a marital malaise that reached its apotheosis in nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: eight with I Married a Monster from outer Space.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this whole legacy of I Married a blank film,
Speaker 2: it's pretty fascinating. I did read that I Married a
Speaker 2: Communist was the initial title for Peer thirteen, then the
Speaker 2: kind of the woman from on Peer thirteen, and then the kind.
Speaker 3: Of backed off of it.
Speaker 2: I guess audiences didn't like it as much, but but
Speaker 2: in general, like you can definitely see the power of it.
Speaker 2: You know, this this kind of the bait is that
Speaker 2: there's a. You know, the will the would be filmgoer
Speaker 2: is gonna have to contemplate the change and identity within
Speaker 2: the confines of a married relationship. Uh, in a kind
Speaker 2: of promisingly evocative way. So like that sweet loving person
Speaker 2: that I married, Oops, they're actually a dracula, They're actually
Speaker 2: a franket, stuff, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can see why it's a successful pitch. It
Speaker 3: packages a lot into a few words. It Uh, it
Speaker 3: implies automatically relationship stakes and drama, human drama. Like you
Speaker 3: can see how there I married a blank always seems
Speaker 3: to imply surprise of some kind, which implies deception, which
Speaker 3: you know, is something that the characters are going to
Speaker 3: have to work through. So that's guaranteed drama on the
Speaker 3: front end. And then also, of course I'm married a whatever.
Speaker 3: Even if it's not going to be explicit, it implies
Speaker 3: that there will be something about sex, you know, it
Speaker 3: just like conjures the idea of sexual union into the mind.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, like even sexual secrets will be discovered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like even in this picture, which again is fifty
Speaker 2: eight very much a bedroom door closed picture, still the
Speaker 2: idea of sex and the idea of human reproduction is
Speaker 2: very much an important part of the film. It just
Speaker 2: is alluded to, you know, at times, you know, very
Speaker 2: very chastily, very clinically in some regards. It's happening in
Speaker 2: the background, but is absolutely essential to the plot.
Speaker 3: I agree this movie is not very explicit in any way.
Speaker 3: I mean, certainly not visually explicit, but the sexual and
Speaker 3: reproductive themes of it are definitely central and one of
Speaker 3: the strongest elements. Actually. Yeah, So this film I Married
Speaker 3: a Monster from Outer Space was originally released as part
Speaker 3: of a double feature with The Blob. Could you have
Speaker 3: guessed the weird pairing, isn't it?
Speaker 2: It's a great pairing, though. Imagine getting to see two
Speaker 2: classics like this back to back. I mean, assuming you
Speaker 2: were there to actually watch the film and not make out.
Speaker 2: Some people were there to watch the film though.
Speaker 3: I Married a Monster was originally supposed to be the
Speaker 3: A film, with The Blob running second, but reactions from
Speaker 3: test audiences made Paramount decide to flip the bill, so
Speaker 3: I Married became the b title. If you ask me,
Speaker 3: I've seen them both, I would argue that I Married
Speaker 3: a Monster from Outer Space is the better of the
Speaker 3: two movies, at least in terms of writing and acting
Speaker 3: in cinematography. No slam in the Blob, but I think
Speaker 3: this is the stronger film. But reports from the time
Speaker 3: are that the Blob won out because it was in color.
Speaker 3: It's hard to beat colored. This is what the teenagers
Speaker 3: wanted at the time. Even if you have a lot
Speaker 3: of other stuff going for you, if you're in black
Speaker 3: and white, it's just hard to compete.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the Blob is pretty brilliant in color. And yeah,
Speaker 2: the Blob is an Alzheimer Steve McQueen star jelly. That
Speaker 2: great title sequence with the Bert Backerac theme song, you know,
Speaker 2: it establishes that there's a party that's about to happen.
Speaker 2: So for the driving especially, that makes sense. But I'd
Speaker 2: agree that I Married a Monster Is is a far
Speaker 2: more contemplative work with effects that I think stand up
Speaker 2: even better. I don't know, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 2: compare because we're used to the Blob. The Blob has
Speaker 2: kind of like a bigger pop culture shadow. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the effects in this film are terrific, and at the
Speaker 2: very least are in their own way, on par with
Speaker 2: the Blog.
Speaker 3: In this movie, they're terrific, but they're more modest. I
Speaker 3: mean The Blob is an effects centric film, and this
Speaker 3: is not. This is a tense, frightening, little relationship drama
Speaker 3: with you know, aliens and alien special effects woven in. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So if you've seen a bunch of other sci fi
Speaker 3: horror movies from the drive in era, you will probably
Speaker 3: not be very surprised by the core plot or premise
Speaker 3: of the movie. I would say this one actually makes
Speaker 3: use of two different alien invasion premises that were popular
Speaker 3: at the time that you'll find in other films. So
Speaker 3: maybe we should talk about both of them and how
Speaker 3: they kind of work into the themes of this movie,
Speaker 3: and how they work into themes of other movies, and
Speaker 3: then how they work in differently in this one. So
Speaker 3: one of these plot types is the aliens in human
Speaker 3: skin plot. The premise is that the alien invasion is covert,
Speaker 3: not over, so it's not a flying saucer attacking Washington.
Speaker 3: It's you know, the aliens are blending in with us.
Speaker 3: They're trying to seize power by blending in with human
Speaker 3: society and pretending to be us or acting through us.
Speaker 3: And this can take several forms. Sometimes these movies have
Speaker 3: a kind of puppeteering premise where aliens take control of
Speaker 3: human bodies directly, either through technology like a mind control
Speaker 3: ray or by taking up residents inside us as some
Speaker 3: kind of parasite. I think of the brain eaters. You know,
Speaker 3: we've done plenty of movies like this. And then the
Speaker 3: other major version is body duplication or body snatching, where
Speaker 3: aliens copy the appearance of an earthling but remain themselves
Speaker 3: on the inside.
Speaker 2: And these are both. These are these are great choices
Speaker 2: to make, especially with a scrappier B movie budget, right,
Speaker 2: because you can if you can afford monster effects that
Speaker 2: look pretty good, great, you can use them, but you
Speaker 2: can use them sparingly. And if you've got actors who
Speaker 2: are even just halfway decent at their job, you're gonna
Speaker 2: be able to lean on those performances more and not
Speaker 2: have to worry about what kind of you know, plaster
Speaker 2: goop is attached to their faces.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and of course you get instant tension and drama
Speaker 3: from the idea of someone pretending to be something they're not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it absolutely works.
Speaker 3: So a lot of these body snatching movies from the
Speaker 3: fifties are now interpreted. I was actually wondering about this.
Speaker 3: I should have looked it up before we recorded how
Speaker 3: often it was interpreted this way at the time, but
Speaker 3: at least retrospectively, they're now interpreted as Cold war paranoia,
Speaker 3: you know, consciously or unconsciously expressing fears about communist infiltration,
Speaker 3: Like they look just like your neighbors and your coworkers,
Speaker 3: but secretly they are Red spies. You know, they're subversives
Speaker 3: trying to destroy your way of life. I have seen
Speaker 3: a few comments online that seem to casually lump I
Speaker 3: married a monster from outer space in with those other
Speaker 3: movies like, oh, it is another cold war political paranoia
Speaker 3: body snatching movie, you know, assuming it's about fears of
Speaker 3: secret political infiltration. I really don't agree with that reading.
Speaker 3: I think the themes of identity and mistrust raised by
Speaker 3: the body snatching plot here are actually in service of
Speaker 3: a different constellation of ideas, mostly related to sex and gender.
Speaker 3: Actually that and actually I'll come back to this in
Speaker 3: a second, but the same ideas are raised by the
Speaker 3: second main familiar sci fi premise this movie uses, which
Speaker 3: is the reproductive conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree that this film seems mostly concerned
Speaker 2: with relationships and distance in those relationships, and there are
Speaker 2: various ways you can interpret that. I've noticed some online
Speaker 2: re examining this film in terms of closeted nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: sexual identity and orientation, and I can see where those
Speaker 2: connections can be strongly made with a lot of it,
Speaker 2: I think, hinging on what we now know about star
Speaker 2: Tom Tryan's closet homosexuality, at least as far as his
Speaker 2: public persona was concerned as first an actor and then
Speaker 2: as a writer.
Speaker 3: I would be interested to read about that. I would say,
Speaker 3: I don't know at the surface level if I see
Speaker 3: that kind of content intended within the film itself, but
Speaker 3: maybe I don't know. Yeah, yeah, but anyway, So the
Speaker 3: other thing that is, like a common type of fifties
Speaker 3: sci fi horror movie plot that appears here is the
Speaker 3: reproductive conspiracy. So the idea is space aliens have lost
Speaker 3: the ability to reproduce sexually on their own. Often these
Speaker 3: plots are because one of the sexes has been wiped
Speaker 3: out by a catastrophe, so they decide they need to
Speaker 3: mate with humans in order to continue their line. We
Speaker 3: have covered several movies like this before, though always sillier
Speaker 3: versions like Ship of Monsters from nineteen sixty. Actually one
Speaker 3: of my favorite movies we've ever done on the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, love, and I can't believe you're arguing that it's
Speaker 2: not serious.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's It's seriousness is masked by the heart
Speaker 3: of a clown. There's that one. And then also Devil
Speaker 3: Girl from Mars, which is less overtly silly than Ship
Speaker 3: of Monsters, but is still pretty silly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has a certain amount of cant to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I would say that the reproductive plot in I
Speaker 3: Married a Monster from Outer Space feels significantly more serious
Speaker 3: and frightening than it does in those two movies, which
Speaker 3: is partly due to just approach, you know, differences in
Speaker 3: the writing like those movies are sillier, but also because
Speaker 3: of the swap to gender dynamics, like in those movies
Speaker 3: women from space need earth Men, which is usually played
Speaker 3: for comedy in the movies. In I Married a Monster
Speaker 3: from Outer Space, men from space are trying to have
Speaker 3: offspring with Earth women, which that premise tends to create
Speaker 3: a darker and more threatening tone. And I think I
Speaker 3: think also in an interesting way, indirectly racist theme of
Speaker 3: sexual autonomy and reproductive rights for women. I don't want
Speaker 3: to overstate that element or overstate the feminist credentials of
Speaker 3: this film. Because it is a drive in movie from
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty eight, You're not going to get explicit discussion
Speaker 3: of stuff like that on screen, but it does, I think,
Speaker 3: raise those ideas in an interesting and provocative way. And
Speaker 3: I think one cool power of speculative genres like science
Speaker 3: fiction and horror is that within them you can sometimes
Speaker 3: raise questions by implication and analogy which might not be
Speaker 3: given a fair hearing by the same audience if you
Speaker 3: just brought them up directly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great point, and I
Speaker 2: would agree that it is treated with I mean that
Speaker 2: this is saying men, but it is treated with a
Speaker 2: lot more seriousness than say nineteen sixty eight's Mars Needs
Speaker 2: Women or sixty fives Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, in
Speaker 2: which you have like bikini ladies brought into parade before
Speaker 2: the Martian overlords so forth.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, there are some movies like that that
Speaker 3: also just treat it for comedy. Sometimes that for some
Speaker 3: reason feels just more in bad taste.
Speaker 2: Yea, we may have to come back to Frankenstein Meets
Speaker 2: the Space Monster. Though there's a lot of as I
Speaker 2: recall there's a lot of canned footage in there of
Speaker 2: like planes and rockets and whatnot, but also some legitimately
Speaker 2: goofy weirdness.
Speaker 3: Is that the one with the bald guy with the
Speaker 3: pointy ears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's another one that I remember mostly from
Speaker 2: it came from Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But anyway, I think maybe we can talk a
Speaker 3: bit more about these themes when we get into the
Speaker 3: plot section later in the episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm just going to throw out here real quick.
Speaker 2: We've been doing Weird House Cinema for a few years now.
Speaker 2: You can find all those episodes in the audio archive
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcast. We cover movies from different decades.
Speaker 2: This is our twenty third Weird House Cinema selection from
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, and I often will look and see, well,
Speaker 2: what did Michael Weldon have to say about this film
Speaker 2: and psychotronic Encyclopedia film or it's companion book, and he
Speaker 2: describes this one as quote an overlooked, well made science
Speaker 2: fiction hit that should appeal especially to women. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: but I mean I think it would appeal to everybody.
Speaker 2: It's it's a pretty solid film, all right, Joe, do
Speaker 2: you have an elevator pitch.
Speaker 3: The title is already an elevator pitch. But yeah, the
Speaker 3: other one is just what time is it? Totally unclear?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, is it day?
Speaker 3: Is it night?
Speaker 2: Sometimes there are there's some strong hints, like, well, they're
Speaker 2: having a picnic outside surrounded by the people. It has
Speaker 2: to be daytime.
