Episode 805: I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

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They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booths. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. A beautiful innocent girl on her honeymoon, Her passionate dreams of perfect romance turned into a living nightmare for this sweetheart she married. The man she had loved was merely the hollow shell for the invaders from out her space there who would believe her, who could help her through the flesh crawling terror of this unhearthly marriage When anyone she turned to could be one of them? Could she touch the body of this masquerading alien who wanted to learn the secrets of human love.

Your race has no women, it can't have children, it will die out. Eventually, We'll have children with your kind of children, all kind? Was it true? Could space monsters mate with Earth women? See the startling answer in The Shocker of them All?

Welcome to the Projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again. Is mister Bill Ackerman. Could to be invited back?

Mike, I'd just about given up, Hope. I've been reading books about Florence Nightingale, Joan of Arc, Madame du Barrie, career women. Also back in the booth is mister Ben Buckingham. Good to be here once again as well. Thanks Mike, Thanks Bill.

We continue a month of sci fi film discussion with the Patreon request from John Adam. I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Released in nineteen fifty eight, The film was written by Lewis Fetees and directed by Gene Fowler Junior. The film stars Gloria Talbot as Marge Bradley, who becomes Marge Ferrell early in the film when she marries the titular monster from outer space. Tom Tyron as Bill Ferrell.

We will be spoiling this film as we go along. So if you don't want anything, we're go and turn off the podcast, watch the film, and come back. We will still be here. So, Ben, when was the first time you saw I Married a Monster from Outer Space? And what did you think last week?

This one was very new to me, always just kind of in the background with that famous title, but nothing had leapt out to make me want to seek it see it until now, And I was very very impressed by it, very surprised, kind of surprised I hadn't heard more, because it seemed so ripe for having gone through university and studied these kinds of films and had all these interesting ones pulled out that are said to be rich texts, and I were near as rich as this one. And Bill, how about yourself? The first time I saw I Married a Monster matter Space was I guess when I was twelve or thirteen. And I knew about it because my dad was a famous Monsters Film Land subscriber and so we had all of those old issues, so I knew the monster looked like I knew the title, and I think I liked it well enough as a kid.

I mean, they don't make you wait half an hour to see the monster but I probably rated it below Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a kid, and I circled back to it as an adult after reading about it in cult movies from Danny Perry and getting into things like Douglas Cerk movies that Gloria Talbot was in, so that when I got back to it as an adult, I really came to love it because of the austere, domestic melodrama aspect of it that I don't think I would have appreciate it as a kid so much. Yeah, I don't remember the first time I saw this. One might have been back in twenty twenty two when we were doing the episode on Rosemary's Baby, because I definitely it was kind of like vague memories even though it's four years ago.

I'm going through things and like, even when I downloaded the remake, the ninety eight remake, my plex server told me, oh, you saw this before. I was like, oh I did, Okay, So all these vague memories of this, Like as I go back and I'm rewatching the Astronaut's Wife, it's like, yeah, you saw this back in twenty twenty two. Down my ass, I'm like, oh, okay, did I Wow? I just kind of forgot. But anyway, I definitely was familiar with the monster and with certain scenes from this from it came from Hollywood.

I was a huge fan of that movie when I was younger, and definitely saw parts of this, especially Bill when he hits the body on the road, obviously just a dummy laying on the road. I saw that. I saw the famous shot of the lightning going off and lighting up his face. But back in twenty twenty two, I definitely fell in love with this film, and yeah, I can really see the Invasion of the Body Snatchers as well. I'm sure we'll talk about that as we go along too, but way different of a feel, I would say.

I mean, there is some domesticity things going on in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but way more when it comes to this, and interesting that we put a woman at the center of this and have her be the person that married the monster from outer space. I mean, it's such a lurid title, and I always wonder if this would have done better with a different title, But hell man, I mean it tells you what it is going in. I was so struck by how much this felt inspired or even a love letter to the films of val Luton, like I Walked with the Zombie with the title and cat People taking that real pulpy, trashy vibe, but going far more expressionist and Gothic and focusing more on the feminine and melodramatic aspects than most of these kinds of films tended to do at the time.

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned val Lewton because I was thinking about I Walked with a Zombie as a title that probably creates the wrong impression for audiences, so that they tend to be happily surprised at how subtle and sophisticated a movie it is. But I also do think that, you know, when you have the Cuthulhu looking like aliens with the ray guns, and it does live up to the monster of matter space part of that title as well, Like, it's not selling you the wrong film in being so lured with the title. But yeah, I thought it was interesting reading up on just how it was received at the time, how it would be compared to titles like I Married a Communist or I Married a Nazi, like these kind of expose women's stories.

I guess it is in that vein, but it is also being pitched to the mostly like younger boys that we're making up that sci fi fifties boom in the horror boom. So I guess we could talk about how it was kind of you know, played against things like The Blob when it came out at the time. I guess why it's kind of lasted as a cult movies because it works as a drama that is endlessly like you know, interpretable, and I think that like critics that take these kind of films seriously have always kind of championed this, even though the title yet does. It's been a punchline since nineteen fifty eight, and it probably will always be a thing that makes people chuckle initially when they talk about it. It's interesting that this would be marketed at young boys, and that's who would be seeing this because this is so subversive when it comes to all of the different subtexts going on here.

I mean, with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it is so easy to read that as a metaphor for time immunism and just the way that they're being infiltrated and the emotionless state of the pod people. And with that too, everyone can be a pod person with this. It is just men. So we really are concentrating on to quota twenty twenty six ish term the manosphere of these guys. I mean, we open with these guys at a table, these four men I think the five men, sorry, because Bill leaves the table pretty quickly after they start showing them, and they're just bemoaning like, oh, we're losing another man and know another guy's getting married, and just how horrible this is.

And I'm looking at these guys going, are you all bachelors? Like the guy who's the biggest lush at the table, I'm like, you're not married. You've got to be what forty fifty years old. I know he's not nearly that old, but it's just like, come on, guys, like what is going on here? And yeah, just this whole theme, I mean, let's just say it.

I mean, this whole homosexual subtext that goes on through this entire film. It is wild to look at this from that angle and just here are these men that gather in the woods at night and do these untoward things or alley ways. You know, it's it's wild that they are hitting all the cruising spots. When it comes to where people are being quote unquote transformed into these monsters. And I will say that the first bit of dialogue we get in the film is two women commenting on how these guys aren't hitting on them at all.

Also, Tom tryon being closeted as an actor, I think is also kind of invited a lot of that reading the way that you know, Rock Hudson movies tend to be now kind of looked at through that prism of like, what is it saying? Like queer subtext, and I think it's also the case with this movie. There was one chapter of a book I read I'm trying to remember the author's name, but talking about these men in relation to veterans of war because I was thinking about that. In addition to being the queer subtext that I, you know, we can talk about with this film, it's also I was thinking about how they're all pretty much like alcoholics, like you know, as we're meeting them. I don't know, this is like an odd thing to note, but like, I just reread Jimmy McDonough's book on Russ Meyer because I had Jimmy McDonough on my show, and so I reread that book and one of the things I thought was interesting about it was how all those World War two veterans like russ Meyer still had this like brotherhood that was like heavily alcohol driven with the soldiers he's served under.

It was served with alongside, And I think about even though they don't really establish Bill and his friends as war veterans, they have that same kind of like fraternal bond driven like alcohol driven that when the aliens take over, they are kind of behind enemy lines, but the alcohol is removed because they can't tolerate it, and so the trauma of that character and like how he can't really engage with her. I mean, it can be read as a queer subtexts, but I also be read as PTSD of a war veteran, which I think is also interesting way to read it. I don't know if any of that is intentionally. I don't know really what the screenwriter has ever said about if there's meant to be buried themes, if it's just meant to be a body snatcher's riff.

That's kind of a creative variation on that film. But I thought that was interesting how there's multiple ways to read his ill in like behavior in the home. Yeah, was that book Monster in the Machine by Stefan Huntke, because I came across that too. Yeah, it could be much more focusing on that the effects of World War. Two and Korea too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and definitely the trauma aspect because that was for me. I think that the like I said, the film is a rich text and I can really be read in numerous different ways. And I think it's more just because it's about men. It's that not specifically pinning. I think it is probably pinning a little bit more of the trauma stuff down, but because it's just about like there's something not quite right with guys, had really let you bring in, well, which way, which one do you want to talk about?

Because it's so much a film about not talking about stuff and not dealing with it. It's like, oh, well, men are the locusts of not talking about stuff. It's like, which thing do you want to talk about that they're not talking about? Let's let's let's let's evoke it. I went and dug into a couple of Gene Fowler Junior's other films, and I had a couple of things that really struck me.

I do wonder if the title and the connection like being pitched as a kid tip towards younger boys and men, was to do with his previous film being such a huge hit, and that of course was I was a teenage werewolf, and that would definitely lock him into being like, oh, well, that guy made us a fortune off of this rebel without a clause kind of film. When I went to that, it was like, Oh, look at this, it's another film about men the problem. And then I watched a showdown a boot Hill which came out in nineteen fifty eight as well, which was actually had to share the screenwriter with I married him, Monster Am Out of Space, and that one is a western that's very firmly about guys not dealing with stuff and running away from it and death and violence and all the usual things.

And it was just like those three alone were just like Wow, this guy has a theme and he's pretty damn good at it that trauma aspect. It also, if you put them all together, it really creates a three dimensional thing that's like, oh yeah, this is about how men don't deal with stuff and the explosive outcomes of it. I was so surprised by how dark and grim I was a teenage werewolf is. I thought that, like I married a monst of out of Space felt as grim as that. But then after watching show Down a Boothill, which starts and is mostly as grim as that, that film does actually suggest that forgiveness and moving board and growing is possible.

And then when I came back and watched my Monstive out of Space again, I felt that he was moving towards that in this film, that it's least suggested as a possibility through the literal humanizing of build a Tom Tryon's character, Oh man, I really want to check out more of this guy's films, but he only made a handful of films and mostly in like a two three year period, and then that's it. And yet just those three alone was like, whoa, you could write a decent sized book just on these three. Yeah. I was very unfamiliar with Tom try On watching this, and I didn't know that he was gay until I was listening to the audio commentary and going, oh, okay, okay, that makes sense, and then looked into him a little bit more.

And one of his last longtime boyfriends was Casey Danovan, the actor from Boys in the Sand, which we talked about years ago. So I thought that was a nice little tie together of these two films. Yeah, I mainly knew him as the writer of the other, the Fantastic seventies horror film, which he wrote the book and then also adapted the screenplay. Which I still haven't seen. I ran across that a lot when I was doing research on Exorcist to the Hair Attech.

I've only seen it once that I really wanted to revisit it for this because I feel like it's probably got some themes connecting a bit, remember just being blown away by it. Yeah, it's got doppelganger theme if you an Americana horror in small town. It's also a theme in Harvest Home, which becomes the TV movie Dark Secret of Harvest Home, which is another book he wrote, adapted from another book he wrote. So, yeah, there's I don't want to get into spoiling those, but you know there's there's definitely themes in books. He writes later that you know, you could you could draw parallels to the plot of this, whether or not he intended that or not.

But it's kind of a handsome son of gun too. It definitely is portraying this all American male for his soon to be bride and then bride, and just that awkwardness though that they have on their honeymoon, and just this whole yo, this is my first time. Yeah, it's my first time too, and they have no idea what's going on. Really plays into the whole sexual politics of this because I think the one thing that you know, we have brought up a lot of different readings of this, but the one thing that's just their period because of the time that it was in, whether it was intended or not, is the sexism and just the role that our poor female lead is is kind of put in because of the way that the world was in nineteen fifty eight.

Bill, your opening line about you know you've read all of these different things, you know, career women, that whole thing. It's like, well, you better get married ladies, you know, like the one woman who's been pursuing the guy for so long. And I mean they they change I believe they changed that line in the ninety eight remake into I was thinking about trying women instead like something like that. I'm like, okay, so just like writ large the potential reading of that line, the career women. Thinking about alien Bill in this versus other films that take this kind of premise later, like that remake or like The Astronaut's Wife, which we can talk about.

But I think what I like about this film is that he's not purely a villain, and I feel like they kind of make him into more of like a statement for abusive men in relationships in later tellings of it, whereas this he's closer to David in Village of the Damned, where it's like he's he's like the one alien being that's still kind of human, or like he's learning to be humans, so that it's more tragic when it ultimately doesn't work out for him than the rest of them. It's not just that he's trying to conquer the world. It's not like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where there's an unfeeling wave taking over the town. There's a pathos to it because they lost that women and maybe they didn't know what love was, but as they're learning it, that makes their downfall like a little bit more sad than other tellings of it, where it's just purely an alien threat.

And I think, you know, even compared to other body snatcher movies, I mean, I think about invaders to Mars, and again it's like purely evil military has to be involved, Like it's nothing like that here where it's I mean, you might even feel like a little bit of mixed emotions as the vigilante passy rounds up the dogs to take care of these outsiders, because you know, they're learning how to be people. They have more use for the women than the previous versions that the men did. And they're not drinkers. They're not misanthropic or maybe in a way like the way that their initial men are, So there's not it's a little bit more murky whether or not this is like a totally positive outcome. The threat is a bit more philosophical.

