I Married a Monster from Outer Space: Gene Fowler Jr.

As a general rule, if a movie's title contains the phrases "I Married a ______" or "I Was a Teenage ________," then even if I don't think it's very good, chances are I am still going to enjoy it. Because, let's be honest here, nobody sets out to make the Next Great American Movie with a title like that. People who make films with those kinds of titles know that they are making cheap, tongue-and-cheek schlock-fests. Take director Gene Fowler Jr. When he directed I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), I doubt that he wanted to create a serious movie akin to Rebel Without a Cause meets The Wolfman. It was a fun, silly, over-the-top werewolf movie. A year later, he would direct a fun, silly, over-the-top alien invasion movie entitled I Married a Monster from Outer Space. My favorite part of this film is how seriously its characters take the situation that they find themselves in. The film basically plays out like a low-budget remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). A race of aliens comes to earth, steals human bodies via smoke bubbles, and begin a hostile takeover. And, God bless them, these aliens actually think that they can take over the world with a single spaceship. Okay, that's not true. The last shot of the film reveals a whole fleet of UFOs fleeing earth. But for the length of the entire film, we are led to believe that the aliens attacking the USA are doing so from a single ship. Here's a tip for any would-be alien invaders: if you are going to send ONE alien to subjugate the entire human race, at least have the decency to reduce said race to only a handful of survivors, like in Robot Monster (1953). Otherwise, your grand scheme to conquer the earth comes off like a pale rehash of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). At the end of the day, I Married a Monster from Outer Space is a fun little alien invasion film. And really, it should be treated as such.

6/10