Speaker 3: The only business that's opened seems to be the bar,
Speaker 3: so I think it's night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're wearing your nightgown. Must be night. Though the
Speaker 2: nightgowns of the late nineteen fifties are not that now
Speaker 2: it's harder for us to necessarily distinguish if this is
Speaker 2: a nightgown or this is a dayware. So yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: If you were interested in watching I Married a Monster
Speaker 2: from Outer Space, well, it is widely available. You can
Speaker 2: stream it or buy it digitally in a number of places,
Speaker 2: and if you would like to get a little physical
Speaker 2: media while, it's available on Blu Ray from Imprint as
Speaker 2: well as Shout Factory. Shout Factory put out a double
Speaker 2: feature set that also includes nineteen fifty five's Conquest of Space.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the folks behind this film,
Speaker 2: starting with the director, who was also a producer on
Speaker 2: this film. That's Gene Fowler Junior, who of nineteen seventeen
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety eight. I think we already alluded to
Speaker 2: his past as an editor. He was actually an Academy
Speaker 2: Award nominated film editor or would become one for nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World. He
Speaker 2: worked primarily as an editor of TV and film from
Speaker 2: about thirty five through nineteen eighty five, but he also
Speaker 2: directed a series of projects along the way, beginning with
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifty two TV film China Smith, which spawned
Speaker 2: a TV series of the same name, which he also directed,
Speaker 2: and he followed that up with the nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 2: trend setting hit I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring a
Speaker 2: young Michael Landon.
Speaker 3: According to the Turner Classic Movies Retrospective by Richard Harlan
Speaker 3: Smith I mentioned earlier, Fowler took the chance to helm
Speaker 3: I Was a Teenage Werewolf because he wanted to try
Speaker 3: his hand at directing, and then, based on the title,
Speaker 3: he assumed nobody was gonna see this movie and he
Speaker 3: was wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And it was a hit. The film was
Speaker 2: enough of a success, and it hit enough of a
Speaker 2: nerve with the teen powered pop culture of the day.
Speaker 2: That it led to multiple mostly unrelated projects looking to
Speaker 2: cash in on success, and then later It's cult following
Speaker 2: a nostalgia factor, but basically a whole string of teensploystation
Speaker 2: films followed, and these included Let's See I Was a
Speaker 2: teenage Frankenstein from fifty seven, The Blood of Dracula from
Speaker 2: fifty seven, which, despite the rather generic Dracula title, is
Speaker 2: apparently essentially a teenage vampire movie.
Speaker 3: Oh that's funny. I would have assumed that has Christopher
Speaker 3: Lee in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, teenage cave Man from fifty eight, Teenagers from Outer
Speaker 2: Space from fifty nine. That one has some really cool
Speaker 2: effects in it as well.
Speaker 3: One that one was on Mystery Science Theater was there's a.
Speaker 2: There's in particular, the teens look a bit old. These
Speaker 2: are your you know, your standard issue twenties and thirties teens.
Speaker 2: But there's a great scene where somebody kills a dog
Speaker 2: with a ray gun.
Speaker 3: Points the ray gun at it, and then it just
Speaker 3: turns into a skeleton. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really solid old time the effect. But yeah. Fowler
Speaker 2: of though he'd moved on to a handful of nonspecuative
Speaker 2: genre of films before coming back in fifty eight to
Speaker 2: him today's film I Married a Monster from Outer Space,
Speaker 2: which isn't a teen movie, but benefits from that same
Speaker 2: sort of snappy title composition as we discussed, you know,
Speaker 2: I Married a blank instantly draws you in.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Fowler went on to direct I'll See nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: nine's The Revel Set, also seen on Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 2: three thousand, nineteen fifty nine's Here Come the Jets spoiler
Speaker 2: the Jets are not warm in this case, and various
Speaker 2: TV show episodes. He may have had a hand in
Speaker 2: a final film, nineteen seventy eight's The Astral Factor later
Speaker 2: re released as Invisible Strangler starring Robert Foxworth. The workpieces
Speaker 2: the workpiece, but details on his involvement in that particular
Speaker 2: film are sketchy, so I can't tell he actually had
Speaker 2: anything to do with it, and if he did, do
Speaker 2: what degree.
Speaker 3: Fowler allegedly took the job to direct I Married a
Speaker 3: Monster from Outer Space in part because he was promised
Speaker 3: broad creative freedom. The one stipulation from the financiers was
Speaker 3: that the aliens had to glow, and you know what,
Speaker 3: I'll take that as far as creative metaling goes, I
Speaker 3: think that idea works. It looks good. I like the
Speaker 3: glowing aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we'll come back to the glowing effect is
Speaker 2: absolutely solid. So they nailed it. They nailed the one
Speaker 2: thing that was required, and then they delivered on pretty
Speaker 2: much everything else as well. All right. The screenplay for
Speaker 2: this film comes to us from Lewis Vittis, who have
Speaker 2: nineteen eleven through nineteen sixty nine. A screenwriter who frequently
Speaker 2: worked with Fowler, including on Jets and Rebel Set. His
Speaker 2: speculative titles include the nineteen sixty four sleepwalking thriller The
Speaker 2: Eyes of Annie Jones and the nineteen fifty seven atomic
Speaker 2: monster film Monster from Green Hell and By the Way
Speaker 2: I Married. A Monster from Outer Space was remade as
Speaker 2: a TV film in nineteen ninety eight, directed by Nancy Malone.
Speaker 2: I have not seen it. I looked at some stills
Speaker 2: from it, and as I expected from a nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: TV film, I wasn't really impressed by what I saw.
Speaker 2: Maybe the film is good, but I'm not so certain
Speaker 2: about those effects.
Speaker 3: Well. The poster for it, which we looked up is
Speaker 3: the poster from Basic Instinct. Both the text and the
Speaker 3: actors swapped out. That's an interesting choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. It's like, this film does such
Speaker 2: a great job with everything that it has, and its
Speaker 2: effects are so stellar, especially for the time. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: It's a great concept though, and I celebrate the idea
Speaker 2: that it was remade and maybe it is good it.
Speaker 2: Folks out there, if you've seen I Married a Monster,
Speaker 2: the remake of I Married a Monster from outer Space
Speaker 2: right in and let's know what you thought.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Gloria Talbot, our star.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, she has second billing, but she's our clear
Speaker 2: protagonist here, Gloria Talbot playing Marge. She lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: one through the year two thousand. Nineteen fifties, Brunette Starlett
Speaker 2: perhaps best remembered for her various B movies, which also
Speaker 2: include nineteen fifty seven's The Cyclops as well as Daughter
Speaker 2: of Doctor Jekyl. And then there's nineteen sixties The Leech Woman,
Speaker 2: another film that has been featured on Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 2: three thousand and one that I remember being pretty fun
Speaker 2: and having some legitimately creepy moments in it.
Speaker 3: I want to see Daughter of Doctor Jekyl because for
Speaker 3: several reasons, one of which is that it follows up
Speaker 3: on the premise of Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde the novel,
Speaker 3: which is that, as you'll recall, doctor Jekyll turns into
Speaker 3: a werewolf.
Speaker 2: Hmm all right, Yeah, there are a lot of I
Speaker 2: feel like when it comes to some of the classic
Speaker 2: literary monsters, Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde is one of
Speaker 2: those where interpretations can vary in very specific but very
Speaker 2: interesting ways, Like you can't. I don't know, we need
Speaker 2: to come back at some point and do a jacculine
Speaker 2: Hyde movie. I don't think we've actually done one, but
Speaker 2: there are numerous choices to be made there.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is the one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She also appeared in a number of Western She
Speaker 2: did a lot of TV work, and that included various
Speaker 2: Western TV properties as well. But I have to say
Speaker 2: she's pretty great in this. I thought, yeah, perfectly wonderful
Speaker 2: performance and while at the same time delivering on sort
Speaker 2: of that nineteen fifties starling eye candy as well. Obviously
Speaker 2: gorgeous woman opposite gorgeous lead male performance. Is that necessary
Speaker 2: for a film, Well, if you're going to if it's
Speaker 2: a nineteen fifties drive in it's kind of like, that's
Speaker 2: the idea, these two will kiss, don't you want to
Speaker 2: see it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Tom Tryon's hunkiness is its own kind of thing.
Speaker 3: It's a major presence in the film, and I think
Speaker 3: affects how the movie is received. And maybe we should
Speaker 3: come back and talk to that, talk about that later,
Speaker 3: but yes.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Gloria Talbot was at least retrospectively known as a scream
Speaker 3: queen of the fifties. She did a number of horror movies,
Speaker 3: and apparently Talbot said in interviews that she considered working
Speaker 3: on this movie a significant step up in her career.
Speaker 3: Both of the horror movies she did in fifty seven
Speaker 3: were very low budget. For example, I was reading some
Speaker 3: stories about the production of The Daughter of Doctor Jekyl.
Speaker 3: According to Talbot, the majority of the production took place
Speaker 3: at somebody's house, and in the final film you could
Speaker 3: occasionally see cars driving by in the street outside through
Speaker 3: the windows, and the movie's supposed to take place in
Speaker 3: like nineteen ten. Her other movie from fifty seven, The Cyclops,
Speaker 3: was a bert I Gordon feature not regarded as one
Speaker 3: of bert I Gordon's best movies. Mister Big, by the Way,
Speaker 3: directed some other movies we've done in Weird House before
Speaker 3: Attack of the Puppet People and The Magic Sword. We've
Speaker 3: done another one.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, we want to do The Amazing Colossal
Speaker 2: Man at some point, but that one has been just
Speaker 2: very hard to source legitimately for a long time. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's received an official Blu Ray release. You
Speaker 2: can't stream it anywhere. But I really want to come
Speaker 2: back to that one.
Speaker 3: It's in Blu Ray purgatory. Yeah. So by contrast, I
Speaker 3: Married a Monster from Outer Space was a modest, mid
Speaker 3: budget production, and in that article for TCM I mentioned
Speaker 3: earlier by Smith, he mentioned he says that Talbot has
Speaker 3: said she quote appreciated the relative luxury of the Paramount backlot.
Speaker 3: A few more details from that article, which are most
Speaker 3: of which are originally sourced to an interview Gloria Talbot
Speaker 3: gave to the film historian Tom Weaver in nineteen eighty six. Overall,
Speaker 3: she liked the experience of making this movie, and she
Speaker 3: was proud of the final film, but noted a few frustrations.
Speaker 3: One is that during the middle of production she developed
Speaker 3: an absessed tooth ough yikes, and so I was looking
Speaker 3: for that once I knew that detail, Like, can you
Speaker 3: see the pain in any of the scenes. I don't
Speaker 3: know if I can tell that.
Speaker 2: I did not need to know that about my actors, please.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I can tell that from the acting.
Speaker 3: I mean, she is going through pain in some scenes.
Speaker 2: Well, you don't use it if you got it, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't need to know about their dental pain.
Speaker 3: She also claims she found the screenwriter Lewis Vittis to
Speaker 3: be something of a stickler. She says he would park
Speaker 3: his body right underneath the camera and watch the actors
Speaker 3: like a hawk to make sure that they did not
Speaker 3: change a single word of his dialogue. Which that is
Speaker 3: an approach, you know, that is maybe not an improv
Speaker 3: friendly set. But uh then again, as a writer, I
Speaker 3: can sympathize somewhat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know. I'm always the
Speaker 2: mind like when I when I have written text that
Speaker 2: an actor is going to read, I'm always kind of like,
Speaker 2: is this is this good? I don't know, Like you
Speaker 2: I'm going to pass the ball to you and then
Speaker 2: you score the touchdown with it. That's kind of my approach.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just that says more about my uh, you know,
Speaker 2: my relationship with with acting and you know, and and writing.
Speaker 3: But you know, I guess it would just depend what
Speaker 3: they're doing with it, Like, yeah, I feel like they're
Speaker 3: improving it. Oftentimes I would feel that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But you know, there's a lot to be said
Speaker 2: of both approaches. You know, Obviously a lot of filmmakers
Speaker 2: have made some wonderful discoveries and created some great content
Speaker 2: by enabling there and allowing their actors to bring stuff
Speaker 2: to life in their own words. But if you're if
Speaker 2: you're more of a script purist, and then you've got
Speaker 2: good company with the likes of the Coe Brothers, who
Speaker 2: pretty famously don't use much in the way of improv
Speaker 2: on the part of their actors and pretty much stick
Speaker 2: to the script.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One final detail from that article is that Talbot
Speaker 3: remembered her co star Tom Tryan playing her husband quote
Speaker 3: as cordial but aloof and that Tryan hated making the film.
Speaker 3: So it's a good experience for her at least as
Speaker 3: far as she remembered, not so fun for him.