I always like the remake four grounds of it, like, oh, they're already impregnating the women and that's leading to horrific outcomes almost immediately. But in this it's like, well, that's still something they're trying to think you figure out if they can even do. Throughout the film, they themselves are in this limbo, and it does add the filmlosophical tod It is quite shifted by that. Yeah, well, if you want to read this as a as a as a gay panic reading. I mean, I guess post Kinsey Report, there's like articles coming out about gay men among us that don't show themselves as being the effeminate stereotype we might imagine, and they could be anywhere, you know, and they could be you know, and that kind of terror, And if you read this film as being about that, then the only way that you can really identify them is that at the end of the day, they can't bring children into the world.

That's also a difference that you don't have in the other films that tell this story. It's post Rosemary's Baby, and the threat of forced pregnancy by a stranger becomes the real horror, whereas that's not really maybe because production code or maybe because they had us other concerns that it's not really what's happening here, like it could happen, but it's really the scientists are still working on that. It's really just that they can't really love their partner. And in that that brings it back to the horror of things like the other body snatcher movies, where the real sadness of somethingation of the body Snatchers is when a really bright, kinetic kind of romantic dynamic is just rendered gone because now one person has no emotion or you think about Invaders to Mars and how the child's nightmare of like the parents no longer love you, you know, and looks at this is not quite played that way because you'd almost you never see her with the real Bill until the very ends, so it's not like you really have a sense of what their dynamic was before.

Yeah, that's so such a significant difference to most of them that we don't get the before Bill at all. There's no sense of who they are together, who he is, and there's also no like nostalgic before to try and say the opening of the film is this kind of tainted world with it's like just people bitching and complaining, and like the first human interaction we see as a couple making out and then a dude slamming the side of the car to giving them a fright. It's like everything is like, ah, this is this is a bit of a bad taste vibe, like bad taste in the mouth kind of vibe. And it's like that's the total opposite to like most of the other body stature gund of Invasion films. It's like, oh, look at the perfect suburb and look at that.

It's like, no, this is maybe get a beautiful lake in a beautiful world, but the people in it are kind of suck. Yeah. I love that line from Envision of the Body Snatchers when Kevin McCarthy's kissing the girl and like you get that voice over of. Like, I've been afraid a lot of times in my life, but I didn't know the real meaning of fear until until I had. Kissed back me when I was looking up Jeene Powler Junior.

And there's so much in his filmography that you're like, oh, whoa what you did what? Because he is an editor for years before he moved into doing directing and worked with Fritz Lang and Sam Fuller, but he did Sex Hygiene, the very famous World War two military educational film directed by or co directed by John Ford. And I feel like Sex Hygiene kind of hangs over this film because it is like, oh, these are people who haven't learned how to be together, because you know, you don't talk about that stuff until you get married and then it's too late and you're on your own together. When she goes to visit the doctor to be like, is it my fault? You know that whole thing.

I mean that is that whole sequence of her visiting the doctor the first time feels like it's right out of a sex ad film. Yeah, And her unfamiliarity with what her insides look like as they look at the X ray machine, Like that's really full grounded there. Yeah. I remember reading one article and it's just like, oh, look at they have to check her. Yeah, Like it's all about what's inside of her rather than what's inside of the men.

The men actually do have something else inside of them her. They're like, no, no, we're going to examine you and like basically put all the onus on this woman character where she's like, no, no, you're to blame if things aren't going well at home, honey. Like the way that she has to write her mother and everything. We get that one year time jump in here where it's like, here we are, we still haven't conceived what's going on. We don't know what's happening.

And she's writing to her mom like he's not the man that I knew before, And it's like, well, is that just because this is married life or is this because your husband is a creach from outer space? I think it's also interesting that it's a film that has characters that are both you know, experiencing sexual naivete. You know, because you think about the target audience being like young men in the late fifties, Like, how many of that target audience would have known what a honeymoon was like either it's not speaking over their head, Whereas I think the audience for something like Grossmary's Baby would have been more sexually experienced and it would not have been the same innocence as there maybe a lot of the viewers for a blob I Married a Monster double feature in nineteen fifty eight.

Thinking about how I was a teenage wear wolf and how much that was directed at young angry men and the issues that they were having. In this way, it's also maybe like, hey, guys, if it's like this, maybe there's something wrong. I mentioned that one woman who is like, oh, I finally bagged the guy that I was going after. That guy is the one who's like the biggest lush that I mentioned before, who's shorter than all of the other men. He almost looks like a living Fred Flintstone to me, Like if Fred Flintstone's voice came out of his mouth, I would not be surprised.

And I love when they when Marge sees her friend down the street and she is announcing like, oh, I finally bagged him. He's sitting in the passenger seat like she's the one that's driving. I'm like, this is an interesting relationship. I'm surprised that they would let women drive at all. I mean, you know, I'm still mad that they got the vote.

You're talking about the Sam character. And it's interesting because you think about the aliens in these other films, and like part of it is like they're so cold and affectless. And the thing about these aliens is that once they are comfortable in those suits, they kind of get into having sex with these women. They kind of they can they can kick back at the picnic and kid around and make jokes, and they aren't just these blank kind of characters. And whether or not, you know, it's because they have some residue of the emotions of the people they're inhabiting.

Like the same character is the one that is most he's most into being an earthling. He has a personality like he's playful with Bill when he like lets him know kind of casually like hey, I'm an alien to but he plays a game with it, like he doesn't just say, hey, I know we're both, we're both you know, inhabiting, like he he has fun with it, like there's there's emotion to them, even though they're supposed to be quote unquote emotionless or like that, that they're not, and that that's also what's interesting compared to some of the other ones, where humanity is being replaced by something that has no emotion is part of the you know, the red scare element of it, and that's not really They're just getting comfortable in this new skin, which I think is interesting because you don't know what that would be like in a year had they not been.

Detected him letting Bill know that he knows. I mean, what a pickup scene that is. Right, Aren't you gonna join me? I didn't get engaged today. I haven't seen you take a drink since you were married.

Bill. I guess I've lost my taste for this stuff. Well you're gonna drink that or just hang on away? You know I've lost my taste for two. I'll get the policy.

I don't need it. Did you make many mistakes. At first. Selling insurance? No wearing this thing the design's pretty lousy.

How much did you have before you came here tonight? I'll say one thing for humans. They may not be very bright and their bodies fall apart in a ridiculously short time, but they do manage to enjoy themselves. You're celebrating be kind of humans week. They've been the methane reservoirs and these bodies you're due to report of the ship tonight.

There's a very strong implication that they are becoming who they've adopted as their formed because the guy in that scene where all the bar talking and the guy who's like, oh yeah, get away from me woman is the one who's most like, oh yeah, you know married, the only solution is mass suicide. He's still got that kind of vibe happening with Sam is like you know, the cool bounty like yeah, and he seemed to be rolling with it and adapting that. Of course, the cop, the cop is still a cop. He's like the closest to the film comes to like cold, emotionless aggressive bad guy and he's the cop. And yeah, I was like, oh yep, cool, this this film's very acab, very very acab.

Yeah, it's interesting that the doctor is one of the few guys that isn't replaced because it feels like they're going after all of these authority figures. They definitely have all of them. Well, I don't know if all the cops are monsters or if that's just the way that they are. As you say, I mean, the whole thing of when she's trying to get the word out and oh, sorry, all the lines to Washington are down, and oh, the telegraph guy rips up the telegraph and then she tries to get out of town. Oh the bridge has been washed out, even though it hasn't rained that much.

I mean, that's one of the few instances where she starts to even show some agency where she's like, it hasn't rained in days, and they're like, no, no, it's gone. It's gone, and you can just see, like I mean, by then, she knows everything that's going on, which is nice that our main character that Marge knows what the hell's going on, can figure out what's going on that she isn't just in the dark the entire time. But yeah, I love that it's all of these authority figures. But then the doctor isn't And you would think that in nineteen fifty eight. A doctor would be one of the main people that they would go after.

And I want to say the doctor is definitely a pod person and invasion of the body snatches feels like that's the one of the first people that they would transform. You know, they they know how to travel from planet to planet, but they might not be comfortable delivering babies. And that's the whole point that they're there. So I think that's why they leave him alone, because you know, that's. A good point, Bill, good point.

Yeah, that's his one purpose is as soon as we get this baby factory open, and we'll go in here with this stuff and you'll be up to your elbows in newborns. I like that he also like vaguely flirts with her as like after the like you know, like you're you know, like he compliments her appearance before like but seriously, let's talk about the medical part of it, like like you know, he's still all men because he still has like that like tiny hint of like acknowledging her sexually. Yeah, that's how you know he's not an. Alien fipeew a coincidence. I recently started watching Resident Alien, the Elentrio series, and it's basically almost a chunk of this film that he has to take over being in a person on Earth and hide in there.

And as he's the longer he's a playing a big human, the more the human DNA is seemingly affecting him and altering him. And in that the person he takes over is a doctor, So for a junk of the first season he has to pretend to be a doctor and quickly learn everything, and they get a lot of comedy out of that. So I, having now watched this, I'm like, oh, the person who wrote this definitely definitely saw this film and did a bit of a remix on it. How does Alan Turk get along with animals in that series? It's generally pretty okay.

I don't think they have much stuff with animals in it. Because that's probably the most upsetting part of any version of this story is the aliens and just how they don't get along with pets. And my god, that scene you don't even see anything, You just hear the noise and it's just it breaks your heart every time. When the cat gets it and it does that huge yell. This fuzzy one sitting behind me was under a blanket on my lap and leaped about six feet in the air.

I was like, I'm sorry, it just a film. It's just a film. Don't look like we talk about the the idea of the haunted veteran, the PTSD veteran. One of my favorite horror films is a film called Death Dream, and part of that is the young soldier kills the family dog spoiler alert because because again the dog recognizes that this is no longer the person that they knew, and that, I mean, that's the trip that you've seen lots of movies with the dog sees what the people don't as far as this is their threat. I mean, I think that goes back to even like what like The Stranger with orson Wells and things like that, Like it's a noir thing as well as a horror thing.

Goes back to the Obyssey, right with the dog that's been waiting for Odysseus to come home after all those years and he's the only one that recognizes him. That those aspects what ties this to the horror genre a lot more. Di had thought of Death Dream as well, like how much these always having common and that also ties it in with the trauma aspect and I feel, yeah, I married monst Ma outter space. Even though it's yes trappings of sci fi aliens and all that, that does say the val Luton connection, the Gothic aspect of the expression of the aspect, does feel like it ties it more into horror traditions and noir traditions. It's shot in like the Malibu Lake area, and if you know Frankenstein, that's the lake that the monster tosses the girl into the drowns.

I think the drowning scene. I'm not sure. I haven't seen The Bad Seed in a long time, but the Bad Seed is also shot around there Twin Peaks. Part of that was shot around there, the gazebo scene, So it's like it's actually a location that has a lot of tie to horror and horror adjacent kind of fiction and entertainment. So I mean that's also like the relation to La Like it's a convenient location, but that part of California, I think is also where things like Poltergeist and Phantasm are also not far from there, so as a rustic location, I mean, that's something I thought about with the fifties and how horror post World War two and the gi Bill and the expansion of suburbia, American horror and sci fi horror starts invading small towns, whereas like the It's the Heyday of Hammer and Gothic periods at horror coming out of England.

But in America, like some of the counter programming. I mean, you have the post cycle from Corman and all that as well, but I mean you but you start getting things like the William Castle movies and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and films that are set in Invasion of the Body. Yeah, like that are said in small town America and like the mundane location where the threat occurs. And I've always found that, really, you know, as some of that grew up in suburbs myself, like I've as a kid, I always responded to those stories way more than things set you know, in far away times in castles and such, because it felt more relatable as a kid to see an environment that you recognize. I think that's why things like Invaders of Mars had such an impact on directors Spielberg and Dante and to come later, because they started at aage where they really saw themselves in the boys' shoes.

And I think about this film and I don't know if it's made director has really sited as influence. I don't know if John Carpenter was thinking about it when he made Starman, but like I do think that, yeah, like that idea of the uncanny in everyday America was only like a relatively new trope in movies. The confrontation between the cops and the criminals felt like it's something it could have been in a David Lynch film, especially how it was shot. But I've got some real like Nightmare on Elm Street vibes from some of Marge's experiences and her art. It really struck me as being somehow sim I couldn't quite pin down what it was, but there's something that felt really strongly connected to Nancy's experiences in Nightmare Elm Street and the way that her world was falling apart in the suburban space.

I reckon this must have been an influence on Wes Grave, and at some level it just feels like like lots of his films have an aspect of this bubbling through them. Well, you guys mentioned Noir, and yeah, the lighting in this, especially in that scene where March goes downstairs and finds the dog dead, I mean, those shadows are so harsh. I just absolutely love how this is lit. I mean this movie. Yes, it's got a cheesy title that we've already discussed, but it is one of the most gorgeous films.

It looks so good. It's like you think about quote unquote cheesy sci fi and it's like, well, it doesn't have to look that good. I mean, you know, the giant shrews, those kind of things. It's like, all right, yeah, it isn't like the nicest looking movie in the world. This looks really really good.