Speaker 2: Well, that'll be interesting to contemplate because on one hand,
Speaker 2: maybe he's able to bring that energy into his performance
Speaker 2: because there is this you know this distance to him,
Speaker 2: and there should be, because he is an alien for
Speaker 2: most of the picture. Most of the picture, he is
Speaker 2: an alien pretending to be a human named Bill, and
Speaker 2: while he doesn't hate humanity, he is having an interesting
Speaker 2: time trying to figure out how it works, especially from
Speaker 2: an emotional perspective.
Speaker 3: The character of the alien Bill, I think is really interesting,
Speaker 3: and Tom Tryan's performance is really good. He of course,
Speaker 3: it is valuable to the film that he is an
Speaker 3: incredibly handsome actor, I think, because that changes the way
Speaker 3: this character is received. That he has amid this amid
Speaker 3: this coldness and the problems within the relationship. He does
Speaker 3: have a kind of raw sexual appeal, and that keeps
Speaker 3: things especially weird and complicated when we're working through these
Speaker 3: scenes where he's displaying this coldness or you know, there's
Speaker 3: this threat about what he represents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think one of the great things about
Speaker 2: this film too, is that there's not a point in
Speaker 2: the film where Bill is just like, oh, you got me.
Speaker 2: I'm an alien and now I'm just going to be
Speaker 2: a straight heel for the rest of the picture, Like
Speaker 2: we're we end up in a much more thought provoking area,
Speaker 2: where as we'll discuss you know, it's like his alien
Speaker 2: nature is known, but he's also not like but he's
Speaker 2: also trying to be more human. Like they're trying to
Speaker 2: make it work even though one of them is an
Speaker 2: alien from another planet. Yeah, so yeah. Tom trying Here
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty six through nineteen ninety one. Golden Globe
Speaker 2: nominated Actor for nineteen sixty fours The Cardinal. That was
Speaker 2: an Auto Priminger film that co starred John Houston. It
Speaker 2: was an inter war drama that took on various social
Speaker 2: issues as well as the rise of fascism through a
Speaker 2: Catholic lens. It was not a hit. And you know,
Speaker 2: without knowing exactly how career concerns factor and had everything,
Speaker 2: I wonder if Tryan's feelings about this movie might have
Speaker 2: been related to that. Like, you know, in the Hollywood
Speaker 2: of the nineteen fifties, generally speaking, like starring in a
Speaker 2: horror movie or a sci fi film wasn't necessarily like
Speaker 2: you're ascending the latter. I mean sometimes it worked out
Speaker 2: that way. We were talking about the Blob. Steve McQueen. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Steve McQueen went on to much bigger and greater things,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't always seen as you know, a step
Speaker 2: in the right direction.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that wasn't just the nineteen fifties. I mean,
Speaker 3: we were recently talking about actors reflecting on working in
Speaker 3: the in the eighties, when it was still widely believed like, look,
Speaker 3: you do horror movies, you're just not going to be
Speaker 3: in mainstream movies. After that, people don't want to mess
Speaker 3: with you. They think, okay, you're you're dealing in the
Speaker 3: in the weird genres. You know, you're not part of
Speaker 3: what we're doing now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, this in a similar way, It's like they used
Speaker 2: to say that about TV. I was like, oh, you're
Speaker 2: doing TV. Now you're a TV actor. You're done with
Speaker 2: mainstream cinema. And you know, nowadays it's a little more
Speaker 2: complicated than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and obviously even at both of these times
Speaker 3: in history, you could find exceptions people who went from
Speaker 3: one to the other. But at least there was a
Speaker 3: wide perception among actors that you know, in the genres
Speaker 3: that's sort of on the downslope, or at least you're
Speaker 3: you're not getting out of that valley.
Speaker 2: Right, especially if you were a star player, if you
Speaker 2: were if you were a featured player, as opposed to
Speaker 2: a character actor who maybe sometimes character actors maybe had
Speaker 2: a little bit more of along jayvity and a little
Speaker 2: bit more ability to move between these sorts of things.
Speaker 2: So Trian was mostly a serious dramatic actor who's only other,
Speaker 2: even faintly horror sci fi related credit was nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: two's Moon Pilot. This was a Disney comedy. This was
Speaker 2: not a serious sci fi film, so it was only
Speaker 2: marginally sci fi. His other credits include nineteen sixties The
Speaker 2: Story of Ruth, sixty two Is The Longest Day, and
Speaker 2: sixty five's In Harm's Way. However, just because he only
Speaker 2: ever acted in one horror movie doesn't mean that he
Speaker 2: didn't have a taste for horror as a genre, because
Speaker 2: apparently the story goes that after he experienced Rosemary's Baby
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight, I think maybe was a combination
Speaker 2: of seeing the film and reading the book, he wrote
Speaker 2: his own horror novel. He switched careers, he dropped out
Speaker 2: of acting, devoted himself to writing, and he wrote nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one's The Other, a supernatural horror tale about identical
Speaker 2: twins that became a best sell. He adapted it himself
Speaker 2: to screenplay for a film the following year, and you know,
Speaker 2: from that point on just focused on writing. He followed
Speaker 2: that book up with seventy three's Harvest Home, which was
Speaker 2: made into a nineteen seventy eight mini series, The Dark
Speaker 2: Secret of Harvest Home with Betty Davis, and then the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight Billy Wilder movie Fedora, was based on
Speaker 2: one of his short stories. He wrote six more novels,
Speaker 2: culminating with the posthumously released Night Magic in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think he's pretty great in this. You know,
Speaker 2: whatever attitudes he had about the project, he either uses
Speaker 2: those or you know, gets those out of the way,
Speaker 2: because it's just, you know, a great kind of distant,
Speaker 2: brooding performance for the most part, that also has its own,
Speaker 2: like weird alien heart to it, as we'll discuss. Like
Speaker 2: we reached the point in the picture where he describes
Speaker 2: to Marge that like he doesn't know what love is,
Speaker 2: but he's trying to learn what love is, you know,
Speaker 2: And I don't know you can single that line out
Speaker 2: as being a little hammy, but I thought it was
Speaker 2: pretty pretty strong within the context of the scene.
Speaker 3: Oh, I feel like it only sounds hammy by virtue
Speaker 3: of appearing out of context like this, I think in
Speaker 3: the scene it hits pretty hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, well acted on both counts. It's a
Speaker 2: great scene between the two of them. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: So we'll have more to say about these two performances
Speaker 2: because these are the main performances there everyone there. There
Speaker 2: are so many supporting fifties white guys in this movie
Speaker 2: that I'm honestly not even gonna attempt to classify them
Speaker 2: all and credit them all.
Speaker 3: Because he's a note about this later. He just like
Speaker 3: cannot keep up with all of Bill's friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Bill has a number of friends, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're all well acted, but they're not main characters. They're
Speaker 2: just his buddies. And some of them are replaced by
Speaker 2: aliens as well. Some of them are not.
Speaker 3: Most of them, I think are replaced by aliens. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and aren't they Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm not gonna mentioned them all. I'm just
Speaker 2: going to mention a few of these supporting players here.
Speaker 2: Some of them have interesting connections. First of all, there's
Speaker 2: Officer Hank Swanson played by Peter Baldwin, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty one through twenty seventeen. An actor of the fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties whose credits include fifty eighth, The Space Children
Speaker 2: and one episode of the original Outer Limits. He went
Speaker 2: on to become a pretty prolific TV director on shows
Speaker 2: like Newhart in The Wonder Years. I think he was
Speaker 2: at least nominated for an Emmy for his work on
Speaker 2: The Wonder Years. Oh okay, let's see. We also have
Speaker 2: Doctor Wayne played by Ken Lynch, who lived nineteen ten
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety American character actor who often played cops
Speaker 2: and detectives. And you can get that, you get that
Speaker 2: energy off of this performance because I don't know, there's
Speaker 2: something He's very authoritative, and he also ends up playing
Speaker 2: that role. He ends up becoming more of the like
Speaker 2: not really local law enforcement. He essentially becomes like the
Speaker 2: vigilante leader once the people are brought around to Marge's story.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about this later if it means anything,
Speaker 3: And maybe it doesn't, or maybe it's not supposed to
Speaker 3: mean anything, but like, why is it that Marge's doctor
Speaker 3: ends up being the one trustworthy man in town?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyway, he's good in this. His credits also
Speaker 2: include fifty nine's North By Northwest and Anatomy of a Murder.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna skip over a few people here,
Speaker 2: let's see. I'm gonna and I may come back to
Speaker 2: them later as we get through the plot. Oh but
Speaker 2: we have a character named Helen Rhodes. She's Helen is
Speaker 2: one of Marge's friends, and she ends up married to
Speaker 2: one of the guys Sam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the one guy whose name I know.
Speaker 2: Okay, she ends up marrying Sam. And she's played by
Speaker 2: Gene Carson, who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand
Speaker 2: and five. She appeared in the original Twilight Zone episode
Speaker 2: A Most Unusual Camera, and she often played comedic roles
Speaker 2: on TV. She had kind of like this kind of
Speaker 2: this husky voice that she could like play up. For instance,
Speaker 2: on The Andy Griffiths Show, she had a recurring role
Speaker 2: with this character Daphney, who was one of these two
Speaker 2: fun girls who had come to town and get Andy
Speaker 2: into trouble. So a couple couple of blonds that were up.
Speaker 3: To the fun girls from Mount Pilot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, those are the Oka yeahose are them? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I'm not to say they were up to no good.
Speaker 2: I don't think they were necessarily criminals. But they were
Speaker 2: fun ladies all right, going behind the camera, but also
Speaker 2: someone in front of it too. We have he's uncredited officially,
Speaker 2: but we have another monster suit superstar in this picture,
Speaker 2: and that is Charles Gamora, who lived nineteen oh three
Speaker 2: through nineteen sixty one. We've talked about him on the
Speaker 2: show before. He was born in the Philippines, a Hollywood
Speaker 2: makeup artist who became known is the King of the
Speaker 2: Gorilla Men because he did a lot of gorilla costume
Speaker 2: and monster suit work in his career, both in making
Speaker 2: the costumes and then wearing them as well.
Speaker 3: How many full time gorilla suit performers do you think
Speaker 3: there were in Hollywood at any given time.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's only going to be room for a few,
Speaker 2: you only they're they're they're yeah, few and far between.
Speaker 2: But even today we have some some folks who, in
Speaker 2: their own way and with the current technology, are sort
Speaker 2: of like the gorilla men.
Speaker 3: But oh, like the Andy Cirkus. I'd say that.
Speaker 2: I mean Andy Cirkus, you know, his abilities, you know,
Speaker 2: certainly go beyond being a gorilla man. But yeah, absolutely
Speaker 2: a gorilla man in the best sense of the word.
Speaker 3: But a seasoned creature performer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah. Gomora has like sixty makeup credits
Speaker 2: on IMDb, but also sixty acting credits. Most of them
Speaker 2: are gorillas. He designed and sculpted the excellent monster costume
Speaker 2: in this picture and seemingly wore it. I was looking
Speaker 2: at the book Keep Watching the Skies by film historian
Speaker 2: Bill Warren, and he pointed out that in the original
Speaker 2: script for I Married a Monster from Outer Space, the
Speaker 2: alien is kind of as described as having a mask
Speaker 2: that featured various breathing tubes running from a helmet to
Speaker 2: the chest, so very much like a fifties helmet alien.
Speaker 2: But in what is sometimes categorized as a miscommunication, Gemora
Speaker 2: designed and sculpted these elements not as technology but as
Speaker 2: organic parts of the creature's whole body. So tubes not
Speaker 2: going from a helmet to the chest, but growing like
Speaker 2: out of the face of the creature and then into
Speaker 2: the torso of the creature. And the result is just
Speaker 2: top notch. Here it looks, i mean, to my eye,
Speaker 2: unlike anything we'd seen before, and really there's not a
Speaker 2: lot that looks like it. You could you could make
Speaker 2: an argument for it almost being gigorsque in a way.
Speaker 2: Without that without like the Freudian energy of Geeker's design,
Speaker 2: but very much in terms of just its fleshiness.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, man, it would fit in with the themes
Speaker 3: of the movie if the costumes were more sexually charged.
Speaker 3: They're not really at all. But it is absolutely the
Speaker 3: case that it looks like a mix of technology and biology.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, we get these hoses that play into
Speaker 3: this gross, weird ripping thing that happens at the end
Speaker 3: with dogs, which I can't wait to talk about. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like that. But also I mentioned this earlier. To me,
Speaker 3: the way the biological elements and the helmets look is
Speaker 3: almost as much plant as it is animal. Do you
Speaker 3: see what I'm saying. It has a kind of bark
Speaker 3: like texture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminds one of things a little bit of
Speaker 2: like swamp thing or man thing in that regard, very
Speaker 2: rooty looking. And I think it's great that this works
Speaker 2: so well in black and white because we don't get
Speaker 2: a sense of the color, like it could be green,
Speaker 2: it could be brown, it could be pale white, and
Speaker 2: we don't have to fill in that blank. It takes
Speaker 2: on this it feels it does feel kind of corpse
Speaker 2: like in its own way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't think about that with the color, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a welcome ambiguity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. One more actor note, just because his
Speaker 2: story is a little interesting and also his name's funny.