Absolutely that Fritz Lang influence from having worked does his editive years is so fun at the center and like I said, that valution vibe of the leaning into that expressionist and like, yeah, Tom try on. Like he might not be the most emotional actor, which is obviously what he's meant to be, Like here, he's meant to be a bit Avian, but like you just look at his face and the way the light hits it, Like he's got such an angular phase with the bonde structure, and he's got those big beefy arms that he looks like he would have been a great Frank and Signs monster. And it's just like he fits in the architecture and the lighting perfectly. The use of shadows and the ankles and such, I mean does evoke noir in a way that I think is really satisfying and creepy.

But I also I have a weakness for day for night photography, and there's so much of this that feels like like black like when used well, like I don't know, for some reason, I really love it, and and I know it's never been like a fashionable like people always kind of it takes people out of the movie because they can see the effect. But I think the whole idea of like seeing shadows and like what appears to be sunlight that is supposed to be moonlight like gives like all of those things where she's like walking, like following him at night, like I don't, just like a slightly different alien quality that I really kind of think helps the film. That I think that the color versions that have bigger budgets that come later can't really capture that quality.

Somehow, It's like they feel pretty in a more conventional way, whereas this feels like a little bit has more personality to it, even if it is them working with a low budget and they're just trying to use that budget for whatever they can stretch it. However they can. I think with more money they have something that's more quote unquote professional, but it's well not professional, but more more anonymous. I guess maybe than this, where it's it really called not as extreme as Invaders of Mars, which is real, kind of super designed, you know, and kind of surreal. This isn't like that.

But I do think that the tutelagender people like Fritz Lang probably influences how he understands how to tell this story, and more so than I Was a teenage Werewolf, where it really doesn't call attention to the style so much. It's more kind of focused on performance and even more focused on special effects with the look of the creature. But I think here, with the resources of a major studio, he's using the noir playbook to tell sci fi, which I don't think. You really have a lot of science fiction that feels nourish then, I mean, other than things like Alphaville that are more self consciously mash up. I also am a huge day for Knight Nerd.

I always go yay when it pops up, get very excited. It was only on a second viewing that I have copped that someone sayings are meant to be day for night because so much of it is this expression of shadows, the darkness. It was like, oh, wait, it's not daytime. When it's like, you idiot, you should have had your lights on, and I'm like why yeah, one. In the afternoon.

Ye, it's like this, this is it's real shadow this all the time. Yeah. There are quite a few times where I'm like. Oh, this is night. Okay, okay, all right.

I got it. Now, I got it. And I love that it kind of has like this weird little mini noir short film inside of it with the criminal character that it's like you could just cut that out on its own and let it sit as a film and it would be something. Compared to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where we're with the man the entire time, seeing the whole thing through his perspective. There's a lot where we're not with Marche, where there's things that we're learning about the alien on his own the whole episode, with that shady character lurking around, there's a lot that she's never clued in on that we're clued in on.

As the viewer, Like, I like the fact that he's stalking her and she she never has any knowledge of it the entire time. She only sees him for like one minute, but he becomes a character that you know, has his own little storyline and a short one. But I mean, there's a fair amount that doesn't keep us in her shoes. And I don't know if that's because they didn't trust that the audience would care about a woman's story for ninety minutes, or if they just had no other way to get all this information out that they wanted to cover, that there'd be no way to logically have her witness all of it, and they weren't going to do the Invaders of Mars. It's all a dream thing and have her remembering things that are that she's not present for.

But I didn't think about that because you think about the pacing of this and how it's so fast that you don't have time to really question things. It kind of goes so quickly, but it does tension dissipate by having us leave her paranoia to like fill us in like we we're not in the dark the way. That she is. That scene is so impactful with the criminal versus the cops, Like it really shocks you the way it shot. That's another thing that struck me was the use of music in this and how often we just get silence or the sounds of like the world, and that's one where there's like no music, it's just the street and it's this absolutely like it felt like something that like it maybe think of like bits and Stephen King's Top books, where it'll just be these little jags and he goes off on where a character meets the end, and it just everything drives a hold and freezes in this chilling way that you never forget.

Yet it struck me so so I'd actually like saying that. It's like, yeah, of course Stephen King definitely borrowed from this film doing that because he loves his sci fi. It adds such a fascinating wrinkle because there's only two kinds that really see through the aliens and spot them, and that's animals and a criminal. The criminal is the hero for a brief bit. He doesn't make it out, but like he's the one who actually goes like, ah, no, I see you, I see what you're doing and tries to take action, but it doesn't have enough information knowledge to make it work, but for a brief bit, he's like the only heroic figure in the film up to that point.

On the more underworld side of things, you have the woman who hangs out at the bar, who I don't know if she's an actual prostitute or if she's quote unquote just a fluozy, but just the way that she gets treated in this movie is awful. And just that she's shot in the back by a laser gun, but she is for me, one of the more sympathetic people in this movie. Yeah, fran scene the characters name, I can't remember the actress's name, but she's fantastic. She has so not much to work with and just just so memorable in it and really like makes an impact. Her death scene is also like don't Look Now much just as creepy as don't Look Now, like again the same thing with no music that just this style is like not showing you much at all.

You just like hairs on the back of the deck, like, yeah, something's not right here in the park. Also invokes the Brood, which is also taken from Don't Look Now. That's another like sort of Cookoo's Nest kind of story that. Was Valerie Allen was fran scene and mostly know her as being one of the people on the party line that Rock Hudson sings to in pillow Talk that it's a monster wearing like a hoodie in front of the store window looking at the baby dolls, like longing for children and stuff. And then you've got the great like turnaround and she freaks out and you don't receive full on but you see the reflection in the window after he turns back after killing her.

That's like I remember like first year university during film studies and having to write, you know, like a thousand words on a three minute scene, and it's like, oh, man, if I knew that scene existed, like I could have written three thousand words on that because it's like, first it opens with Fancine coming out and stopping and like checking her tights and stretching out her legs as off her gams right in front of the church supplies store with the Virgin Mary's there at the window, the bar in the background next door. It is like, Okay, there's a lot going on here. And then that final shot of that scene is the we're looking over the shoulder of the alien at its reflection in the glass of the store and yeah, it's a baby doll there, which is like, oh, because they want babies, But also that TI it back to the uncanny and Voyd's writing on the Kenny being dolls as the main representative of it, and how much of this film is again going back to that horror aspect, is about the Unkenny of the unhomely you know that, which is almost but not quite.

Yeah, I mean, I do think that that character, I mean does betray the conservative side of this film, because I agree that she's one of the more sympathetic characters. I don't know if the film thinks of her that way, and that she's kind of shot in the back and the most, I mean for being flirtatious with men that are are not showing interest, like it's a way of punishing that character, whereas almost everyone else survives in the movie. I think she's dispatched the most coldly, and it's really just because she talked to forwardly to an alien that is trying to check out this doll and kind of be in parental thoughts. I don't know if it's just that though, Because so much is made we get a real close up on her of how she reacts to the bartender confronting the group of men and how he gets humiliated and treated really badly and she just reacts to like nothing, like just takes it in.

And it feels like that is actually maybe more emphasized than anything with how she speaks to what she thinks is some dude on the street. That's a good point. Well, she's she's responding to their macho coldness. I guess I like that. She she's responding them because they are more powerful than this older, weaker man, and so it's it's she's responding to the machisma of these of these aliens.

And that feels like the greater crime the way the film language is structured. Yeah, no, that's true. I absolutely love that bartender. Absolutely Maxie Rosenbloom slapsy Maxi, the former professional boxer who's just got that great voice. She didn't look like a lush They don't wear badges.

You know, I could tell you there was this little old dame or look just like your grandmother. I never shot grandmother. You know what the broad was? Yeah, she's missus poull love. She married a guy sells insurance and tom a little over you ago, Bill Bill foul.

That's he should dropping every once in a while just to knock one over. I guess she's taking over all to take up for the family now. And I love that. In both this and the remake, which we'll talk about later, they it's the bartender who never gets turned because it's basically old and lonely, kind of good character, or or married to a woman who's passed her prime. Really is probably why these guys aren't going to be going after the bartender here.

But yeah, his attitude and just like because alcohol is such an important part of this whole thing. I mean, you know, we think back to these movies that this time and earlier, it's just like every time somebody walks into a room, it's can I get you? What are you drinking tonight? And it's just like that was such the Probably maybe in real life too, I don't know, like my parents had a fully stocked liquor cabinet, you know, I'm sure a lot of people's parents had those, but comes from a different age where it's just like drinking, drinking, drinking, And yeah, it's such a big deal that these guys aren't drinking anymore. And that's one of the tells, right when Sam comes in and he's like, what can I get you?

He's like, oh, I'll take this. You know, I'm really not drinking anymore either, and it's like this you know, secret code between them, and it's like, no, no, I'm not performing this ritual that we always do as men of this time. I think it's important to remember that there's the people making this film are not far very rude from the generations where in America it would have been safer to drink the alcohol and to drink the water. True. It's also a tell in the invasion of the body Snatchers because even before they know that there's an alien threat, they go to the nightclub or the and it's empty, and so they get the martinis served right away because business has died off.

And then they can't even enjoy their martinis because they get a call there's some medical problem. But that's one thing that also links at tendation of the Body Snatress is that one of the first industries that is harmed by the alien innovation is the nightlife. Yeah, these communists, they don't know how to party, and who wants to live under that kind of you know, that's not my America, damn it. No, I want to be able to shoot cans of bud light whenever I want. To go back to like the foruma aspect of it.

Then connections to World War Two in the Veterans and such the reds under the Bed thing with these films. The more I think about it, the more I feel like that is certain right wing factions co opting a narrative to suit their ends rather than what it actually represented. Because the more you learn about American history in the twentieth century, it's like, oh, they were nazi Is floating around really openly for a long long time, both posts during and after the Second World War, like they were really out there and visible. And these films strike me so much more, especially when you look at how like the Hollywood being a lot more liberal and having been targeted as communists that less. So many of these films feel much more like the infiltration of fascists, not maybe specifically Nazis, and definitely not in this case because they don't have that same vibe.

But I think that the reds under the Bed theme is like I think people too easily and too readily adopted that as the primary theme for most of the twentieth century, and I think it's much more appropriate to be like, yeah, no, we've always had issues with really bad people coming in and trying to destroy a way of life and holding up a nostalgic vision of it for like to try and delude you. So few people exist in this town, and that's obviously a function of a result of it being a low budget film and not having the scale or something even Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which seems to have a large community being affected. I mean, this feels like so few people and no children either. I don't think in this film compared to other body snatcher type movies, you know, and it's an idea that they're trying to create children, but it's like when they can't get out of town because the roads are closer, because the telegram is like, they really feel so isolated that it feels like a more contained situation than you know, if it were set in a city where you really couldn't put any kind of there would there'd be no hope because it would spread too fast.

I mean, it does feel that does give kind of almost more of a fairy tale feel that it feels like so kind of locked into that one little place and a child free place. I want to go to there. I absolutely love the nightmare ish sequence because it's not a dream, it's a living nightmare where she's running away after she sees Tom and pushes up. Sorry, I keep saying Tom, but Bill, And it's because maybe because I don't want you to think I'm talking to you Bill, but heaven forbid, I talked to you. But when she sees him and he tips over and you get that it's not a real bug, but it's the shadow of a bug, like a double exposure of this thing going across his face, and like I kept reading about, oh, this cockroach goes over his face and like, oh that was a cockroach, Like I couldn't really tell what the hell it was.

But then when she runs away from there and you get that montage of her running and the creature walking and Bill's face and all this, and you're just like, wow, this is great. And when she finally like falls down and everything, it's like you get that great like dreamy you know, effect to the screen and everything. I just love that kind of stuff. I mean this, it elevates it for me. Far beyond just like a normal you know, creature from outer space type movie.

Yeah, that's when you really go, oh, yeah, that's right. The editor. There's also edited Psycho and Verdigo, and it's really on display there. I'd have to look at them side by side to see if it's actually what I'm thinking of. But when I that senior talking about where she's running and it dissolves into the creature following in Pursuit, I do think about the Texas Chainsaw massacre and Sally running and then it dissolving to leave their face chasing her.

And I think that's also for Thirteenth Part two copies that from Chainsaw, where it's like the girl running and then dissolves to Jason following. And I don't know, I mean, I assume that lots of films have used that film grammar. I don't know that the horror filmmakers of that generation were necessarily influenced by this, but I did think about like how that I mean, it's not like it's walking, not running, but it's it seems to point towards the way that contemporary, more contemporary horror films, you know, would be telling that kind of that chas scene in a more kind of amplified way than this, where it's more kind of surrealed and it ends kind of ambiguous. Well, it ends like almost like a dream, but the language of it kind of it looks more intense films to come.

Well, yeah, because she falls and then when she looks up, she's back in town and it's like, how did you make that amount of distance in that amount of time. And it's interesting that you're saying it's a chase scene because I didn't picture the alien that she keeps flashing on. I wasn't picturing that as the alien chasing her. So I love that we have these two different ways of approaching that. That seems the one that really made me think of I walked with a zombie like the way that he's saying, the way he shell up with the big eyes, and everything felt very much like that.

But it's been so long I've seen that, I can't remember if there was a similar kind of constructed scene. But the Texas Chains of Massa, you think, yeah, like Cooper is definitely again a fifty sci fi feel guy, as we know he did Redivators from Mars. That kind of film language in Texas Change, so I was taken from Ony Barber, which I don't know if Hooper ever actually saw, but if you've watched any Barber and compare it to Texas Change, so I was like, oh, these have a lot in comment at many, many, many levels, that expressionist kind of element. There is definitely at the foreground of like a bit of cabinet adopted Kaligari kind of like seeping through where, and it's also dream nightmare awake, like the different realities melting together.

I can see Kaligari's being a little bit of an influence on the creature design. I mean, you've said Cuthulhu before. I believe Bill and I can definitely see that. But when the lightning flashes on their face or it seems like they might even be able to make their face change when they want to with that Sam scene, but like when she's in talking with the police captain and you see the lightning outside and you're like, Okay, this is probably going to show on his face and show that he's an alien at the end, And sure enough, the way that they do this double exposure of the alien face over their face, it doesn't really evoke the alien design. To me, it evokes more like, well, I guess it's like the early ermis saying like, you're so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece.

It looks like the way that the lines are looks almost like painting rather than the creature design. For me, yeah, it also evokes like the people who are victims in people who suffered significant physical damage in the Wars, Like it looks like physical jet traumatic damage to their body, which is they've like sinews and stuff exposed. I think I think that one chapter on veterans kind of implied that, like it's like the physical damaged veteran is underneath but it's you know, but on the surface they seem they seem healed and fine, but the under the surface there's there's trauma and damage that you can physically see on their's face when you know, the light hits. The boom of the thunder representing like the boom of artillery flashing back like connecting through to time.

The special effects in this like really tremendous because only the cockroach bit that is like, yeah, okaye. Otherwise, I love the way they use the overlay of kind of moving light static on the aliens so instead of just looking like rubbery dudes and suits, you get this really unnatural, uncanny motion and a strange kind of living organism that does feel like it came from the stars. We've talked a lot about Tom Twiker, but what do you guys think of Gloria Talbot as our lead actress. She's a big part of the appeal of it for me, and I think part of it is because I love all that happen allows and so I I you know, just to have her from that soap opera world bringing as the lead in this more fantastic soap opera, I think it's kind of a fun bit of casting.

I think Danny Perry writes about her in Cult Movies saying that like she brings like a like a like a stubborn fearlessness maybe to the situation. That like is also part of the appeal, that like, she's not backing away from it in like she's she's a strong character in this situation, Like she's trying to trying to find someone to help, but she's also not cowering in fear when she realizes that she's living with an alien, Like she's just still trying to solve the problem that makes her likable and relatable even in this kind of fantastic scenario. But I don't know that I feel the same way about someone like Charlie's Throne, who's a great actress but maybe not as well served in Astronaut's Wife, which has a lot of you know, common elements to this.

It's been a while since So Old that Heaven Allows. But when I feel I saw it was like, oh, yeah, I think she was in them when all don she splays the daughter, isn't it. She plays the daughter who it's not quite as monstrous as the kids in There's Always Tomorrow, But is the idea that, like she's she's imposing the curvative value. You can't believe you with that guy. I mean, let's think of what our friends are going to say like that, like that kind of peer pressure thing, but like even worse, because you're going to make your own kids feel like they're less happy in life because of your romantic choices.

And so that's what she represents in the cirqu film. So I do love that about this film that it kind of plays like those kind of domestic melo dramas of the Cirque style. But with this kind of fantasy monster element. So it's and the noir look of it too, So it's all these things I like about fifties films kind of swimming together in a way that I don't think. I can't think of another film that really blends them like that, which is part of why I think it's always kind of stood apart from even Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is also nourish and paranoid in a way that Lang could definitely appreciate.

But it's it's this maybe because of the of the domestic melo drama is stronger in this than Body Snatchers. It just it compliments it rather than feels like they're in competition. I had had that vague memory of it, and I did get the feeling that you could read this as like a meta sequel where it's like, oh, well, you were terrible to your mother, Now you get to go through a different kind of experience that will maybe give you some insight, which certainly it works quite well. Not that we get any kind of sense of her being that kind of person, much like with with Bill, we don't get anything of what she was before the film stars. But she does reprimand her mother in the first scene for like, you know, singing here comes to Bride like she's just irritable and stop singing that.

Dirge right, another one of the many negative things that is in the first part. That's a good point about marriage. Yeah, the film has a very low opinion of marriage on the outset. I think one of the strengths of her character is that they there's no hint to a hysterical woman in the characterization. She never tips over her frustration and anger feels real like it is genuine.

It's like, hey, no, you guys are all screwing with me like that. It hasn't rained in weeks like it feels. It feels so real and not theatrical. It feels quite modern in her portrayal of this woman. And I think also like the in the paranoia of the film feels lived in, so it doesn't like paranoia is definitely part of it, but it doesn't come across as the typical like yeah, the reds under the bed, whatever kind of invasion paranoia.

It is like, no, something is genuinely wrong and we need to deal with it. Well. It's also because of the time it takes, I mean in Vision of the Buddy Snatchers takes place over a series of hours, whereas this is like over a year trying to make this work with this alien. Yeah, I had a thought at one point it was like wow, Marge, onto which you said, something's not right real quick. Oh wait, it's a year later.

Ye know. I'm always looking for doubling in movies, right, and this is a great one to look forward and when you have you know, like you said, you don't necessarily ever see Bill in March together in the early part of the film. You don't even see their wedding, right, Like, it goes from them behind the scenes to one year later pretty quickly. Or do you see the wedding? You don't.

You see them kissing, and then you get the wedding later on. So it's nice that it's like there's kind of a void of a wedding, and then you've got the wedding scene later on between her friend and Sam, and it's kind of a similar scene when she pulls March pulls the lady aside and it's just like, hey, have you noticed like weird things going on and just kind of like trying to warn her. It feels very much like when Sam and Bill are having their little like, hey we know each other kind of thing, And here she's trying to reach out to her friend, one of the only other women in this, and is trying to warn her, but no, her friend just walks right out, No, I'm good, everything's fine, don't try to harsh my buzz here.

I'm so excited to finally get married. And then the way that Bill comes in and it's just like, what were you trying to tell her, darling? She doesn't have that agency that he has by being in this manisphere and you know, having his great cover story of selling insurance. Because that was the one thing when I was watching this yesterday my wife was like, doesn't anybody have a job, And I'm like, well, there's the bartender and the cops and the doctor. But yeah, I guess we just get the cover story of Bill selling insurance.

But I don't know what Sam does. I don't know what any of these other guys do other than sit around and drink before they get taken over by aliens. There's an interesting thing with watching it a second time because, as she said Phil, like it does move so quickly. You don't get a chance to stop and question anything, and there was quite a few things, just like Breeze by the first time, they didn't even like, wait a minute, hang on, And one of them is that, yeah, it's a year later, and the conversation when Sam comes to him is like, hey, you know, I'm an alien too. It's like, wait, that implies that Bill's been an alien for a year and has not had any contact with the other aliens, and they haven't seemingly done anything either.

And then you do get that the two cops arguing in the older cops as the younger cop, oh, you've been real cold to me for a couple of months now, so you're like, okay, well they've been infiltrating the cops in the background, but even that's still relatively recently. So there is an implication that Bill has been centers this sort of advanced guard but has yeah, but has seemingly gone a little a wall and has been enjoying or at least relishing being a human and in this world and experiencing it. And they're kind of like, you know, Sam turning up is kind of like, hey, buddy, remember what you're meant to be doing here? Yeah, the company sent me, they want to make sure that you're doing your job out here in the field.

That is actually like really massive implications for how to read the whole film and everything that comes before and after that. Yeah. I think I'd read one review of it somewhere which implied that the Aliens had already been there at the time that Bill gets taken over. But I feel like the only men we meet are drinking, which is a giveaway that they're not aliens. So I don't know if I've ever read it that way.

I do. The opening shot of the film is us traveling towards the Earth, which you could take as being like, well, the Aliens for arriving. I do like that they use bodies as dummies to trick people, like that's their only That's like their only technique for luring people is just a it's like a dead body on the ground. Hands down, the strangest, most perplexing thing in the entire film that it moves likely like they've clearly got us during attached to the arm of the dummeter jerk a little so that the person driving to it in the dark with nineteen fifties car headlights thinks, oh, it might be real. What I like the slow reveal of their powers when it comes to like him squeezing that lighter and you're like, oh shit, they are super strong.

Or later on when he sees that criminal outside and he closes his eyes and calls psychically to the cops, it's like, oh, this is a network here, you know. This is very much that you know, men together type of thing where it's just like, hey, buddy, got this problem over at my house, how about you come over and take care. Of this guy. Yeah. I actually love how subtle it is the way that they hint that he's different, Like the like the car headlights thing that he forgets to turn the car headlights on because his eyes are clearly superior and can see in the dark.

And there's only a little great bits like that that set it up without not without giving too much away too early, but also means that it's not like too obvious for March to be figuring it out, And that was something that was really under with the remake, where it was just like doing everything they could to be like, hey, look there are aliens. Yeah. I'm champing at the bit to talk about that one, but yeah, let's save that for a little bit. I love like you're saying the opening credits where we're getting closer to Earth and the way that the credits are curved as if they were coming from space to Earth the way that we're moving in and you get that great echo shot at the very end where you see Earth again after the cops like the mission's scrubbed, like get out of here kind of thing.

Try another planet, you know, and you get all of those ships that are leaving from Earth. I'm like, holy shit, how many times is this going on? Is this small towns all over the world or all over America? I mean, it's wild to see all of those alien vessels leaving when you thought. It was just the one.

Yeah, there is suddenly a lot of spacecraft, and its like were they just hanging out waiting to see how this one mission went? That kind of felt like more what was being implied, because it doesn't really make sense for them to all like completely bail, especially when most of the evidence has been destroyed that they were there because they turned into a big pile of mushi sparkly jelly when they die and they blow off the ship. So it's like it's not like there'd be evidence they could continue on, but it does seem like, ah no, this is a bust. Let's get out of here. It's not worth it.

Despite him early having saying you're overestimate, like how much life is in the galaxy or whatever dise he says, it seems a bit silly that they may all so easily. We get that line that she asks, and that ties into what we're discussing before about how Bill is falling in love with Marge and turning him more human. She has that line, you know, did you love your women on your own world? You know? And it's like, no, no, we didn't.

It's like their whole society seems to be set up and just very men are together, women are together kind of thing, and we just come together for breeding purposes. There is no love. And again that kind of does play into that red scare of like these creatures have no love, but this fine, red blooded American woman can teach how to love if you just stick with her for a little bit over a year, I guess yeah. And there's also the thing about that they were busy trying to fix the problem while their women died out. I think about how other fifties sci fi when the aliens address us, you know, in a human form, like it's like they're either explaining how they're here to correct our path towards nuclear annihilation, extending to other planets like they are so still, or if they're some Mars, like it's like a pacifist message, or it's trying to change our way of life like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

And here it's not really like they adopt a superior tone with the people when they talk to them. It's not like they're trying to show off that they know so much more or that they're trying to they're just trying to save themselves. Like it doesn't feel like it's extreme a threat, even though I guess I guess it technically is because they are deceiving humans and trying to force them into unwanted pregnancy. But like the the overall aim seems to be a little bit more gray than either the benevolent or the hostile takeovers of other sci fi films from that period. That theme is an aspect is definitely continued in Showdown at boot Hill, the other film that's written by Lewis Fittez and directed by Gene Fowler.

Junior that that is like the kind of the showdown at boot Hill at the end is very anti climactic and so like the main killing happens in the first five minutes, and then the vest is just kind of like, oh, you know, I just want to take this body, and the townsfolk won't let him because they're pissed at him, and it's just this weird standoff that's kind of what is actually happening here and what are what are these conversations actually pointing to it? It really feels like much like this, like the scriptwriter took a genre and just like smacked it up the side of the head and sends it off killed to a little bit. It so also thinking about how if you read this as a feminist film, how none of the women will help her, that she has to reach out to other men because the women are all so conditioned to want to have a marriage and children that they really ignore any warning signs and will not there's no sisterhood.

I haven't liked it. Tried to apply the Bechdel test to it. But did they talk about anything other than marriage and men? I'm trying to think if. They do, I don't think so.

There's very few conversations that the women have together, and what they do, it's almost all marriage related. There's the moment where I think it's Sam drowns and I I'm guessing that there's at least one unturned man, because there's a man that jumps into the water and tries to save him, and then the doctor accidentally kills him by giving him oxygen, and you get again this kind of horror moment. And I think the horror a lot of times has to do with sleeping, and because you've got this great horror moment earlier in the film where Marge is in bed and you cut to these feet going up the stairs and it's Bill's feet going up the stairs, but you don't really know who it is. It feels almost like there's a stalker in the house kind of a thing, and that ends up being diffused.

But then you've got after Sam dies and you've got his wife, his widow now in bed and you get the door opening and the light comes in as she's trying to sleep and oh, okay, shoot, it's only March. It's like they keep giving us these moments of like, oh, this could be a monster coming in or it could be a killer coming in, because yeah, they have human killers in here as well, or at least that creep with the gangster that we're talking about. After she's done Marge is done checking in on her friend, it's like then you dissolved to the chief of police or the captain of the police, like right in her face, just be like March you want to spend the rest of your life and in insane asylum, you know, like just really gaslighting this poor lady and just yelling at her like if you go around talking about monsters invading Norrisville, that's where you're gonna end up.