Speaker 2: But we have a bartender that we see and the
Speaker 2: bartender's name is Max but been. He's played by Slapsy
Speaker 2: Maxy Rosenbloom, who lived nineteen oh four through nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: a pro boxer or former pro boxer by this point,
Speaker 2: so nicknamed apparently because of his open gloved boxing style.
Speaker 2: I do not know what this means, but I guess
Speaker 2: whatever it means, it made him look like he was
Speaker 2: slapping people when he was boxing.
Speaker 3: Slapping instead of punching. I don't know how would that work.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I put the call out to our
Speaker 2: boxing fans out there, what is open glove boxing style?
Speaker 2: Why would you name him Slapsy? But at any rate,
Speaker 2: he was I guess, well thought of in and out
Speaker 2: of boxing circles and got into acting, played a lot
Speaker 2: of heavies and is simply essentially worked out a niche
Speaker 2: for himself playing lovable but sometimes comedic heavies, which is
Speaker 2: essentially what he has here. Like he's kind of a
Speaker 2: rough looking dude, but he clearly seems to have a
Speaker 2: heart of gold and seems like, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: a funny, silly guy.
Speaker 3: And in one scene he gets mad at all the
Speaker 3: aliens because they're not drinking alcohol.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, what's wrong with my liquor? You just
Speaker 2: order it and you sit there and you don't even
Speaker 2: talk to each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's our business if we want to order it
Speaker 3: and not drink it. And then he presses the issue
Speaker 3: and ends up punching Tom Tryan a bunch of times
Speaker 3: and it does nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe that would I think maybe the idea
Speaker 2: here is that a lot of the viewers would know
Speaker 2: that Slapsy Maxi should be able to punch somebody really hard.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But outside of that, he also apparently ran a nineteen
Speaker 2: forties Hollywood nightclub called you guessed it, Slapsey Maxis.
Speaker 3: It had a drink called the Slapsy Maxi and the
Speaker 3: sandwich called the Slapsy Maxi.
Speaker 2: I would hope, so, I would hope, So all right.
Speaker 2: Special photographic effects in this film came from John P. Fulton,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh two through nineteen sixty six and
Speaker 2: those those those photographic effects are on excellent display here.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about all the various things that they do,
Speaker 2: from making the aliens glow to that soul stealing black mist,
Speaker 2: really terrific stuff. Fulton was a six time Academy Award
Speaker 2: nominee for Special Effects and won the award twice for
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six is wonder Man and nineteen fifty seven's
Speaker 2: The Ten Commandments, so you know, the parting of the
Speaker 2: Red Sea, I think. In particular, he worked on a
Speaker 2: number of the classic universal horror films, including Frankenstein Meets
Speaker 2: the Wolfman, Bride of Frankenstein, The Visible Man, and The Mummy.
Speaker 2: He also worked on nineteen fifty seven's Funny Face and
Speaker 2: sixty one's Breakfast at Tiffany's. And we'll just basically skip
Speaker 2: over the music. The music here is all stock music.
Speaker 2: The title music is I believe credited to Van Cleeve,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen ten through nineteen seventy. The music is
Speaker 2: mostly what you would expect, leaning a good bit on
Speaker 2: the melodrama of the scenes, and there is a lot
Speaker 2: of melodrama in here, so it plays well.
Speaker 3: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot
Speaker 3: let's get into it. So we open on the planet
Speaker 3: Earth hanging in space. Someday I would like to do
Speaker 3: a breakdown of the broad differences between sci fi films
Speaker 3: that begin in space versus the ones that begin on Earth.
Speaker 3: I wonder if there's anything happening there, Like what's the difference?
Speaker 3: Like why? How does it change the film when the
Speaker 3: first thing we see is stars and the blackness instead
Speaker 3: of just a scene on Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean we can instantly think of any number
Speaker 2: of films that begin out of space looking at Earth.
Speaker 2: But what if they just all did?
Speaker 3: What if?
Speaker 2: What if? What if every movie had to begin with
Speaker 2: this shot? What would it mean? What would it change?
Speaker 2: How would it change things? It breakfast? Tiffany's began with
Speaker 2: a wide shot of the planet Earth.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Jumanji begins with the Earth and the
Speaker 3: moon rise. Yeah. So yeah, we open on the planet
Speaker 3: Earth and you could see like the Milky Way galaxy
Speaker 3: spanning the background. A very classic opening, and the opening
Speaker 3: music is also very classic for this kind of film.
Speaker 3: It's like a cold, eerie texture that sounds like twinkling
Speaker 3: stars and then this blast of aggressive horns. This's climbing
Speaker 3: and climbing sounds like an alien menace is drawing closer
Speaker 3: and closer. Then we zoom in on Earth and eventually
Speaker 3: drop in on a town somewhere in Middle America. I
Speaker 3: think this town is called Norrisville, so it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to be a real location.
Speaker 2: Ye might as well be Normalville.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Normalville, Americaville, USA. And so the action begins at
Speaker 3: a lakeside drinking establishment where a group of five or
Speaker 3: six men are meeting for a bachelor party. Extremely handsome
Speaker 3: bachelor Bill Ferrell this is Tom Tryan is about to
Speaker 3: get married to his sweetheart Marge. This is Gloria Talbot,
Speaker 3: and the boys are out having a few rounds. Now.
Speaker 3: This is not one of those movie bachelor parties with
Speaker 3: like strippers and loud music and high energy. This is
Speaker 3: more like a funeral for bachelorod. It is a neutral
Speaker 3: to bad vibe. Before we meet the boys, the camera
Speaker 3: pauses with a couple of ladies drinking at the bar
Speaker 3: and they're like, you know, what's up with those guys
Speaker 3: over there? You know they're handsome guys, but we keep
Speaker 3: making eyes at them, and not one of them has
Speaker 3: come over to buy us a drink, And so the
Speaker 3: ladies decide maybe the guys are all married, and then
Speaker 3: what do you know, when we get over to the table,
Speaker 3: it is indeed just a festival of complaining, complaining about women,
Speaker 3: complaining about married life, old battlax stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the movie frequently goes here with our male characters,
Speaker 2: and as a twenty twenty six of youer, it does
Speaker 2: make me wonder how much of it is just snapshot
Speaker 2: at the times you know, this is how men talk
Speaker 2: and we're just trying to be real, and how much
Speaker 2: of it is a deliberate part of the texture of
Speaker 2: the film, in which a cosmic distance exists between the
Speaker 2: men and women of contemporary America.
Speaker 3: I think it's got to be intentional because of the
Speaker 3: way it plays so directly into the themes of the
Speaker 3: film of like, you know this distance in relationships and
Speaker 3: you know things about men and women in marriage. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I also had the same question of just like, I
Speaker 3: don't know how common was it back then for regular
Speaker 3: people to actually just talk like this, just we get
Speaker 3: together and complain about marriage, ah, women, or is that
Speaker 3: more something that was like really played up in the
Speaker 3: movies because it made good dialogue, or they thought it did.
Speaker 3: I don't know anyway, one of these guys is, and
Speaker 3: again I cannot keep all of Bill's friends sorted out.
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of them. One of these guys calls
Speaker 3: for a drink. He calls the waiter over and he's like,
Speaker 3: mister Ferrell is getting married in the morning. He needs
Speaker 3: a stiff drink. He asks for freedom on the rocks.
Speaker 3: I didn't get it, yeah, and then oh, he just
Speaker 3: keeps going, piling on. Another guy's like, I'm already married.
Speaker 3: I really need a drink. And then they decide that well,
Speaker 3: every one of them either was married, is married, or
Speaker 3: is about to get married, so they all have to
Speaker 3: get hammered. They have no choice, but Bill, the guy
Speaker 3: who's getting married in the morning. Bill is actually kind
Speaker 3: of the odd man out. He's the only one who's
Speaker 3: not sitting here complaining about women. So he, you know,
Speaker 3: the rest of the guys are like, we must get
Speaker 3: miserably drunk with the he man woman haters club, and
Speaker 3: he's like, no, I need to go see my fiance.
Speaker 3: So he gets up and leaves. He's going to stop
Speaker 3: by and see Marge on the way home. And then
Speaker 3: it takes a dark turn. One of the guys makes
Speaker 3: a joke that's kind of over the line and provides
Speaker 3: some foreshadowing. I think the guy says he has found
Speaker 3: the only viable way for men to avoid the pain
Speaker 3: and struggle of matrimony, which he says is mass suicide.
Speaker 3: And at this point the other guys stop laughing and
Speaker 3: they just kind of look forlorn. So it's like, I
Speaker 3: think these guys have some issues about women. I think
Speaker 3: they do, yes, or at least all of them except Bill.
Speaker 3: Now there's one thing I wanted to note here that
Speaker 3: it was kind of interesting. I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: supposed to mean something, but on the way into the bar,
Speaker 3: we pass by a man and a woman kissing passionately,
Speaker 3: and a convertible in the parking lot, and a guy
Speaker 3: who's walking by the car tries to get their attention
Speaker 3: with a loud noise, but they just ignore him. And
Speaker 3: then later, when Bill is coming out of the place,
Speaker 3: he passes them again and they're still kissing. He stops
Speaker 3: and looks at them for a second, almost kind of sadly,
Speaker 3: and then suddenly the kissing stops, and the woman slaps
Speaker 3: the man in the face and looks at him coldly.
Speaker 3: You don't see what provoked that reaction, but it's an
Speaker 3: interesting detail. I think it in a subtle way, just
Speaker 3: raises things about tension in romantic relationships, ideas of crossing
Speaker 3: the line, or the idea that intimacy entails vulnerability and
Speaker 3: sometimes danger.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it could be as simple as like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, even this relationship which was going so great
Speaker 2: and has been going great for maybe twenty minutes, has
Speaker 2: suddenly it hit a rocky patch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, something went wrong. Yeah. So Bill gets in his
Speaker 3: car and drives away from this bar where he's been
Speaker 3: drinking with his friends. It's implied that he's they've been
Speaker 3: drinking a good bit, so I don't know. In nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: the car is a mid fifties American station wagon with
Speaker 3: tail fins that feels the size and mass of an
Speaker 3: aircraft carrier. Every time it came on screen, we were
Speaker 3: in awe. We were like, it's the car. It's so big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like some sort of massive plymouth.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, So Bill is driving drunk down a lakeside
Speaker 3: country road. This is the first of many what time
Speaker 3: is it supposed to be things The context would suggest evening,
Speaker 3: but The scene is shot in broad daylight, and suddenly
Speaker 3: Bill notices a man's body lying in the road, so
Speaker 3: he slams on the brakes, stops the car, and gets out,
Speaker 3: but then there's nobody there. He like looks in the
Speaker 3: road and it's empty. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, at first it looks like the body's lifeless husk
Speaker 2: of some sort. But there's not really much follow up here,
Speaker 2: so I don't know what we were supposed to.
Speaker 3: The car bumps the body and it moves as if
Speaker 3: it's weightless, like hollow inside.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was a trap.
Speaker 3: Oh maybe. So it's like he gets out and it's
Speaker 3: not there anymore. And then suddenly, while while Bill is
Speaker 3: standing there, from off screen, a clawed, glowing reptilian hand
Speaker 3: with long crooked fingers reaches out and grabs Bill by
Speaker 3: the shoulder. He whirls around and he sees the alien.
Speaker 3: So interesting thing about I married a monster from outer
Speaker 3: space does not make you wait till the final reel
Speaker 3: to see the alien in its true form. You get
Speaker 3: to see it a few minutes in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really kind of surprising because the glove is great.
Speaker 2: I love a good monster glove. But then you know
Speaker 2: the next step generally comes a bit later where you
Speaker 2: get to see the rest of or at least the
Speaker 2: face of the creature. But now he turns around, he
Speaker 2: sees it, and yeah, great, look to this creature. As
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, by all accounts, this film should have
Speaker 2: and very well could have had a generic space helmet
Speaker 2: wearing alien, but perhaps due to a miscommunication or maybe
Speaker 2: just pure creativity, we ended up with this fantastic organic
Speaker 2: design that's brought to the next level via the lighting
Speaker 2: and the special effects. The design also works especially well
Speaker 2: later on when we'll get the special effects shots of
Speaker 2: the actor's faces shifting to the creature's warped visage during
Speaker 2: flashes of lightning.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I love that. So when Bill sees the figure,
Speaker 3: something begins to emit, a high pitched, throbbing electronic sound.
Speaker 3: We will hear the sound at times throughout the movie,
Speaker 3: whenever the aliens are using their powers and Bill collapses
Speaker 3: against the car and then a bizarre thing happens. I
Speaker 3: love this effect. A slowly expanding, blooming cloud of dark
Speaker 3: smoke or mist flows into the movie frame. It's like
Speaker 3: a jet of ink expanding in a pool of water.
Speaker 3: But it's very, very dark. Very opaque. You can't see
Speaker 3: through it, and gradually it blots out Bill's form, and
Speaker 3: then when it recedes, Bill is gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, looks amazing, Like this is one of the I'm
Speaker 2: not a you know, I'm not opposed to great digital
Speaker 2: effects by any means, but this is a practical effect.
Speaker 2: Just looks amazing, And in the context of watching it,
Speaker 2: I'm like, it just looks ahead of its time. It
Speaker 2: looks better than anything I can compare it to digitally.
Speaker 2: Just amazing. Yeah, dark, otherworldly cloud just creeping out.
Speaker 3: So the next morning we meet our protagonist Marge. Marge
Speaker 3: is at her wedding. She's wearing a white wedding dress
Speaker 3: and a veil, staring out the window of the chapel
Speaker 3: to see if Bill is going to arrive. He was
Speaker 3: supposed to come and see her the night before, like
Speaker 3: he said, but he never showed up. Andy never called
Speaker 3: to explain, and now he's late for the wedding itself.
Speaker 3: So Marge is obviously upset. She doesn't understand what's happening.
Speaker 3: She pulls as his groomsmen to interrogate them. She says,
Speaker 3: what exactly were you boys drinking last night? And two
Speaker 3: of them answer at the same time, but give different answers.
Speaker 3: One says wine and the other says beer. So I
Speaker 3: think maybe it was neither wine nor beer. I think
Speaker 3: it was a hard liquor kind of night. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so they try to cover for Bill, but Marge is
Speaker 3: not impressed with their assurances, and this raises something about
Speaker 3: Marge's personality. I'm interested in the way she's characterized. She
Speaker 3: is not portrayed as an especially suspicious person, like. She
Speaker 3: is portrayed as somebody who really wants to trust and
Speaker 3: wants to see the good in her husband and make
Speaker 3: the relationship work. She's like not looking for fault in
Speaker 3: things or in people. And at the same time, she's
Speaker 3: not a dummy, like, she's not gullible, and that creates
Speaker 3: an interesting tension in her character that, like, she is
Speaker 3: quick to pick up on when there are problems and
Speaker 3: is sharp about observing things, but also has this emotional
Speaker 3: desire to maybe sometimes overlook problems and make things work
Speaker 3: out and make things all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she has right to be concerned here, because again,
Speaker 2: he is late to his own wedding at this point
Speaker 2: and she hasn't heard from him in hours and hours.
Speaker 3: However, Suddenly Bill comes through the door. You know, better
Speaker 3: late than never, I guess. He comes in looking bewildered
Speaker 3: and at a loss for words. He apologizes for being late,
Speaker 3: and Marge rushes to kiss him. So they get married,
Speaker 3: and then they come out of the chapel. They sprint
Speaker 3: to the tail fin station wagon while their friends are
Speaker 3: throwing rice. You know it was a pre bird seed era.
Speaker 3: We're getting the rice going all over the car and
Speaker 3: you can see it bouncing off of the hood. And
Speaker 3: then they drive away, and for a very brief period
Speaker 3: it seems like Marge is truly happy. They drive along
Speaker 3: to their honeymoon destination with Bill at the wheel and
Speaker 3: Marge is sleeping with her head on his shoulder. But
Speaker 3: Bill does not have a peaceful expression like March does.
Speaker 3: He's looking grim and cautious. At one point while they're driving,
Speaker 3: Bill almost gets into a collision with another car turning
Speaker 3: onto the highway. The other guy stops and yells at
Speaker 3: him about how he should have had his lights on.
Speaker 3: Marge wakes up and points out that the guy is
Speaker 3: right the lights were off, but raises a question, how
Speaker 3: could Bill have been driving at all without his head
Speaker 3: lights when it's so dark outside.
Speaker 2: Oh he has dark vision, not a human.
Speaker 3: Another weird thing here. Bill snaps at Marge when she
Speaker 3: mentions the lights. You know, he would never snap like
Speaker 3: that before. It doesn't seem like the Bill she knows. Anyway.
Speaker 3: They make their way out to the resort where they're
Speaker 3: staying for their honeymoon. I'm not sure exactly where this
Speaker 3: is supposed to be, but they say it's on the ocean.
Speaker 3: It's on the sea, so it's like a hotel on
Speaker 3: a dark waterfront with churning black waves stretching out to
Speaker 3: the horizon. It's a very cool scene that where the
Speaker 3: you know, the weather and the landscape and indicates something
Speaker 3: about the relationship to Yeah, and as they settle in,
Speaker 3: Marge is again trying so hard to make things work,
Speaker 3: but something is off about Bill. He literally forgets her
Speaker 3: and leaves her in the car when they arrive. And
Speaker 3: this is an era where I think she's expecting he's
Speaker 3: supposed to come around and open her door for her,
Speaker 3: but he just forgets. He does not want to have
Speaker 3: a drink with her at the restaurant. He has developed
Speaker 3: a sudden aversion to alcohol, which he did not have before.
Speaker 2: This is really telling of the time period that it's
Speaker 2: a big red flag when your man is not having
Speaker 2: a tumbler of hard dark spirits every night, like on
Speaker 2: a weak night. It's like, something's the matter here. This
Speaker 2: is not healthy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did red flags for about men. He does
Speaker 3: not reach for the scotch. So and then also they're
Speaker 3: at the restaurant eating and he's just a cold fish.
Speaker 3: He's aloof he's barely talking. Marge is repeatedly trying to
Speaker 3: find things to engage him on. You can see her
Speaker 3: searching for conversation topics, and he just is not picking
Speaker 3: up what she's putting out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've only just gotten married. They surely haven't heard
Speaker 2: all of each other's stories yet, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all through this part, Bill, so there's a
Speaker 3: menacing element in that he seems to have changed and
Speaker 3: become cold. At the same time he is strangely innocent,
Speaker 3: almost childlike. At one point, the two of them are
Speaker 3: standing out on the balcony overlooking the water and there's
Speaker 3: a crack of thunder in the distance, and Bill asks
Speaker 3: what the sound was, and Marge tells him it was thunder,
Speaker 3: and he says thunder like he's learning a new word
Speaker 3: or experiencing it, Yeah, experiencing it for the first time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because to be clear, yeah, Bill has been replaced
Speaker 2: by an alien at this point. Yeah. But it's like
Speaker 2: the alien is wearing like a copy of his body,
Speaker 2: but also wearing his thoughts and memories and his knowledge,
Speaker 2: but not in a way where like he just has
Speaker 2: instant natural access to it all. Like he's having to
Speaker 2: like sort of if it's like a costume. It's like
Speaker 2: he's having to like put his fingers into the glove
Speaker 2: and then see how that glove moves with his hand,
Speaker 2: so like he might, you know, he knows what thunder is,
Speaker 2: but has he experienced it before? Has he has he
Speaker 2: had had that sort of relationship to the concept, and
Speaker 2: so he's having to like, really he's having to learn
Speaker 2: everything in real time here.
Speaker 3: And you can see him trying to fake it. He's
Speaker 3: not doing a very good job, but he he gets
Speaker 3: the sense that he needs to say something to assure her.
Speaker 3: So he tells Marge he loves her more than anything,
Speaker 3: but the words feel awkward, something doesn't work, and Marge,
Speaker 3: seeming a little bit sad, goes inside. And then here's
Speaker 3: the part where we first see this weird, asymmetrical inhuman
Speaker 3: face superimposed over Bill's face. The lightning flashes and then
Speaker 3: an animated alien layer of his face is revealed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, looks really good, especially with that perfect hair and everything. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 2: that monster's weird organic vibe just melts so well here
Speaker 2: and just looks great in black and white.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, there's a there's a scene here on the Honeymoon
Speaker 2: that I really loved. There's a there's the blocking in
Speaker 2: particular of this one scene where Bill and Marge are
Speaker 2: chatting and there's a mirror in the shot, and we
Speaker 2: see reflected in the mirror the twin beds. So twin
Speaker 2: beds like this were, of course to a large degree,
Speaker 2: but not entirely a product of censorship of the day.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 2: The story behind like why we see so many twin
Speaker 2: beds instead of like a king or queens size bed
Speaker 2: typically in like a married couple's bedroom, The actual story
Speaker 2: behind it is a bit more complex, but more complicated
Speaker 2: than I than I anticipated. I actually ran across a
Speaker 2: book by Hillary Hines titled A Cultural History of Twin Beds,
Speaker 2: and it pointed out that while media is part of
Speaker 2: the situation, twin beds were actually a seemingly popular sleeping
Speaker 2: arrangement for married couples between eighteen seventy and nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: for a number of reasons, including consumer preference, social mores,
Speaker 2: and product placement as well. But when it came to films,
Speaker 2: it did become a standard. I'm going to read a
Speaker 2: quote from this work. Quote. While the code referring to
Speaker 2: the Hayes code here itself did not specify the need
Speaker 2: for twin beds, by nineteen thirty seven the advice to
Speaker 2: movie makers was unequivocal. A double bed was too explicit
Speaker 2: in its sexual associations for safe presentation in films intended
Speaker 2: for the general cinema going public. Only twins had the
Speaker 2: necessary cultural delicacy. They had the advantage of implying marital
Speaker 2: sexual intimacy without showing a bed that might have facilitated it.
Speaker 3: Wow, I can't have film audiences knowing where babies come from.
Speaker 2: Right even though again, especially in this film, because we're
Speaker 2: about to like leap forward a year and part of
Speaker 2: what we learn is like they've been trying to conceive
Speaker 2: for a year, they've been having sex, and it's an
Speaker 2: important part of the storyline. But yeah, you had to
Speaker 2: in the words of the Hayes Code, what you had
Speaker 2: to think about the sacred intimacies of modern life or
Speaker 2: marital life. So in this particular scene, though I don't know,
Speaker 2: I thought it played really well, at least to the
Speaker 2: like the modern twenty twenty six viewer, because the twin
Speaker 2: I suspect it was unintended. But it just feels kind
Speaker 2: of palpable. You know that we have distance between this
Speaker 2: newly pronounced man and wife, the awkwardness of implied physical
Speaker 2: intimacy to follow in the symbol of those twin beds
Speaker 2: in the mirror, as if illustrating the golf between them,
Speaker 2: a golf that is at once between romantic partners and
Speaker 2: the golf between far flung planets, between different species with
Speaker 2: different evolutionary origins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I did not notice that the first time
Speaker 3: I watched it, but I saw your note here and
Speaker 3: I caught that the second time. I think that works
Speaker 3: really well and it's subtle. It's like, yeah, like you said,
Speaker 3: it's reflected in the mirror while they're facing each other
Speaker 3: in the room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure how much of that is, just
Speaker 2: like the modern viewer looking back on it, how much
Speaker 2: of it was an intended part of the film, but
Speaker 2: it may have well been very intended. Like I said,
Speaker 2: it's a very well composed shot. And you know, they
Speaker 2: knew what the twin beds were about. They knew why
Speaker 2: they were using twin beds and films like this, and
Speaker 2: there's explicitly they're expressly trying to tell a story that
Speaker 2: has a major plot about human reproduction and sexual relations.
Speaker 3: So after this we cut to the future. A year
Speaker 3: has passed and in the transition we see Marge writing
Speaker 3: a letter to her mother. She says it's been a
Speaker 3: horrible first year of marriage. She is frightened and bewildered,
Speaker 3: and she writes, quote, Bill isn't the man I fell
Speaker 3: in love with. He's almost a stranger. There is a
Speaker 3: scene where two of Bill's friends from the bachelor party
Speaker 3: are drinking together at the Bar and Grill, a recurring
Speaker 3: location for the rest of the film. Surprising amount of
Speaker 3: this movie takes place at Bar and Grill.
Speaker 2: This is where Slapsy Maxie works.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's the bartender there, and it's also right next
Speaker 3: to a building call a store that sells church supplies
Speaker 3: that just says church supplies in the window. I like
Speaker 3: that detail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. This is where you buy your wafers in bulk.