You know. It's like it's like, quit spreading the panic. And just the way that he's intensely like honored, it's like there's no intro to that scene at all. It's just like is a real quick dissolved from one to the next, and boom we were in there and he's just yelling at her like, hey man, I'm gonna lock you up, throw you in an asylum, which was like such the you know, like obviously they're much more like snake pits at this time, probably are today, but just how awful asylums were and that was such a Hey, listen, if you don't stand up and correct yourself as a woman, I can get you tossed into this asylum at a drop of ad. That's one thing that this does tie this film to a lot of the paranoid sci fi films, whereas rationalization is a way of enforcing the status quo and denying any kind of possibility of difference or change.

And also, you know, rationality is a threat that if you appear irrational, then you can be locked up and disappeared. The dying from oxygen thing is fascinating because that is like the one moment in the film where rationality just shatters, and that's immediately what makes the doctor go like oh, and he's just like then waiting for that bit of information which then comes from March when she comes to talk to him. That switches him over real quick, because he's already had that tangible piece of evidence that says rationality ain't what. It used to be. You were talking too bell about the whole idea of no confederates for March, and that it's one of the few women that she talks to, which and I don't think this would pass the Bechdel test.

One of the few women she talks to is the operator when she's trying to get Washington, DC, and the woman operator is not helping her out whatsoever. Sorry, all the circuits are busy and there's no isn't this strange or you know, like she is obviously somehow in on it maybe or just has been told this is what you say and is following along, just following orders. Yeah, I mean that that feels also like a call back to invasion. The body Snatcher's just like, you can't you can't, you can't make a call to another unaffected town because the Yeah, the lines of communication are all severed. All the forms of civilization useless, Like all the technology is useless, the guns are ineffective.

It's only like the primal bast that finally manages to kill one of them to stop them. Yeah, then just the little puppy in the basement. Which is another's craven connection. I was like, is this where you got the Hills Have Eyes Part two? Prince going after the having dog flashbacks and seeking revenge.

Yeah, well doesn't a dog get killed? And it was a teenage wearing wolf, So it's also like another. Yeah, yeah, there's a dog fighting. The way the dog gets it in that as well, clearly, I think I think it's like the Australian thing that I always remember, like doing a horror podcast series of years ago and doing Australian film. They're like, why does the dog die in all these films?

I thought Australians love dogs. It was like, yes, it's because we love dogs that the dog always gets it because the line has been crossed. That's when you know that shit hits that. That's one of those now it's personal moments for mad Max and the Road Warrior is when that that poor dog gets it. I love how eventually they end up getting like a lynch mob together to take care of these aliens.

And where are you going to recruit people? Well, at the bar, because those are the only people that are still human, are they that are still drinking? So let's get let's get an army of drunks and give them shotguns, and let's go out in the forest and try to find these aliens. That's something they change in the remake because in this film it's it's identifying who's had kids, whereas like whereas in the remake it is who's still a drunk. That's right, thank you.

It's all the fathers in this one, Okay, I mex. Yeah, it's much more emphasized the alcoholic part and the remachanimism. But I loved it, like they really, like, you know, there's saw a bit of writings that are like, well, you know they really improvised. Is the only real men of the you know, fertile American males and everything. It's like yeah, but I feel like they don't really lean into that much after having established it.

It feels just like, hey, how do we know? Oh well, this seems like the way, so let's say it and then just get on with it. But I feel like they do have a bit of a poke at it as a bit of a joke by having the person who instigates this awareness that this is a possibility is a dude coming up being like she had twins with two cigars, Like, oh, we're really gonna make We're gonna push this that a little bit further. So it's a bit silly, and. That's nice that that gets called back to in The Astronaut's Wife as well with the twins, but it also.

Shows that the military made is not how you solve the problem because they're they're bulletproof, and I feel like the remake they aren't bulletproof if I remember correctly, that they can be shot. Whereas this it really is down to the man's best friend is mankind's best friend? You know, as far as like pulling the you know, the exposed I don't know what you call them, if those are like external veins or tubes or whatever, but like fatally injuring the alien, it's the dogs that save this. The remake says, oh, hey, aim for the tubes on their necks, so they like make it explicit that, oh, yeah, the bullets don't work on the torso, but they work on the neck, and watching the like the original after the remaker was like, well, it does seem like they've got a carapace of some sort on their tours, so it's like maybe that was the case in the original, but it's never made explicit that it seems a bit more ephemeral as to why as the dogs that they will defeat them in the bull it's not so.

I love when they finally do find the ship and there's that device that comes up from the ship that I think is sending out a signal to all of the aliens to be like, hey, we're under attack. It looks like fri Conductor Seuss designed that machine that comes up with all the horns coming everywhere. It looks like something that would be played in Whoville on Christmas Day. And then you get all of the guys when they go inside and you see and it kind of doesn't make sense that you only see five of these bodies when they've obviously taken over way more than five. But there are five, you know, most familiar faces.

You've got the police chief, You've got Bill, You've got one of Bill's friends, and then the two cops. And I love that they just seem like floating there, and the way that they're tied down into those machines and everything. It's such a wonderfully eerie image of these guys just floating above the ground with these ties. It almost looks like they're being tied down, like they would float away if they didn't have these machines below them. Well, maybe I'm just saying this because it's the same woods that parts of Twin Peaks are shot at.

But I did think about the Black Lodge and how the possessed people are kind of like hung in the air like that, and it's probably just a coincidence, but I do think about that, like how the real person is preserved but the alien doppelgangers out in the world, and it does feel like it points towards things like what do on twin Peaks later. Well, it's almost like a blue velvet when you see the man in the yellow jacket just hanging out, like standing there in the room after Frank has murdered him. I mean, because we do get you know, saying like you only see five, but there is another shot where you see five more guys and yeah, that looks like they're just kind of swaying there. And that always reminds me of that man in the yellow coat.

When she sees alien Bill leave and go into the spaceship and just the shell is there, Like are the shells not able to go in and out of the spaceship? Like they don't explain it, but it's such an eerie image that there's just this husk of her husband standing there that I think is more effective than even the rubber suited monster as far as like being an eerie image. The floating at the end also reminded me. When they start pulling the plug on them, it reminded me of the Matrix, and you know, no, not like this. And they start pulling the plug on the major and the way they drop is kind of similar, not a bit more sudden in the Matrix.

But there's again that ending. Is one of the things that feels very modern about this film that there's so little like fanfare about it, like it's real. Death is just comes. But he says like, well, we don't know, maybe there's some kind of feedback, you know, if you pull the plug and then the diet it's like, do we have any other options? It's like nah, okay, and starts pulling the plug and then the people are running and they go and they did, and it's the way it's even shot feels like something from like a World War two film of looking back at your buddies running over the heel and then bang and they dwell.

And he does a mercy killing. There's the one guy, the cop who collapses and yeah, he's struggling, and then you've got Bill turning around and shooting him with the laser to disintegrate everything. It kind of reminded me a little bit of Looper, that Ryan Johnson film when the guy's running and his future self is having body parts cut off and he just starts missing his parts as he's trying to run along. Just this like there's an inevitability about it that uh poor. At that point you sympathize with Bill, and I like that.

You really get this moment of sympathy with him at the end where it's just like, listen, I was learning how to love. You know, I'm not a human, but I'm not that bad of an alien kind of a thing, you know, both sides. He's never given a moment of like being part of the real strong pushback against the people, Like he's only just part of the team that's being kind of eliminated by the time he even gets there, Like he's not really positioned as an antagonist the way other tellings of the story. Are, Yeah, your people have won. That makes you happy, doesn't it.

And she's like, doesn't say anything. Yeah, there's so much in this film where it doesn't tell you why this thing is happening. But it's not a mystery either, Like the thing of him doing the mercy killings. It's like it all has this emotional internal logic that we get enough of that if you're paying attention, it's pretty hard. And I think that really sort of is why this film, like it feels so different to a lot of the other film of that time that it is that that starting to seep into post modern horror and sci fi where there's more going on than there was a lot of other the forties and fifties er ter stuff.

But it's also more optimistic than the original ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or I mean Invaders of Mars ends in a dream it came from out of space. It's kind of more like, well, you know they'll be back, but it wasn't our time to really make that contact just yet. Like it, But there's the films that seem to be like, well, they're trying to communicate with us, but we're still not ready to accept them yet because of our own militaristic kind of impulses. Like it's not critiquing people's reaction to the aliens the way those films are, but it's also not quite as dark as I mean, almost everybody survives at the end of the day. Like it's still like they like they've learned a lesson whether or not, like you have no idea like how the men are going to react to the women now that they've gone through that experience, Like that's left your imagination whether or not they'll actually have changed for the better, or even if Bill will be upset that his wife's been sleeping with someone else for over a year.

You know, like you don't know what the outcome is going to be, but you assume the way it ends that right and might has been restored. Like it doesn't really leave you with those questions, but if you think about it, there's a lot of there's a lot that could go wrong after the credits roll with that town. They never were married actually, so now they're gonna have to look into that. So that's okay. They were sleeping in separate beds anyway.

So which is. Funny that it's just such a you know, a common occurrence amongst those movies that it doesn't even register sometimes now where I'm just like, oh, yeah, separate beds, you know, no big deal. But it's like, yeah, that's kind of a big deal. Don't forget about that. Hey, hey, doctor, is there something with my insides that I can't have kids?

Have you tried actually sleeping together yet. Sleep together like just sleep I mean, but the implication is that they are sleeping together. And I don't know, there's a lot of fifty sci fi films that really even hinted that. I mean, so, I mean, I know that they have to be kind of playing it safe, you know, for censorship reasons, but I think that, yeah, I mean, that is one also thing that keeps it a little bit more modern than some of the other ones, where you just assume that everybody is sexually inexperienced in the in those stories of invasion, the body snatchers and the other I mean, they're chased relationship. They might they might flirt heavily, but you know, you don't get the impression impression they're actually going to sleep together, whereas this is explicit.

Having that sex hygiene film in the background of his field bography does feel significant here because of that likes he's a filmmaker, has at one point within the confines of official military acceptance, being able to engage with that kind of media, idea, ideas and media. And he actually there's another film he made as part of his military service that he was as an editor on that he won an oscar called Seeds of Destiny, which was post war actually and was about the like the refugee situation and the output the fallout from the war of how many people were left homeless and ravaged and destroyed, and thinking now like that is also what this film is dealing with, Like it's dealing with refugees from a mass destruction and how they're trying to deal with that, which is also fascinating.

Did work on John Houston's Let There Be Light, that film about. I think it was just sex, hygiene and Seeds of Destiny that he was involved in. No, he was. Jim Fowler Junior was one of the editors on Let There Be Loved. But so, but that's also dealing with the trauma of I mean to the degree that it was suppressed by the government, but just that idea of the of the effects of war on men, because that's that's something I find fascinating about.

The whole explosion of suburban in this period where this film is set, is all those provisions to keep soldiers from rebelling the way they did at the end of World War One, you know, as far as like having things of the g I Bill put in place so that when all these people came back from overseas, they weren't going to riot that they, you know, were treated so badly with compared to the veterans of World War One, that they have all these incentives built in so that you know, the suburb suburban idea like really flourishes in the wake of World War Two because of those safeguards against rebellion. But yeah, the whole idea of the of the of the traumatized soldier. I just think it's It's something I never thought about with this film until kind of reading some of the essays in preparation for this conversation, and I think that's a real interesting Again, I don't know how much of it was articulated as they were creating it, but it's fun.

It's a fun way to interpret it. For sure, I would be pretty comfortable saying, I mackon it was fund and center of Owl's mind, knowing that he had worked on those World War Two films that he had been you know, in being in the media departments of the military means he has access to a lot more materials that aren't otherwise seen by a lot of people in the army. A lot of suppressed materials, thinking about like I was a teenage werewolf, Like it's really easier to read I was a teenage werewolf. Was parable about going into the military, where the school is the military organization, you know, the doctor who is treating his issues in order to make him into a better student, more able to do his tasks, and the fallout of that is somebody who occasionally explodes but also showdown at boot heel.

Like the instigating kind of thing in the background of that is like Charles Bronson is a short guy who everybody looks down on and he doesn't get treated well and he's got nothing, you know, it's not good enough at anything other than shooting. So he goes and becomes a US marshal and a bounty hunt to it. It's that's like, well, there's no jobs in the town, or go join the military, and you end up going off and collecting just like years and years and years of trauma, and then you try to run pick it and everything's exploding around you because all you know how to do is skill. It's like, oh yeah, no, Fowler was making films about traumatized war veterans stage weird. We'll forget you know, it's a whole I mean the gender aspects of that.

It's a whole other conversation between like having no mother in the home or the teachers at his school are women. But there's also that does that amazing thing like that there's only two people killed in that, and one is a man and one's a woman, and the teenage boy and a teenage girl. The teenage boy is in a red riding hood situation walking home through the dark woods and screaming like that is very feminized. And then the young woman is like in her safe space in the gym class at school and feels comfortable and in control, and him violating a space like yeah, he Voula is playing with all of this stuff through all of the films, like very aware. So let's go ahead and take a break and we'll be right back after these brief messages.

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It seemed like he was from another planet. He was. You were carrying our only hope for future. Let's talk about a honeymoon being over and now the Senatl's. Richard Burge for Malros places Susan Walter I'm Married a Monster on the UI and Thursday.