Speaker 3: It's like a costco for churches. And then so we
Speaker 3: join the couple of guys here in the bar, and
Speaker 3: they are still complaining about women. They're still on the
Speaker 3: same stuff. One of them, the guy named Sam, he
Speaker 3: you know, has enough complaining and he walks out, stumbling drunk,
Speaker 3: to head home. But on the way he stops to
Speaker 3: puke in an alley and then he gets smoke bloomed
Speaker 3: by the a lad and so they come get him.
Speaker 3: And then the next time we see him he has
Speaker 3: a very different vibe. In the very next scene, we
Speaker 3: learn that he has suddenly proposed to his girlfriend Helen,
Speaker 3: and now they're going to get married. There's also a
Speaker 3: scene a little bit later where we see a police
Speaker 3: officer get claimed by the smoke in the same alley.
Speaker 3: I think it's making the point that slowly, one by one,
Speaker 3: over the course of this year, the men of the
Speaker 3: town are being replaced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the entire local patriarchy is being supplanted.
Speaker 3: There's also a scene where Marge goes to visit her doctor,
Speaker 3: doctor Wayne. Marge is concerned because, as we alluded to earlier.
Speaker 3: She and Bill have been trying to have children, but
Speaker 3: so far they haven't been able, and doctor Wayne gives
Speaker 3: her a checkup and says he can't find any evidence
Speaker 3: of a condition that would prevent her from getting pregnant,
Speaker 3: so he tries to give her some confidence. He reassures her,
Speaker 3: but he also suggests Bill come in for a checkup
Speaker 3: as well. Now after this we get into an early
Speaker 3: more menacing subplot of the movie, because for a lot
Speaker 3: of the film we're really balancing this question of exactly
Speaker 3: how dangerous is the alien Bill. We the audience already
Speaker 3: knows he's been replaced, but we're trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what is he going to do? How dangerous is he? What?
Speaker 3: You know, what kind of threat does he represent? So,
Speaker 3: in what comes off as a desperate attempt to inject
Speaker 3: some joy into their marriage, Marge buys a dog from
Speaker 3: a pet shop as an anniversary present for Bill, very
Speaker 3: weird domed cage. She's carrying the dog around in She
Speaker 3: like carries it up. It's this huge, almost kind of
Speaker 3: dog suitcase. But when she lifts the tarp off the
Speaker 3: top of the cage to show it to Bill, the
Speaker 3: dog cannot stand him. It growls and snaps at him
Speaker 3: on side. It's like a terminator, you know, dogs can't
Speaker 3: stand him. And Bill says, maybe dogs don't like me,
Speaker 3: and she says, but Bill, you've had dogs all your life.
Speaker 3: And then he says, maybe I'm a little out of practice.
Speaker 3: And then later in this scene he says, maybe he
Speaker 3: just needs a little time to get accustomed to me.
Speaker 3: Knowing the premise, you might assume this part comes off
Speaker 3: as like chilling and overwhelmingly threatening, But there's a complexity
Speaker 3: to Alien Bill that I really appreciate. Here. It's a
Speaker 3: kind of sadness, like he hoped maybe it wouldn't be
Speaker 3: this way, but he doesn't know how to fix it
Speaker 3: and wishes he could.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he tells her go put it in the basement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then this leads to a horrible dog murder
Speaker 3: scene in the basement. I mean, the murder itself happens
Speaker 3: off off screen, but yeah. Bill goes down there and
Speaker 3: the dog is still snapping and growling at him, and
Speaker 3: he realizes, like this can't go on, you know, there's
Speaker 3: no way for him to continue with this dog in
Speaker 3: the house. So he kills the dog and then he
Speaker 3: tells a very implausible story to Marge to cover it up.
Speaker 2: It's like the dog slipped in a puddle March and
Speaker 2: is dead now No, I think he says that it's
Speaker 2: collar too tied or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So later Marge and Bill are sitting on the
Speaker 3: couch together and Marge brings up the top of children.
Speaker 3: She reiterates how much she really wants children, and she
Speaker 3: brings up how the doctor wanted to have Bill come
Speaker 3: for a checkup about this, to see if that maybe something,
Speaker 3: maybe something about Bill could be addressed to deal with
Speaker 3: fertility issues. Bill verbally agrees to do this, but you
Speaker 3: can see his frustration and even rage kind of contained
Speaker 3: under the surface. Marge steps away to answer the door,
Speaker 3: and when she's out of the room, Bill crushes this
Speaker 3: heavy metal cigarette lighter with his hand, so it's like
Speaker 3: he's he's feeling extremely frustrated with the situation, and this
Speaker 3: leads into a tense and interesting scene. It's a visit
Speaker 3: from Sam, the New Sam, the Alien Sam. There's one
Speaker 3: kind of interesting wrinkle here, which is that in some
Speaker 3: of these body Snatcher movies, the aliens can always recognize
Speaker 3: one another on site, even if they're disguised as humans,
Speaker 3: so the alien always knows another alien. In this movie,
Speaker 3: it seems like the disguise works against their own kind
Speaker 3: as well. So these aliens in human skin are kind
Speaker 3: of wary of each other at first, like I don't
Speaker 3: know if you're cool. I don't know if we can talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like this detail. I wonder if the vibe
Speaker 2: was borrowed from says, sort of like deep cover crime
Speaker 2: or spy storytelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But in any event, it works well here, and it
Speaker 2: also plays well into various interpretations of the plot. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a deeper identity at play here. Is this deeper
Speaker 2: identity something to do with closeted sexuality? Is it akin
Speaker 2: to some generally unrecognized aspect of the self concerning attitudes
Speaker 2: and desires regarding the opposite sex? I mean it's all
Speaker 2: open to interpretation.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah. Anyway, Alien Sam wants to share information with
Speaker 3: Alien Bill even when they're when they're alone together in
Speaker 3: the room, Sam is kind of dropping hints and Alien
Speaker 3: Bill resists at first, like he's I'm not sure he
Speaker 3: can trust him. They talk about alcohol. You know, I've
Speaker 3: lost my taste for the stuff. I've lost my taste
Speaker 3: for it too interesting, And this also brought to mind
Speaker 3: don't people have fans of a theory about the thing
Speaker 3: where like the thing can't consume alcohol or something?
Speaker 2: You know, I haven't read that one. But the next
Speaker 2: time I actually watch, is it Carpenter's the thing we're discussing?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, next time I watch where we watch it, I'll
Speaker 2: have to take that with me.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's correct. I'm half remembering that,
Speaker 3: but anyway. At one point, the conversation shifts and Sam
Speaker 3: lowers his voice and he says, did you make many
Speaker 3: mistakes at first? But Bill is still kind of like
Speaker 3: holding back. He pretends he doesn't know what Sam's talking about.
Speaker 3: And Sam says humans are not too bright, their bodies
Speaker 3: are frail, but they do manage to enjoy themselves. And
Speaker 3: then he says they've improved the methane reservoirs in these bodies.
Speaker 3: You're due to report to the ship tonight. First Bill
Speaker 3: still plays dumb, but then final Sam unleashes that throbbing
Speaker 3: electronic sound and shows his you know the cartoon tree face,
Speaker 3: and again an interesting question about why Bill takes so
Speaker 3: much convincing but once it's undeniable Sam gives the orders,
Speaker 3: you've got to go to the ship tonight. So later
Speaker 3: that night, once again this is a very daylight filled
Speaker 3: kind of night, Marge pretends to be asleep because at
Speaker 3: this point she she already knows something is wrong with Bill,
Speaker 3: and she she wants to find out more. So she
Speaker 3: waits until Bill leaves the house and then follows him
Speaker 3: on foot in her nightgown, kind of draped awkwardly in
Speaker 3: a long overcoat, and so she follows him through the
Speaker 3: neighborhoods he's walking out on foot as well. At one
Speaker 3: point she hears a cat screech, and then following in
Speaker 3: Bill's path, she finds a dead cat in the road.
Speaker 3: I didn't understand why this happened.
Speaker 2: I think dogs are natural enemies of these aliens, and
Speaker 2: so are cats. So it's like sleepwalker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's attacked on site by cats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have only Officer Cloak was on the case here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she follows Bill to a forested ravine at
Speaker 3: the edge of town and watches him make his way
Speaker 3: into the woods, and then eventually she sees him make
Speaker 3: contact with the ship. So the alien form here somehow
Speaker 3: exits Bill's body, leaving it frozen standing in this pile
Speaker 3: of dead leaves, and Marge sees the alien's true form
Speaker 3: glowing in the dark. It leaves to head inside the ship.
Speaker 3: Then she goes over to Bill to try to get
Speaker 3: his attention, but he cannot be roused. He's unresponsive with
Speaker 3: eyes wide open, like he's frozen alive, and she touches
Speaker 3: him and he falls over, so she screams in horror
Speaker 3: and retreats to town. She ends up seeking help at
Speaker 3: where else the bar and grill, you know, like hot
Speaker 3: jazz music is playing inside. Everybody's drinking through the night,
Speaker 3: and she goes up to the bartender and a man
Speaker 3: sitting at the bar to try to get their help
Speaker 3: to explain what happened there is there's one of the
Speaker 3: guys sitting at the bar is this kind of creep
Speaker 3: who has a almost kind of a here's the guy
Speaker 3: who hosts Unsolved Mysteries. He has I don't know for
Speaker 3: why why. He kind of reminded me of that guy,
Speaker 3: but more of like a criminal vibe to him.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that you should mention Robert Stack. He was,
Speaker 2: of course on the old Untouchables TV series of the
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, and so was this guy really playing
Speaker 2: the creep? A guy who by the name of Steve
Speaker 2: London who lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty fourteen. I
Speaker 2: did make note of him because I was like, oh man,
Speaker 2: this guy's good. This is this is a nice, little
Speaker 2: creepy performance. He's like, clearly, this disturbed woman has come
Speaker 2: into the bar and he's trying to pick her up. Yes,
Speaker 2: so we'll see more from him. His is a small
Speaker 2: role but has a weird character art to it.
Speaker 3: Well, he presents a parallel threat, you know. It's a
Speaker 3: different kind of Yeah, it's interesting. So the men here
Speaker 3: at the bar do not take her story serious. They
Speaker 3: do not listen to her, and they do not offer
Speaker 3: genuine help. I mean, they pay attention to her, but
Speaker 3: it's the wrong kind of attention. The creep at the
Speaker 3: bar is reacting to her only as a potential sexual partner,
Speaker 3: so he tries to buy her a drink and hit
Speaker 3: on her. And it's interesting that these men are not
Speaker 3: aliens yet as far as we know, but they also
Speaker 3: cannot be relied on. So the next scene, she decides
Speaker 3: she needs somebody who can help her, so she goes
Speaker 3: to see her godfather, who happens to be the local
Speaker 3: police chief, Chief Collins. He is not dismissive like the
Speaker 3: men at the bar. He's dismissive in a different way.
Speaker 3: He has a kindly manner and he tries to put
Speaker 3: her fierce to rest. He listens and then he tells her, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I believe maybe you saw something, but it
Speaker 3: was probably caused by hysteria. But just in case she's right,
Speaker 3: he promises he'll look into it. And then after she leaves,
Speaker 3: the Chief turns to face the window and with the
Speaker 3: lightning flashes, we see, uh, oh, he's got that root
Speaker 3: ball face as well. Well he's got the alien face.
Speaker 3: So he's already been gotten. And so finally Marge really
Speaker 3: has no choice but to go home to Bill. She
Speaker 3: has made bids for help in these different locations and
Speaker 3: just nothing went anywhere. So she goes back home to Bill.
Speaker 3: When she gets there, he's sitting in the dark in
Speaker 3: a chair in the living room waiting for her, and
Speaker 3: together they go up to bed and it's just this
Speaker 3: kind of sad, menacing scene where there's like she doesn't
Speaker 3: know what else to do except to go home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just continue to just go through the sugar d here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: After this, at some point there is an there's a
Speaker 3: wedding rehearsal scene Helen and Sam are getting married. Of course,
Speaker 3: remember Sam is alien Sam now, but Helen is getting
Speaker 3: married to him. Marge at the wedding rehearsal pulls Helen
Speaker 3: aside after the runthrough, and she herries to convince Helen
Speaker 3: not to marry Sam, though she has a very hard
Speaker 3: time explaining why she shouldn't. She's saying, like, it may
Speaker 3: not be true of Sam, I just don't know. But
Speaker 3: Helen's like, what is it? What are you trying to say?
Speaker 3: And Helen is obviously not very happy to be hearing
Speaker 3: whatever this is. And she's trying to explain to Helen,
Speaker 3: but she doesn't get a chance. Bill comes in and
Speaker 3: interrupts them, and there's no opportunity to explain. She never
Speaker 3: gets a chance in the film to compare notes with
Speaker 3: another woman, Like she has a few female friends, but
Speaker 3: she doesn't really she's not given an opportunity to like
Speaker 3: have a deep and private interaction with them. You know,
Speaker 3: they can have brief, shallow interactions that are kind of
Speaker 3: like interrupted and managed by the men around them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and going back to you know, what we
Speaker 2: said earlier about the scene at the bar, it's like
Speaker 2: we're increasingly in a situation where it's clear that, like
Speaker 2: pretty if you haven't been replaced by an alien being
Speaker 2: at this point, then you're probably just a local creep
Speaker 2: who is never going to be able to help you anyway,
Speaker 2: or you're just completely indifferent. So it's definitely not a
Speaker 2: scenario where it's like, oh, all the men have been
Speaker 2: replaced and now all the men are suspicious or no help.
Speaker 2: And I think that was certainly the better choice here,
Speaker 2: because there's probably you know, another on another shelf of
Speaker 2: the library of Babel, there's a version of this film
Speaker 2: where the aliens just replaced all the men in town
Speaker 2: and it would be less interesting.
Speaker 3: I think I agree with that. I think it is
Speaker 3: more interesting and kind of says more in that we
Speaker 3: were getting this mix of different kinds of threats from men,
Speaker 3: you know, and some are quite mundane. And then so
Speaker 3: there's this later scene between Bill and Marge at home.
Speaker 3: This is one of these scenes where Marge points the
Speaker 3: Bill has not touched his drink and he's like, I
Speaker 3: told you I have an allergy to alcohol.
Speaker 2: Now I don't go to the doctor ever, but assure
Speaker 2: let me assure you, I have an allergy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then Bill starts confronting Marge about her behavior
Speaker 3: and about her being weird. He's saying, what's wrong, he says,
Speaker 3: in the last year, you've changed. He says that to her,
Speaker 3: which I think is a great I think this term
Speaker 3: was not in wide use of the time, but a
Speaker 3: great use of gas lighting here. He's trying to make
Speaker 3: her feel like, no, she's the one who's acting weird. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna accuse you of the thing I've been doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she goes up to bed, but then Bill
Speaker 3: watches out the window and outside the house there's the
Speaker 3: creep from the bar, the guy who reminded me of
Speaker 3: Robert Stack. He's like lurking outside the house on the street.
Speaker 3: We learn that he has been trying to follow Marge
Speaker 3: because he thinks her marriage is on the rocks and
Speaker 3: he thinks he can swoop in and pick her up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But it's also interesting, isn't it that he's he's
Speaker 2: not really positioned this way, but he in many ways
Speaker 2: is also that outsider who I don't know, Like he's
Speaker 2: not here to save the day.
Speaker 3: But he in terms of plot structure, this character would
Speaker 3: be like that, Yeah, but he's not trying to be helpful.
Speaker 3: He's he is a different kind of predator Bill. Here
Speaker 3: he uses his alien powers to summon the alien friends,
Speaker 3: the ones in the police bodies. They arrive on scene,
Speaker 3: they confront the bar and grill guy and they kill him.
Speaker 3: They kill him.
Speaker 2: There, brutally shoot him in cold blood, just go down
Speaker 2: in the street. And then inside Mark is like, I've
Speaker 2: heard something, and Bill's like, don't worry, it's just police
Speaker 2: firing their guns in our neighborhood. Nothing to be concerned about.
Speaker 3: Yah, I mean, it's a chilling scene actually what he
Speaker 3: tells her. He says it's a car backfiring, and she's like,
Speaker 3: oh wow. Yeah. So anyway, we go to another scene
Speaker 3: at the bar. We're starting to see, i think, just
Speaker 3: more scenes of the aliens being directly violent and dangerous. So, uh,
Speaker 3: there's a scene at the bar where where Bill gets
Speaker 3: frustrated where with the way Marge is reacting to him.
Speaker 3: He goes out to the bar and grill and he
Speaker 3: goes drinking with Sam and one of the other guy friends,
Speaker 3: which is funny because they're all body snatched, but they're
Speaker 3: still doing the same. They're still getting together at a
Speaker 3: bar and complaining about their marriages and avoiding their wives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that that is one of the
Speaker 2: wonderful textures of the film, is that the men who
Speaker 2: have been replaced by aliens are still doing things that
Speaker 2: men do. And that's clearly part of the statement that
Speaker 2: is trying to make here.
Speaker 3: There's some plot explanation in the scene as well, like
Speaker 3: when they think nobody's around to hear them, they talk
Speaker 3: about their plan. One of them says that their scientists
Speaker 3: are still trying to find a way to make reproduction
Speaker 3: with human women possible. They're very close. Soon they'll find
Speaker 3: a way to make the germ cells compatible. So it's
Speaker 3: almost time. And this is the scene where we get
Speaker 3: the bartender Slapsey coming over to be like, what's the
Speaker 3: matter with my liquor? At one point he starts insulting
Speaker 3: the guys, and one of the I wrote down a
Speaker 3: line he said. He says, you're like a bunch of
Speaker 3: ghouls waiting for a corpse to ripen. Whoa nice But this, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is a scene where he starts punching Bill, and
Speaker 3: Bill just stands there, absorbing the blows and doing nothing,
Speaker 3: and the bartender is quite freaked out by this. And
Speaker 3: then the scene right after this is another frightening scene.
Speaker 3: It's the death of Francine, the woman who hangs out
Speaker 3: at the bar. There's implication, it's never stated explicitly, but
Speaker 3: implication that she's a sex worker. She hangs out at
Speaker 3: the bart flirting with men, and she leaves the bar
Speaker 3: alone after the music stops and sees a man standing
Speaker 3: across the street looking into a shop window. She approaches
Speaker 3: the man, tries to flirt with him, and then the
Speaker 3: scene takes this weird, eerie turn. She looks in the
Speaker 3: shop window and the man is looking at dolls, and
Speaker 3: she says, I'm crazy about dolls. Would you like to
Speaker 3: buy me a doll? And then the electronic worrying noise
Speaker 3: starts up and the man doesn't reply, and she gets
Speaker 3: angry because he won't say anything, and she says, if
Speaker 3: you was a gentleman, you'd at least speak to me.
Speaker 3: But then she sees his face and she screams and
Speaker 3: runs and he turns and he blasts her with some
Speaker 3: kind of laser that we have we seen the aliens
Speaker 3: use it up to this point.
Speaker 2: I don't think maybe the first the first place where
Speaker 2: we see it that the effect here is great. It
Speaker 2: doesn't turn vaporizes her and it looks super super cool,
Speaker 2: very clean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and scary. I thought this is a scary scene. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: along with the scene with the creep earlier, like the
Speaker 3: way the aliens are killing people is frightening. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean you can go back and forth about the
Speaker 2: implied morality of a film like this regarding a character
Speaker 2: like this, but like, she did nothing to deserve, no,
Speaker 2: to be vaporized on the city street.
Speaker 3: Here, totally. No, I mean, she's just a victim who
Speaker 3: I think the what she got in trouble because she
Speaker 3: saw the alien's face and so like she knew, so
Speaker 3: they couldn't let her live. So let's see, after this
Speaker 3: we get the death by oxygen scene. That's kind of
Speaker 3: weird thing and one of the more awkward things in
Speaker 3: this movie, I think is right in the middle of
Speaker 3: scenes that are working really well as horror and relationship drama,
Speaker 3: you get some more kind of hard science fiction content
Speaker 3: insurged in that's a little bit goofier, And this is
Speaker 3: one of those scenes I think I didn't mean to
Speaker 3: say hard science fiction, like highly scientifically accurate, but just
Speaker 3: dealing with the science fiction premises as physical realities. Some
Speaker 3: of those are some of the weirdest and most awkward
Speaker 3: parts of the movie. So, like, all of the married
Speaker 3: couples are out for a day at the lake. They're
Speaker 3: hanging out having a picnic. Sam and Helen are on
Speaker 3: They're out in the lake and in a row boat
Speaker 3: and Sam falls into the water. They pull him out
Speaker 3: of the water, and then doctor Wayne happens to be there,
Speaker 3: and I was really confused. I was like, wait, isn't
Speaker 3: he marches obg y N. But I think maybe it's
Speaker 3: just like it's a small town and doctor he's the
Speaker 3: general doctor. He does everything. Okay, Yeah, So doctor Wayne
Speaker 3: is there and he's got a he's got a giant
Speaker 3: oxygen tank and a face mask. Uh. And that's weird
Speaker 3: enough on it. Why does he have a suitcase full
Speaker 3: of oxygen tanks? But he gives Sam some oxygen after
Speaker 3: he's been pulled out of the water, and for some reason,
Speaker 3: when they give him oxygen, he dies. So the doctor says,
Speaker 3: you know, he was alive when we pulled him out.
Speaker 3: I'd say it was the oxygen that killed him, And we.
Speaker 2: The viewer know from earlier that apparently these these creatures
Speaker 2: depend on methane and they have to have methane reserve
Speaker 2: reserves in their body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the aliens are vulnerable to oxygen. Uh, and
Speaker 3: they have to keep these internal tanks to breathe. So
Speaker 3: there is a part in the middle of the movie
Speaker 3: where we see Marge making other attempts to try to
Speaker 3: fix the situation. He's resourceful. She comes up with a
Speaker 3: lot of ideas. She tries to call Washington d C.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I don't know who she was
Speaker 3: trying to call, like put me through to the President,
Speaker 3: but she learns from the operator that all the lines
Speaker 3: to Washington are out. She tries to send a telegram,
Speaker 3: but the guy at the Western Union office takes her
Speaker 3: telegram and then rips it up. When she leaves, she
Speaker 3: tries to drive out of town, but the roads are
Speaker 3: closed and she gets turned back. Almost like the Truman Show,
Speaker 3: she just can't leave. Finally, we get to a scene
Speaker 3: that is I think the heart of the film, the
Speaker 3: scene where she confronts Bill in the living room. So
Speaker 3: she comes home and they meet each other in this
Speaker 3: dark room, and she tells him that she knows. Bill says,
Speaker 3: how about some light? And Marge says, you don't need
Speaker 3: any and Bill says, don't be too sure, and then
Speaker 3: he asks her what she knows, and she says, I
Speaker 3: know you're not Bill. You're some thing that crept into
Speaker 3: Bill's body, something that can't even breathe the same air
Speaker 3: we do. Bill says, aren't you afraid to be telling
Speaker 3: me this? And she says yes. Does frightening women make
Speaker 3: you proud? Or is pride something monsters don't understand? And
Speaker 3: Bill says, we understand pride, but we can't afford it.
Speaker 3: So he's being open now he's admitting it. He levels
Speaker 3: with her and he explains the alien's backstory. I'm going
Speaker 3: to read from what he says. Quote. We came from
Speaker 3: a planet in the Andromeda constellation. Our son became unstable,
Speaker 3: so we built some spaceships enough to carry all our
Speaker 3: people safely away before our sun exploded. But it took
Speaker 3: time to build those ships, and in that time, as
Speaker 3: our son's rays became more intense, our women died, so
Speaker 3: they were doomed to extinction until they found Earth. And
Speaker 3: he says you have no idea how rare life is
Speaker 3: in those cold, countless miles of space. So I feel
Speaker 3: like we also might get the idea that this creature
Speaker 3: could be ancient. Who knows how long he's been alive.
Speaker 3: They don't specify that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I love that line about because essentially
Speaker 2: she's like, why us, you know, were not somewhere else,
Speaker 2: And he's like, yeah, you have no idea how rare
Speaker 2: life is, Like it's imp heavily imply we did not
Speaker 2: have a choice. You were maybe all we found.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we didn't pick you. You were the only ones.
Speaker 3: And then there's another There's several more really interesting exchanges.
Speaker 3: Marge says, did you love your women before they died?
Speaker 3: And Bill says no. Their species did not have love
Speaker 3: between the sexes. They came together briefly for breeding purposes only.
Speaker 3: But now here something is different. Bill says, quote something
Speaker 3: happened that we hadn't foreseen. Along with these bodies, we
Speaker 3: inherited other things as well, human desires, emotions, And Marge says,
Speaker 3: are you telling me you're learning how to love? And
Speaker 3: Bill says, I'm telling you I'm learning what love is.