Night of the Movies The Preservation of the Species of Worts both plays. All right, we are back and we are talking about I Married a Monster from outer Space. But let's talk about the inevitable remake which dropped the from outer Space and just said I Married a Monster from nineteen ninety eight. It was a UPN original movie. I absolutely had the best time watching this movie because the version I watched was taped off television, so you got all those sweet nineteen ninety eight commercials.

That was probably my favorite part of this because I had seen this before. This was directed by Nancy Malone, with a screenwriting credit for Dwayne Poole. It's got Richard Bergie. Bergie here was from What the Sentinel. Playing this, he kind of reminds.

Me Still Part two. I love it, but all still pot Too is one of the creep Americans paying the kills. He plays a creep really well, really well. And then we've got Susan Walters as our main character here called Kelly. He's called Nick.

The choice that he makes as an actor or maybe that he was directed to do to just play an alien more than any alien, Like you can't be around this guy unless this is just the way that men were in nineteen ninety eight, but just he is the weirdest guy ever and he is much more. Ah. He he takes everything from television, like we've seen characters like this. I mean, he's almost like the Chauncey Gardner of Monster movies or you know, like there's what p K the Indian film, and just all of these characters where they watch television and get phrases off of that, and you know, at one point somebody says something about news and he goes news at eleven you know, and just it's very strange. He even watches, of course, clips from the original film on television.

But really it's a lot more of like, you know, melodramas and learning how to love people, love his wife through the magic of television. I don't have a ton to say about this one, even though it is a very interesting update to it. We've got more dogs and more dog death and some the creatures in this Holy shit, this is nineteen ninety eight CG and boy of voy, can you tell the budget limitations with this? I got to say before we revit, like watching the TV thing, like, there was not a lot to recommend about this film, would you really boil it down? But that scene where all of the dudes are in the bar just watching some black and white lifetime movies so intensely instead of sports while the bartender is getting annoyed, it's just like stunning.

No, no, it's like perfect, Like that's that was reddible, like the most belangiomatic circuit kind of the lifetime movie on the TV the oh so good. You think about how TV is used in all that Heaven allows, and it's like shown as like the last the last gasp of entertainment for lonely, unmarried women. It's like brought into the house like a curse by her children, like because it's like, oh, you're not going to ever have a lover again because you're too old now, So here's a TV just to numb your brain, Like it's it's TV's portrayed so negatively by films in the fifties because it's the competition for free So it's funny that here it plays such a big part as like the way aliens learned about people that it's and that feels like I forget it if like Twilight Zone movie or like.

It feels like that is Explorers. Yeah, Explorers, that's what it was. Yet like I knew some Jo Dante thing, but like yeah, like it feels like that's an idea I've seen before. The way that he learns the wrong lessons from like a like a kind of a rough sex scene on his honeymoon is like a bizarre kind of idea. The one thing I will say in its defense, which I agree with every criticism of it, the one scene I thought was maybe an improvement was the scene where the female friend who's married to this I forget if Sam has the same name in this but when she's rocking the boat, and she's literally rocking the boat in this version to the point where her being playful ends up killing her husband, and because she doesn't have a context for why that's happening, it feels so sad that what she thought was innocent actually brought about like the death of her husband and she it's not like they linger on the pain, but it feels like it's played more real than how things unfold in the in the in the Fouler version, like that's the one scene I thought like, okay, well that's that's actually giving a little bit more depth to it than the original.

But otherwise, yeah, it's it's it feels like compared to remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or even the remake of Invaders of Mars, it feels like it's it's knowingly telling you that it's a remake of a fifty sci fi film, Like it's it's not. It doesn't feel like as heavy, you know, it doesn't feel like it's seriously rendered, like it feels like it's it knows that it's doing a remake. If I married a month from Matter of Space and it's only really thinking about an audience that's coming to it with a little bit more nostalgia than I think, like say, the Philip Coffman version of Invasion that Martin Snatriss is trying to be a serious science fiction movie, like this doesn't feel like it has that same kind of weight behind it.

If I had watched this remake first, I probably would never have watched the original, because I would think it's exactly what you think a fifty sci fi film called I Married and Once Am out of Spaces like this nineties film in it that in that fifties jag that we were in in the nineties of remaking everything like fifties and you know, bringing back on this stuff from that ear and it's like they turn it into such a nineteen fifties sci fi b film, like they make it eat and more what you think the original will be. And there's almost nothing of everything we've talked about. There's no sensfulty. It's what twelve minutes longer than the original and yet has so much less content. There's so much more of the fifties filler that you expect in a fifty sci fi film, and you also get a whole chunk before that introduces the characters and sets up who they are and everything, and adds nothing to the film and ridiculously significantly reduces a lot of the ambiguous meeting that we've been talking about.

Yeah, you get so much before they get married, and so you actually get to see the bill type character Nick as a regular person. So then when it's the wedding and he's just standing there like a lump and has no idea to say, I do yes, I understand wedding jitters. But he is such a different person. That's the thing about the original is that we don't really know him very well, so and the way that try and place him it seems a lot more like a normal human being after he gets changed into an alien. But then again we do have a year gap with that.

But here, seeing the wedding, seeing just how he doesn't even know how to react to anything, you're just red flag should be going off like crazy. Yeah, the original film sets up nothing of how they might have learnt about us, and yet he seems to relatively like seeing in pretty okay, and in this they're like, oh no, he's been watching TV, so they know stuff. And then he's just like completely lost to the point where everyone should be like, have you had a stroke? Are you okay? But I was just like watching this being like, oh man, this is so absolutely directed by a woman who read Men from Mars, Women from Venus, Like this is the Men of Mars, Women of Venus remake.

I very didn't want stuff about his space and it's so so it's not even that it's painful, It just like it just happens at you. And I had such a different experience than you guys because of the adverts, because the adverts so added to the experience. But it was just like Cult America blasting at me cranked up to eleven, and they were indistinguishable. The only way that I knew that it was an advert some of the times was that it had text on the screen and the editing was faster. Otherwise, the way that they were shot and the music and the acting was all identical.

And it was just like I think it would be coming back to the film because it would be some like setting up a story in a narrative and they're like, oh no, they're selling me robotushin from Dr Mum, And it was just it was this psychic assault. That was incredible, Like it was worked so well on this demented piece of American ideological bullshit, and I really hope that that's the only version that ever continues to exist in the world, because like, you guys are used to that kind of advertising, and I'm like, there was maybe one or two in there that I was like, oh, I think these did get portered over to Australia, Like the eminem one was kind of familiar, but like the vast majority of them were just like and then oh the whiplash from like the then it was like, oh, the New England adverts, and there was the thing about the new Millennium seminars with the religious due that went from like out of space to the Bible, and it was just like, this is too much.

I can't deal this. Like I think it took me like three hours to watch it because I get to be just like Aws, go and make the sell a cup of tea and just have a breathe for a second, because then you come back to the show itself, it'd be these insane cgi effects and this Banana's overacting and underacting at the same time, just like crazy nineties and it's just being like coming in like left and right punches, and I was like, oh man, I had a hell of experience. But my god, it was also avoid. Those commercials for the Truth of the New b M with the Bible and everything. Those were amazing.

Yeah, those those really it did feel like part of the program a lot of times. But going back and seeing like Nicktine patch commercials and hot Pockets, toaster pizza pop up times for things, I mean, it was so quaint for me. I mean it was only twenty eight years ago. But even just seeing like an original you Better lay a Finger on my Butterfinger Simpsons commercial, I was like, oh, yeah, I remember these days. This was so Yeah.

The film felt like it was a Nickelodeon film. It was like something like like you know Alex Mack or something like. That was the main one that we had on TV when I was a kid. And now I have to go track down every episode of Mercy Point because it was a hospital in space. What the hell was that I did?

I Like, I was reading stalogue back in the day in Fangoria and I was just like, what is the I never heard of this? I mentioned the score. O Jesus Christ. It was so can and so just non. It was the opposite of the other film with that silence so beautifully.

This was just this canned nineties music, like a Nickelodeon show. And then it turns out the composer is David Shaia, who scored like Fincher's Zodiac and things like All the President's Men and the Taking of Balum one, two three, the conversation, I'm like brook clearly, he just like he had some vet bills or something. I don't know. Oh, but did you see who produced it? It only had one producer on it.

It was Ste's Cigal and I was just like that name sounds vaguely familiar. He's a porno director and roffy exploitation horror film director. He directed Drive in Massacre and Marilyn Chambers Insatiable one and two are probably the two most famous. And he did like Dirty Dolls and teenage Jailbait, and this was like one of his few outside of his pornocean stuch. He didn't produce a whole lot of other things, which was really interesting because I would have sworn that this was part of that Almond cycle, because there were quite a few remake of fifties sci fi films in the nineties, and it seems like he maybe he just managed to pick up the right to this one and was just trying to jump on the bandwagon.

It is kind of a one and done deal. It's interesting that a roughy sex type scene would then be brought into the Honeymoon sequence, as like as the wrong lesson to learn from men. I love how it Also the beginning makes so much of the point of like, oh, it's spring and the weather is beautiful, and this strange thunderstorm is so unusual in passing. And then that night they're having sexy times beside a roaring fire? Why is the fire?

What is happening? Oh? Man? They Yeah, they were leaning into some cliches here. It was.

It was kind of glorious. The director of this was an actress primarily, but then she definitely got into making movies around I think eighty one, and then it's funny to look at some of the other things that she had done over the years. So we talked about Starman earlier. She did an episode of Starman. She also was directing episodes of Star Trek Voyager, which was interesting.

At least two episodes of that and yeah then she it was like she was working for UPN after that because she was also doing Dawson's Creek. Also the TV series The Guardian. Do you guys remember that one? So it was another one where I was just like, oh yeah, I remember this thing when it was on. That was Simon Baker show, so classic.

Oh yeah, Australian actor Simon Baker. No relation to the Freakin movie where the woman makes loved of the tree right. No, Unfortunately that that suggests a show waiting to be made. Oh yeah, the. TV version of that movie would be fantastic.

Goods it com I saw. The screenwriter for the remake Head is one of those guys who has the mix of Christmas and horror films. Yeah, he knows how to make some money. Yeah, even I haven't seen some of these, but like Return to the Batcave, Flintstone Christmas, like Next Up Christmas, Timeless Christmas, a Royal Lambert Affair, just though there is one here, The Face or Face the Die for which is directed by Jack Bendo who did Midnight Hour and Child's Play three that I've been wanting to see. But otherwise I think this might be the only film he's I check out of that.

I really like the character actor Tim Desarn, who plays the I guess he's a drunk in this movie, Bud Riley. He just seems he seems almost homeless at times. It just seems really kind of mess up. I was trying to make a note of that, and I'm just like, I don't even know how to politely refer to this kind of person stereotype and film any more, A bit touched in the head, like that's it was pretty bad. He was doing a great job of it, but it was just like it felt like they had three stereotypes that they all rammed together into one.

But then when he gets taken over, he's just fine. Old Tom knows how to spell aliens m oo n. But yeah, Richard Hurt as well as Richard Hurd who plays the uncle doctor in this. Yeah, there were a lot of Seinfeld actors in this one, for sure, Like having Bernie Martin as the bartender for this one, and I was just like, Oh, it's Jerry's dad, Okay. I always got that great voice.

And he's so not happy having all these guys hanging out at his bar not drinking anything. I mean, he's no slap slapsy MAXI, but you know he's there. So I was so convinced that it was that the best friend, that the Sam guy was Gil Bellows with the rough VHS rip, and I was like, wait, no, he looks like Gil Bellow's now, so it can't be him. He definitely didn't have the chartism of the original unfortunately, So yeah, that he's dead scene was a more meaningful, but I didn't. I was more happy to see him go than in the original where it's like, oh.

I like Sam. I was laughing quite a bit at Well One. We were talking about the commercials that you would get the here's the break part, and it would always be stuff that has yet to happen, so it's like, oh, stay tuned, you know this is coming up, you know. But the first one of those that happens, it's right after we see him mowing the lawn and he's mowing a crop circle in the lawn. And then of course I had just seen Disclosure Day where it's like, oh, hey, you've had alien encounters and the grass starts to lay down and make a fucking crop circle.

I was just like, oh boy, oh boy. I don't know if either of these movies handled that very well at all. Man, I forgot about that. I think that my brain just couldn't even take that in because it's just like, wait, what, Yeah, I mean one of the adverts was for the video release of the X Files movie, the original one, and I was like, oh, yeah, this is this is a film made in the shadow of the X Files. And a bit of a bit of fire in the sky there too with her alien abduction scene, which is something that the original doesn't have at all, Like there's no alien abduction Marge, whereas this year is actually abducted and impregnated.

So definitely trying to ride. Those unsuccessfully though, which you wouldn't get the unsuccessful pregnancy. Well I'm talking about the first one. Yeah, Yeah, that was that was That was the solid bit of body horror that kind of came out of nowhere for a Nickelodeon story. A lot of excellent use of the color purple though in those the Goo and the CGI.

If you're found of color purple doing weird stuff. Yeah, those aliens, I mean, god, they were rough with the the big like insect legs and everything. I know, they were trying to make them look even more alien than the Originals. But man, oh man, they looked like they had escaped from the lawnmower. Man.