Speaker 3: So it's an interesting complication. It doesn't make the aliens friendly,
Speaker 3: because what they're doing is still evil and horrible. But
Speaker 3: the aliens do not have they don't have the kind
Speaker 3: of intentional hate or maliciousness you see in some aliens
Speaker 3: from movies in the fifties. In their own way, they
Speaker 3: are trying to understand the emotional dimensions of marriage, but
Speaker 3: in a way that is wrong because it's an asymmetrical way,
Speaker 3: like it can never work because it exists within the
Speaker 3: context of a deception. They're not trying to be cruel,
Speaker 3: but they are nevertheless cruel. They're acting in a predatory
Speaker 3: way toward both the men and women of Earth. They're
Speaker 3: trying to dominate and control the bodies of both sexes
Speaker 3: without their consent, by stealing men's identities and eventually by
Speaker 3: deceiving women into procreating with them. And this leads into
Speaker 3: the exchange where Marge says, your race has no women,
Speaker 3: it can't have children, it will die out, and Bill says,
Speaker 3: eventually we'll have children with you. Marge says, what kind
Speaker 3: of children? And Bill says, our kind. So deeply frightening, disturbing,
Speaker 3: but interesting scene. And I think this comes back to
Speaker 3: one of the issues I brought up at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the episode, how it indirectly highlights issues about like
Speaker 3: bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, like the horror of the
Speaker 3: idea that the women in this in this story wouldn't
Speaker 3: ultimately have a say and when and how they have children,
Speaker 3: as well as bringing up ideas about how love can't
Speaker 3: really exist within a lie, even if the liar is
Speaker 3: trying to love in their own way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's just yeah, it's so well composed.
Speaker 2: And again, this is this is something when i'd seen
Speaker 2: the film previously, I just I didn't really pick up on.
Speaker 2: You know, it's probably just what maybe even headed on
Speaker 2: in the background. It was mostly focusing on the monsters.
Speaker 2: But the human story here is so well composed.
Speaker 3: And then while we're on the subject of how those
Speaker 3: two common story types I mentioned earlier in the episode
Speaker 3: are manifesting here, I guess that's how the movie deals
Speaker 3: with the reproductive conspiracy and a kind of frightening and
Speaker 3: interesting way. But the other thing is the body snatching
Speaker 3: subplot and how that leads to this environment of distrust
Speaker 3: and paranoia. I mentioned earlier that I don't think this
Speaker 3: movie uses it the same way a lot of the
Speaker 3: others do to highlight ideas about the Cold War and
Speaker 3: political and filtration. Instead, this is using the body snatching
Speaker 3: and mistrust theme to highlight a tension and imbalance of
Speaker 3: power between the sexes. Throughout the movie, Marge keeps seeking
Speaker 3: help she has, but she has to appeal to men
Speaker 3: because in this movie, in this world, the men have
Speaker 3: all the guns and the keys and the dogs, and
Speaker 3: the power and the control over institutions and so like,
Speaker 3: really the power to do anything to stop this conspiracy.
Speaker 3: To stop it, you have to appeal to men somehow.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't work because any of the men she
Speaker 3: goes to talk to could be a part of the
Speaker 3: alien conspiracy, or even if they're not aliens, they could
Speaker 3: be somebody who is just not a reliable helper, someone
Speaker 3: who doesn't take her seriously, somebody who's just trying to
Speaker 3: get something from her. So Marge is portrayed as isolated
Speaker 3: from help and support in a world controlled by men
Speaker 3: who cannot be trusted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's a strong character, but in a world
Speaker 2: that just does not give women a lot of options.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so any man she appeals to, even when
Speaker 3: he claims to want to help her, like Chief Collins
Speaker 3: could secretly be working against her, and there's no way
Speaker 3: to tell from the outside. Guys who look human and
Speaker 3: seem nice might not actually be trustworthy. But anyway, I
Speaker 3: guess this brings us back to how does Marge actually
Speaker 3: beat the aliens. I don't know if this means anything.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just kind of you know, they had to
Speaker 3: get to the end somehow, or maybe it does mean something.
Speaker 3: I don't know. She finally appeals to the one guy
Speaker 3: in town who can actually be trusted, and it's her doctor.
Speaker 3: As she goes and she explains things to doctor Wayne,
Speaker 3: and here I was expecting, I don't know, another scene
Speaker 3: of maybe he turns out to be an alien too,
Speaker 3: or he just doesn't listen to her and rebuffs her.
Speaker 3: But for whatever reason, he's just like, Okay, I understand
Speaker 3: what you're saying. She makes the case to him, he's convinced,
Speaker 3: and he's like, I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna figure
Speaker 3: out how. And the solution that Doctor Wayne comes up
Speaker 3: with is interesting. I also am wondering exactly what this
Speaker 3: means in the context of the movie. I don't know
Speaker 3: how much it is intended to mean but doctor Wayne
Speaker 3: is like, the only way I can figure out which
Speaker 3: men haven't yet been replaced by the aliens are the
Speaker 3: men who have recently fathered children. So he goes to
Speaker 3: the maternity ward and gets together a posse of new fathers.
Speaker 2: He goes down there, He's like, men, you're not doing anything.
Speaker 2: You're just setting around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have brand, you have, you have newborns. But
Speaker 3: it's time to get your guns and your dogs, and
Speaker 3: we're going to go destroy the aliens.
Speaker 2: Yes, so he raises up a breeder posse to go
Speaker 2: out and look for the aliens.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So this leads up to the Final Confrontation,
Speaker 3: where this posse goes out to attack the spaceship and
Speaker 3: it turns out that there is a way to save
Speaker 3: the men, to save the men who have been body snatched. Robi,
Speaker 3: I know you had some notes on the final confrontation here.
Speaker 3: Do you want to talk about it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So, I mean, the basic situation is we're
Speaker 2: going to learn is that the men who are replaced
Speaker 2: their bodies are still alive, but in some form of
Speaker 2: suspended an mation aboard the alien spaceship. We didn't know
Speaker 2: that until until here in the final stages, and that's
Speaker 2: how we're going to be able to bring them back
Speaker 2: and have our you know, perfect resolution. And we also
Speaker 2: are going to quickly learn that not only can the
Speaker 2: aliens be killed by at least by dogs, not by guns,
Speaker 2: but dogs, we can also kill them by breaking the
Speaker 2: connection between the host bodies and the alien that is
Speaker 2: pretending to be that person out in the field.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In any either case, when the creatures die, they melt
Speaker 2: in this really horrifying way where like, like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's modern sensibilities in all, but it's kind of crazy
Speaker 2: that we have we have to show twin beds in
Speaker 2: this movie. But it's fine to watch even our top
Speaker 2: build star melt out into a pile of sick, like,
Speaker 2: you know, out of the the neck of his outfit,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing out of the cuffs of his coat.
Speaker 3: It's gross. I mean, it is like a thick, gushing,
Speaker 3: multi textured slime just pouring out of men's clothes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we end up getting into such an interesting
Speaker 2: place in the final stretches of this film because in
Speaker 2: one sense, it's very much a page from the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties genre movie playbook Masculine Authority Figures race to save
Speaker 2: the day. But we've reached that point in the narrative
Speaker 2: here where our alien impostures are. They're not completely sympathetic,
Speaker 2: but they're not unsympathetic like we Again, we're in that
Speaker 2: weird area where they're doing something out of desperation to
Speaker 2: try and save their race. They're learning what love is,
Speaker 2: they're trying to adapt. They just like they don't know
Speaker 2: enough about humans to even know that they are evil.
Speaker 2: And in some respect, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of what they're doing is clearly wrong, and we
Speaker 3: see in deep and profound ways how it's wrong. But
Speaker 3: also we learned that the aliens are themselves confused and afraid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they're increasingly confused and afraid during this theme
Speaker 2: because they realize, oh, the vigilantes here have each our
Speaker 2: spaceship and the use of the attack dogs is also
Speaker 2: rather vicious. Yeah. So they they'll leap up onto the
Speaker 2: onto the creatures and like rip their the tubes out
Speaker 2: of their neck.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The things that look like roots going into the
Speaker 3: trees of their heads, you know that are there hoses?
Speaker 3: I guess there are methane hoses. Those get ripped out
Speaker 3: and that causes the alien melting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these are like German shepherds. These are you know,
Speaker 2: police dogs, so they're pretty intimidating. They also do before
Speaker 2: the dogs attack, they do some sort of weird walk
Speaker 2: like they're in stealth mode. What is that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you see the dogs creeping along on the That
Speaker 3: was interesting. I didn't know what to make of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they'll do that creep and then they'll pounce,
Speaker 2: and then they'll kill an alien. And so yeah, the
Speaker 2: the the aliens here are being hunted by men with
Speaker 2: guns and dogs in the woods. And then yeah, this
Speaker 2: scene where they're unplugging the original bodies one by one,
Speaker 2: which causes the the impostors out in the field to
Speaker 2: suddenly die and die so horribly like the pain is
Speaker 2: I guess so excruciating that the aliens will turn their
Speaker 2: disintegration rays on each other to keep them from having
Speaker 2: to experience the full effect of that situation. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: also reminiscent of what we would get decades later in
Speaker 2: the Matrix, where like unplugging people from the matrix and
Speaker 2: then having them die in the digital world.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, and then I'll also throw in as
Speaker 2: well that the way that the original human bodies are
Speaker 2: positioned in the spaceship. They're kind of hanging, and so
Speaker 2: there's really this kind of sense of like execution at
Speaker 2: the gallows as they go, you know, in order sequentially
Speaker 2: like unhook this one kill an alien out in the field.
Speaker 2: And as they do this, they eventually get to the
Speaker 2: alien that has been impersonating Marge's husband.
Speaker 3: Right, So, ultimately Marge is reunited with the real Bill,
Speaker 3: who we know very little of actually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she probably knows little of him as well,
Speaker 2: because she spent the whole last year in a relationship
Speaker 2: with an alien being disguised as him.
Speaker 3: More time with the alien than with the real Bill, possibly,
Speaker 3: I don't know how long they knew each other before
Speaker 3: their marriage, but yeah, so they're reunited and you get
Speaker 3: a kind of happy ending there. But you also get
Speaker 3: this interesting broadcast right where the aliens become aware that
Speaker 3: they've been discovered and they send out a broadcast to
Speaker 3: this fleet of other alien ships. They're like, forget about Earth,
Speaker 3: it's not going to work here. We got to find
Speaker 3: a different planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Earthlings are too dangerous, and they leave and we
Speaker 2: get that we close out really with that wide shot
Speaker 2: again of Earth. At this time, they are all these
Speaker 2: different spaceships and they're like leaving the planet. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if this means that more invasions were planned,
Speaker 2: like this was just like the Seed invasion or was
Speaker 2: this happening all around the world in different communities.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's a you know, so we get our
Speaker 2: happy ending. We get our you know, humans rally defeat
Speaker 2: the alien menace, but with a lot more nuanced than
Speaker 2: you generally get out of a movie like this from
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties. Like you're left feeling like, Okay, this
Speaker 2: was a victory for humanity. It's not you know, it's
Speaker 2: certainly not shades of gray. But yeah, we feel some
Speaker 2: amount of sympathy for the aliens here as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean it's a happy ending in that these
Speaker 3: aliens are rejected and like Marge is reunited with the
Speaker 3: real Bill. So that's the good part. But also, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's bittersweet because, for one thing, a lot of the
Speaker 3: threats that Marge was dealing with along the way, we're
Speaker 3: not even from the right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all those threats are still very much in play.
Speaker 2: The world has not changed. Yeah, so we were left
Speaker 2: to contemplate that as well. Yeah, all right, Well, there
Speaker 2: you have it. I married a monster from outer space.
Speaker 2: As we've been discussing, stands up really well, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was impressed with this one. It was great to come
Speaker 2: back can revisit it and really watch it in a
Speaker 2: way for the first time. A lot of these movies,
Speaker 2: you know, if I've seen it for Weird House before,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean I've necessarily gotten to really settle in
Speaker 2: and appreciate it. So yeah, I really enjoyed this one.
Speaker 3: Are we going to come back and watch Daughter of
Speaker 3: Doctor Jekyl do the full Gloria Talbot film filmography? Maybe so?
Speaker 2: I mean, she was terrific in this I would not
Speaker 2: say no to another film featuring her.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have a reputation for being amazing, but it
Speaker 3: might be amazing in that other way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for that matter, I'm also interested in coming
Speaker 2: back and maybe doing The Blob at some point. I've
Speaker 2: always had The Blob is a film I have a
Speaker 2: lot of love for, But in a way I'd be
Speaker 2: kind of torn. Do we do the original fifties Blob
Speaker 2: or do we do the eighties Blob? The Eighties Blob
Speaker 2: is also a lot of fun, and does you know
Speaker 2: has amazing effects as well. I think I've found myself
Speaker 2: in that situation before where I'm like a classic blob
Speaker 2: blobb remake. Don't make me choose? All right? Well, just
Speaker 2: to remind everybody, Steff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to talk about a weird film here on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. We've been doing this for years now. You
Speaker 2: can find tons of episodes in the audio archives wherever
Speaker 2: you get your audio podcasts, and if you are on
Speaker 2: letterbox dot com, look us up. We are a weird house.
Speaker 2: On there you can find a list of all the
Speaker 2: movies we've covered over the years, and sometimes a peek
Speaker 2: ahead at what comes next.
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