It is beautiful. Like I loved them, but they didn't work for this film. They didn't. They didn't add anything or help it in any way. But just taking them out on their own is a weird piece of like cinema art history.

They do have a vibe that I did quite enjoy. But yeah, there was That's the thing. It was like all of the parts of this film that on their own were like cool, but all together it was just like, oh, fuck off. Houston permission to rotate the panel forty degrees over. Roger bad two thirty six PM, one hundred and twenty five miles above Earth, Shuttle astronaut Spencer Armor cost suddenly lost contact.

What the hell is that? I'm sure race from NASA. It's about your husband. What happened? There was an explosion?

We lost contact for about two minutes, Jou. What happened up there? Everything shut down? No, Sam, something roughful. And then I felt.

It was one of you. To most he seemed the same, but to his wife he had become something. Not of this world. Ah, yes, ses this here where is too heart beats, it's trings, Missus m across the fins. Everything's gonna be.

Just know what happened during those two minutes was an explosion. She's beginning to fear that the lives inside her aren't human, and he will stop at nothing to protect them. If you are watching this tape, if you're watching this tape, Missus Ramacosta, I'm probably dead. He's not your husband anymore. Where are you gonna go?

Hi, where you don't go? I love you, Johnny Depp, Charlie's theren, the Astronaut's Wife. Everything I see, you see, everything you think I know. So I wanted to also talk about the Astronaut's Wife, which is not an official remake of I married a monster from outer space, or as I kept trying to say, so, I buried a monster from outer space because I kept getting so, I married an axe murderer mixed up in there. I saw Astronaut's Wife theatrically when it was out and there was a point in Johnny Depp's career he might still be in that point where it was just the roles that he was playing.

I was just not a fan of whatsoever, and I probably saw this more as a Johnny Depp film at the time rather than a Charlie's Throng fan, because I was not that familiar with her work. It was interesting, like between this and The Devil's Advocate, it felt like those two movies are very married together, where it's my husband, something's going on with my husband and I don't know exactly what it is, is he made a deal with the devil or is he possessed by aliens? And she just seems to be playing the same character in both. I found it very interesting that she and Johnny Depp are almost twins in this movie. They both have these short blonde haircuts.

Like seeing Johnny Depp with much more light brown hair than he usually has was unusual. Seeing Nick Cavetti's as his buddy was unusual as well, Like his I guess it'd be his co pilot because he's an astronaut and now and just space he goes and comes back possessed with some sort of creature inside of him, and then it's all about let's get you pregnant. And yeah, I definitely was seeing this for the Rosemary's Baby episode, just because when he's having sex with her, it really feels like Rosemary's Baby. I mean, he feels very He's as creepy as guy, maybe even creepier. But I have to say I don't like this movie whatsoever.

I ended up this was probably my third time trying to watch it, and after a while I just had to turn it off because I was just so. Sick of it. I just did not care for this one whatsoever. And I'm curious what you guys think of the Astronaut's Wife. I hadn't seen this since it opened in ninety nine.

I saw it in the theater as well. I think at the time that it came out, I still hadn't fallen out of love with Johnny Depp, like as an actor. Like I think of nineties Johnny Depp as like doing a lot of interesting, kind of quirky characters. It's the era of ed Wood and Gilbert Grape and cry Baby and Arizona Dreams. So I wasn't really turning on Johnny Depp as an actor the way I might later on, as far as kind of hit the characters he chooses to play.

But I think I went into it as a hardcore Tom Noonan fan because I had worked for Tom Noonan between when The Wife came out and when this came out as a just putting up flies for one of his plays, like I knew him. I knew him kind of for a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bit, but like this was like the first thing he made after that, like I had kind of known him. So I was just excited to see Tom Noonan in a movie on the big screen. And so he's only in it kind of a little bit, but I was like I was there for Tom Noonan, And at the time, Charlie Throne I only knew as the Anita Ekberg type character and celebrity the Woody Allen film, So I didn't see that thing You'd Do or Devil's Advocate until after this. So I only knew her from just being this attractive woman in the Woody Allen movie and as an object in that movie.

She's not really much of a character in it, so I only come to know her as a comedian and all the things she can do later. So I only really know her as like someone that's being cast for looks. When I go see this movie in the theater and I think because of the pixie haircut, I'm thinking Rosemary's Baby one hundred percent. I didn't even really connect it to I Married a Monster until we started prepping for them. Oh yeah, I guess it is taking a lot from that.

And Johnny Depp also did a Polanski film that year, because I think I saw Ninth Gate in the theater that year too. I remember finding it really kind of de turgid and bland and like being very disappointing when I saw it, And it was a real struggle to finish at this time because I just felt like there's not any part of it where it really seems to come to life. But as a late nineties, mid budget New Line movie, I do find it interesting now as a time capsule in a way that I didn't before. Like I think it has a slickness and a sleek to it that is kind of interesting, and you don't really see movies quite at the scale that often anymore, feels like, and it is trying to be trying to be a real movie, Like it's not camp the way I Married a Monster for TV is like it's trying to be as seriously rendered as Rosemary's Baby.

It's not a B movie. I did think it was that that was it. The said vicious version of My Way is so prominently I'm like, oh, I guess that is that point in where like it's post Nirvana and like we're trying to bring punk into things like this, But like I think this is maybe hurt by the fact that Johnny Depp's character is like so unpleasant and so prominent throughout it that it makes it kind of a less fun movie to watch. Then, I married a Monster of Matter space where you kind of like Bill at times, like he's you don't really know what Johnny Depp's character's ultimate mission is other than to force this woman at having his twins, Like, I don't know that the agenda of the of the Aliens is quite spelled out.

Thinking about it as a nineties film at the age that I saw it, it's post Cold War, it's pre War on Terror, It's Clinton era. There are military conflicts in those years like Bosnia and such that like you would hear about, and there were things like the World Trade Center bombing or David Koresh like there's there's violent things that happen in those years. It's pre Columbine I think, where it's around that same time, but it's like not like we're really engaged in some obvious military components, so that like when he's using these powers for collaborating with like the defense industry, and she questions like who are we even fighting with? Like that at that age, I think I would have had like that same question, like what is this even?

Have we maybe moved past the point where the military is really quite such a concern and that was also met like in like early twenties, so you know, a naivete but like it's not really got the same Cold War paranoia as the original film, And it feels like if it's talking about anything, it's talking about abortion in being forced to carry to term a pregnancy that you don't want, even more explicitly than the remake of I'm Married a Monster, it seems to be like that's what it's about, and the man's aggression towards stopping the woman from carrying through with this. So I think if there's a reason for them to tackle the similar themes, I can think they're trying to make it topical that way, Like that's the period where they're trying to pass these what is the term like partial birth abortion, so it's.

Now they'll say insane things like, oh, yeah, the one carried the baby for nine months and then it was aborted. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about. You can be thirty nine weeks pregnant walk in and say I'd like an abortion, and everybody's gonna say sure. Sure. It's still not quite willing to totally piss off the pro life audience, but it's still trying to tackle that theme.

So it's it's having it both ways, or at least attempting to. From my money, so it kind of feels like it's trying to be topical but play it's safe, so that, I mean, that's kind of my takeaway with like, it's not a film I'm minute heard to ever really revisit, but it's not. But I'm glad that. I'm glad that I sought for this because it is interesting to see how those themes could be carried over into that time period and whether or not that posts problems for telling that story. I remember renting this on video, but it came out and overnight Mendom and watch you with my dad.

My only vague memory is finding it distastefully exploitative, and other than that it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I went, like, Mike mentioned about it in relation to this, and it was just like, man, I will watch a lot of stuff you, Mike, and this is one of those points where I draw a line in the zand and go nut. I don't remember why, but it was just rubbing me so much the wrong way when I saw it that I'm like, nah, nah, my life's too short. And what you're talking about is like I'm getting an inkling of why. I think why I possibly did that of that real like centrist kind of like trying to have its cake and eat it bullshit really pisses me off when it's like actually a filthy exploitation film and it's not honest enough to engage with that.

Like looking at it now, I'm just like, oh, boy Species, and it's like revisiting Species. A couple of years ago. I was like, man, this film is a gnarly not good hot mess, but my god, is it committed to being what it is? And I really like respect that And it's still like has some kick because of that, and it's just like, oh, I know if that's just why she's doing Boy Species, but like, you know, it doesn't you know some dude. Writing and directing her who's like only other things is like writing one of the shitty gandyman's equels.

Yeah, I'm glad I made the call, but I also just looking out of here at letterbox and seeing one of the people I've stated in the lot firs A lot of the review if Extra was really boring, like, yeah, actually it's just watch Extra Gain instead. In both of the previous movies, I'm trying to remember if in the ninety eight if there was I think there might have been one person of color, there might have been an Asian person somewhere in town. But it's like there's no real prominent people of color. And when it comes to the astronaut's wife, we've got Joe Morton coming in, and Joe Morton is he knows the truth. He's the only one who knows the truth.

And of course he gets terminated by NASA. So it's this you know, black mark against his record. He's the one that is telling Charlie's tharn. Listen, you know what's going on with your husband? Have you noticed any changes in behavior?

And he is the one that knows everything before she does. So it's like the. Agency that we had March have and in the original where she's figuring everything out that's taken away from her. Even Charlie de Ron's character is having all of these dreams and sees herself dead with a radio because that's how her friend killed herself, and you know she's seen her the Nick Cassavetti's character go nuts and everything, but Morton is the truth teller and he's the one that stops her at a toy store and it's just like, hey, have you noticed this stuff going on? And then when she finds out that he's been fired, she's like, yeah, no, you're crazy, I gotta go, and just completely discounts him.

But it's like, oh, this is the only prominent black character in any of these movies, and he's seen as being this unreliable person until he's not. But then even then he's pretty powerless when it comes to what goes on in this movie. Yeah, well, it's funny, like he's the brother from another planet, so you would think he would know about extraterrestrials. But yeah, I guess that they are trying to make a commentary that the two people that won't be believed by these white male power establishment are person of color, a woman, you know, So I guess they lay that on not so thick as far as like, I mean why, I mean, that's up with the viewer to decode. It's not like they have the men saying, you know, even prejudice things or anything like overtly.

But yeah, no, I think that's intentional in the casting. All of the great paranoia that's in Rosemary's Baby is just so wasted here. I mean, they are so going for Rosemary's Baby. I mean the apartment and everything and just I mean this crazy. I don't know how much astronauts make, but her apartment is probably one of the biggest apartments I've ever seen in my life.

I think that's a real problem when you get a young filmmaker who's obsessed with a certain classic film and they're making something because of that previous film without having it connected to any kind of tangible experience in the present timeline. And that's something for what I remember of Asinaw's Wife and what you're talking about is like what it feels like, it's like this is an ego trip film where you're like, want to remake this film that you endure and try and have it be like meaningful in such, but you don't actually understand what it was connecting to, so you don't you aren't able to connect that into something in the contemporary experience, and so it just ends up coming off as like a trashy exploitation that has no soul, I.

Mean, doesn't need necessarily guys in rubber suits, but it doesn't have any of the visceral kick of a proper exploitation movie. It's like it's ninety nine percent just people talking in rooms. It's not kind of held back by cheesy special effects like the TV version of the but it's also there's not a whole lot that's visually interesting about it. Like it's stylishly showing conversation scenes, but that's like that's nearly all that it is. And I think that some of Rosemary's Baby has beyond just more interesting kind of ideas and music and such, but it just feels more cinematic, I guess, And that's kind of like a kind of maybe it was like a meaningless term sometimes, but there's there's not like a there's is not a lot that's visually memorable about it, like as as storytelling compared to Polanski or even compared to the Fowler film.

I mean, where there's there's really a lot of visually interesting things happening with like very little money. Like this, I don't know where all the money went other than maybe paying the actors, because I can't really see what they're spending it on. It's not really that like there's not much of a spectacle component to it for a science fiction thriller. Now, the most spectacle you get is at the end and spoilers for the astronaut's wife at the end when they kind of call back to her friend dying with the radio and the bath or the shower, and you see her and the water is pouring out and it's like, oh, geez, what's going to happen? Is she going to kill herself?

It's like, no, she. Actually started the bath upstairs and all the waters pouring down on Johnny Depp. And then she's the one in control, like plugging in the radio kind of thing, and you get all of the light bulbs. I don't know why they have lighting like this in this house, but just all the light bulbs behind her start going off, and I'm like, this is their idea of a really spectacular shot. It's like, okay, okay, and yeah, you got the whole thing of you know, finally seeing the alien, I guess, and it just looks like a big old pile of goo.

I mean, it's just again, it's almost like an Abyss type alien where it's the clear and you know, trying to possess her and everything. And so it's like the alien ends up winning after all of these movies. The alien is the winner because then we get to see her twins at the end. Because I was trying to think, which is nice the twins calling back to I married a monster from outer space? I kept thinking when I was rewatching this, I was like, is this a dream?

Does she wake up at the end and it's a dream and he hasn't even gone into space yet? Like what? And then I had to you know, go back and rewatch the end again and be like, oh no, okay, this is this is her reality. This is supposed to really have happened. She ends up with another astronaut, it looks like at the end, and now she's got her long hair.

She's been you know, normalized and everything heterosexualized, and now she's got her new hobby and everything and her special alien children it's like, okay, you know, like when when the guy's like, what do you think they're going to be when they grow up? It's like give them time. It's their first day of school, and then that little look that they exchange where it's like, all right, these creatures are going to become astronauts just like their dad. Yeah. I mean, if it hadn't been Twins, it would have felt even more like in a cult horror movie like The Omen, you know, as far as like you know, or Village of the Damned kind of feel a little bit like.

But it feels like, yeah, it does feel like closer to that concept of the Antichrist than an alien invasion movie because of the scale of it, But the fact that it's twins kind of complicates that reading of it. But it does. That's the vibe you get more so than the other artie snatcher type movies. Have we had any films like these recently? I couldn't.

I haven't been watching a lot of contemporary stuff in the last couple of years, so my finger's not on the pulse enough. To what was that twenty seventeen film Life with was it Ryan Reynolds where they go out into space that was. More of an alien kind of thing. It wasn't as heavily on this sort of like suburban marital children kind of horror stuff. It's like, it's definitely there.

At the original I was a married monst from out of Space, but watching the remake and how much the remake was like, oh, this could be made is like a right wing spoof film now where it's like, oh, the men are turning into soy boys and drinking SOI lattes, and you know, it felt so ripe for that kind of remake. Now that I'm kind of I'm a little bit surprised that somebody hasn't done something with it recently. Yeah, there have been a few forced pregnancy type movies in the Omen vein, I think was it immaculate? Was that recently or yeah? And then the Omen prequel, like but more like in the occult horror vein, I can't remember a sci fi horror movie like I Married a Monster Matter Space.

Definitely skewing towards more than like the abortion theme stuff, which is you know, not even present in the original, whereas it doesn't end nothing so much on that focusing on the marital and the gender relationship part. Nothing really jumps out at me as far as that goes. And I'm trying to think especially just around the forced pregnancy, caring to term kind of stuff, because it does feel like that's obviously still very much an issue right now, and if anything, yeah, I would think that there are some Christian films that are like that. Probably part of the reason for that is so much of the very feminist proact did women lead strain that has been exploding through horror cinema and thriller cinema is probably what like something like I married monst matter space is probably a little bit it's not active enough for that kind The way that that is manifesting now is very explosive and very active in the women's role, and it brought to mine is something like ready or Not, where it's you know, it's the woman marrying into the Satanist family, which is again kind of overlapping with the Rosemary's Baby like strand and you know, not knowing who you're marrying and things like that.

That that feels like, that's the way that it's kind of manifesting now is more in horror and more leaning back towards that Rosemary's baby Satanist a cult in cultest kind of group, so it's obviously ties into you know, marrying someone finding out their family's maga. As such. There was a psychological horror film called Grace where it's like a woman's force or she chooses to carry a baby to term only and they say that the baby's still born, but then I guess the baby is born and has a taste for blood. That's what's his name? He's been doing really cool?

Oh yeah, I love what's his name? Yeah, he's great. I'd love I celebrate his whole catalog. He did the one about the Killdozer dude, Paul Seallet Yeah, Paul select. Yeah.

His first film was that was Grace, which was not a very good film. But I love what he's been doing since then. The what was the name of his Killdozer film? That's tread? Have you seen that?

I saw the trailer for that and I was like, ooh, sign me up, and then I completely forgot about it. It's so good. I've seen it like three times and it gets better each time. He gets to have his cake and eat it for making a film about kildoz a dude, it's really really good. It's a documentary where he gets to do the recreations as well, so it's like, yeah, you get to have fun like destroying it down, but also really drive her of the point of how messed up this is and what's wrong with people?

And actually, now that I think of a tread would actually make a fascinating with I Married a Monster from Ota Space. Yeah, he's a fan of that film as well, because I feel like it's definitely in the DNA of some video of like what's wrong with men? And why do they bring it home? When I watching this again, I was thinking about things like face Off, where like a woman be married to someone that appears to be her husband but it is not in the horror of that, or or thrillers like The Stepfather like things of that vein where it's like people marrying under false impression of who that their partner is and then the horror of that revelation. But that's so much coming.

I mean, it seems like once they have the ability to handle the pregnancy theme, they kind of shift into something that is less focused on the gender dynamic than on the notion of the pregnancy being the problem. Other than in thrillers where it's the domestic, the domestic thriller where there's no fantasy element and it's just like they've married a stranger for one reason. But I can't think of a recent film that I've seen that taps into that. But I'm sure somebody out there is making that film. I just haven't seen it.

There's so many films that would go down that path are really restricted by the hang ups and the like ideological structures that they're trapped in, like it yet instead of being so ambiguous and open in how it's approaching the matters, like I married a Monstrom out of Space, is you get the things? Yet like the home is this sacred place, and the alien or you know, unknown man entering it is threatening that, and it's like there's never a sense of there is no home in I Married a Monster out of Space. It's just a building and everything afterwards so obsessed with those ideas that it can't be more than that. I also don't know. I mean, maybe I'm not even thinking this, but I don't know if it's as common for gay men to have to stay closeted and married to women that in a way that would make the plot of the original film such a compelling metaphor, I don't know.

I mean, I'm sure there's still cases of that, but I don't know that it's I can't see them tackling that theme as a relatable theme now. But maybe I'm not even thinking that, but I just see it feels like we've made so much social progress since the fifties that it just feels like that metaphor wouldn't make sense to a lot of people now. I don't know, given how many mega folks in positions of our getting revealed to be other than what they present themselves as, I think there's possible strain still there. And entertainers that don't want to lose part of that audience. Do you know live closeted lives like I know that there's still closeted gay people, But I think that it would surprised me if that story was told as for whatever reason, I don't I can't remember the last time somebody tackled that theme.

And maybe it's just maybe I'm just not thinking of an obvious example of that, but. Maybe that film him for some reason that pops in my head. I didn't see it though, but it's about sports, about masculinity in sports that might have something sort of related to that, but you know, you are right that it's not definitely, at least for the time being, in the recent history, it's not as applicable. Ben. I'm right there with you when it comes to like the hidden MAGA kind of stuff, and not just the closet homosexuality, but the idea of when you're having a conversation with somebody and then they say something that's absolutely insane and you're just like, oh, oh, I didn't realize that you were maga.

It's like talking with a guy a few years ago and he was just like, you know, oh, yeah, I had COVID, but then luckily my inver medicine or whatever invermeactin the horse paste. He was like, yeah, luckily that came in and I was able to knock that out. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, you're nuts. Okay. Yeah.

It's just like you start to back away slowly, and you're just like, nah, I don't want to talk with this person anymore, because it's almost like, you know, does it spread? Is it like a virus that you could catch maga? I hope not. So, just yeah, get me away from there, because can you imagine, like, you know, if you go down and you live in Florida, it's probably like all of your neighbors, you're surrounded. Yeah, it's We're definitely in a time period where the kind of themes of these films has come full circle again.

It's like everything old is new again, and I wouldn't be surprised if you see some kind of resurgence. Conspiracy in horror is certainly never going to go away. I mean you think about things like folk horror, get Out or whatever you want to like, whatever you want to point to almost you know, Midsummer almost everything. Well Rosemary's Baby again, where it's a bunch of Satanists living in New York. Yeah, so much of it is still rooted in conspiracy.

And you know, there's still i mean gender commentary and such in contemporary horror. So there's still room for that kind of film. And there's certainly no shortage of paranoia or conspiracy theory and contemporary life that I think that you can still make a film that would resonate with a lot of people with their story like this, but you know, will take this particular shape, I'm I mean, maybe they'll tell that kind of story again, the people. On you see online complaining about like, oh boy, is every horror film about trauma? And it's like, what did you think the horror films are about?

They were saying they were about trauma. What you're sick of is them explicitly being about trauma. It's like, it's always like you go back to here, like we said for Death Dream, like Death Dream is one of the most it's about trauma, and this as well, Like it's just like it's so in no way discounting the homosexual subtext. Really, it's like it's also just as much yeah, BTSD in the trauma of the First and Second World War, But the way we tell those stories is obviously very different. It's a lot more fore grounded because we're aware of it and we talk about it openly and publicly.

So it's never going to be quite the same as this. Films now make the mistake of articulating the themes outright in a way that can be distracting, But that happens in things like Death Dream too, like I Died for You, won't You return? The favorite kind of lines are still making that text explicit, so you know, the metaphor being kind of spelled out, you know in the dialogue, I think is yeah. But otherwise people think it's a plot hole if they if they don't state it, because they think that they're missing something. Being able to like sit in another existential state where you're not entirely sure what the film is stating has been not entirely lost, but it's definitely not been the primary mode of filmmaking in the West for a long time.

And I think, yeah, especially like watching this and the Showdown a boot Hill, where they're both films, were like, oh, it's really explicitly about this, but also I need to sit with this for a bit because it feels like it's old manhole cover off of a very deep sury sewer of pain. Well, if you look at Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I mean that's a feel that was claimed by people that said it was an anti communist film and by people that said it was about McCarthyism and you know, the Red Scare, and so it's both sides of that issue. Saw the film they wanted in it, and I think that you know, by by not being by being ambiguous, it was a richer film for it because it didn't spell out everything in a way, and I think that I married a monster matter space is the same way.

But I mean, we can talk about it as about veterans. We talked about it as queer subtext. We can talk about it is just representing gender conformity, and conformity is a theme that you get in I was at Tended to Wear Wolf also. I mean, it's the whole idea is that he's not conforming to the rest of the high school, and that's the problem. Before he's even turning into a were wolf.

He's like beating people up because he's he's not fitting in, and it's the anguish of everyone around him that why can't you just get along with everyone else. It's not questioned as a negative thing either, Like he's really like that is a problem. You know. Then they're trying to solve it before were solving it the wrong way with the mad Scientist, you know. I mean, I think I think that's what makes this the original film so compelling, is that it can be read in all those different ways.

And you know, that's the danger of spelling out your metaphor too neatly is that you lose some of that kind of ability to interpret it a lot of. Ways, between the circaine melodrama of I Married a Monster from outer Space and the loving homage of fifty sci fi films that were in poison the middle section horror. I feel like Todd Haynes would be the most natural person to make a remake or take on a subject like that, like doing another I'm Married a Monster from outer Space type movie, and I think he could play the hell out of it well the. I mean think about Far from Heaven and the gay husband. Yeah, I mean you could.

Certainly he would be perfect for it. He would be very self conscious about it, but I think that that's fine. Yeah, I definitely would not want to see that, sorry, like because he's done it too perfect for it in a way that is twentieth century. Like I would want to see one of these rat bag kids who's releasing their films on TV, like somebody who's just like really having to come up from underneath, who's in the absolute mire of the madness of current things and just being seeing them bring this could absolutely be brought to life in our current context in such a wild way. A transfilmmaker could bring such such a different way of approaching this if they wanted to.

Absolutely, does marriage mean the same thing now? Also, that it would mean an activity is another question, because I think that's I mean very much an expectation to the degree that these guys that don't want to get married are being hounded into it in the in the original film, and I don't know does that convention exist in quite the same way in twenty twenty six. I don't know if it does. I mean in some parts of the country it does, but I don't know if it's it carries quite the same meaning as it would. Then I feel like the version of this film we're likely to get will be something to do with like tradwives and stuff.

And that's a mistake because it's such a narrow corner of culture that's blame blown up more than it actually is, and it's so hollow and devoid of real in a meaning, and it would call back to what we think the original film is doing in our minds rather than what it's actually doing. It should be something, yeah, more to do with the trans experience and the misconceptions and the collisions of experiences and feelings. Well, yeah, I think we may have gotten away from the narrative of gay people want to turn straight people gay. But the there I think we're actually getting back with it's okay. Well, I think, thank goodness, thank goodness.

Well, that plays right into the gay Yeah, that plays right into the you know, teachers are teaching their children, your children to be trans and and putting litter boxes in the school bathrooms, you know, like this insanity that queen story. Yeah, well I'm glad that. I'm glad that we are now coming back to gay people want to turn you gay? So fantastic. Yeah.

The battle now is between the people like say good when you say that and the people who are like terrified of it. Yeah. One thing we haven't talked about that I thought about also with The Stepford Wives and how that was a film that was played kind of straight in the seventies and the only way they could approach it when they went back to it was as parody or as comedy. And I feel like that's also another way I could imagine them approaching this again, would be as kind of more winking comedy than playing it straight. Yeah.

I think that the remake definitely tried for that, but didn't quite have the actors or anything to really writing for sure, but I definitely know. It's been over ten years since you and I first did one of these mic and I was thinking like Demon Seed, and now we're coming full circle to another film where women are being forced into carrying the babiesit inhuman threats. So it's a good we come full circle. Well, I'll still continue to talk with you, Bill. We don't have to just do these types of movies, but it's always fun when we do.

Absolutely. My theme with Mike is that I'm always in the ten least downloaded episodes of the year, and I'm like, I've got it's a rich I don't know which one it's going to be this year, but I reckon I've done a couple that'll be there. I just always appreciate that you're willing to talk about whatever movies. I mean, yes, you draw the line at The Astronaut's Wife, but I can respect that. I respect that.

I had a. Ticket to a movie marathon yesterday that was at the theater that was in Blob, speaking of films that you know played on double bills with a married monster. Instead, I stayed home to watch The Astronaut's Wife because I didn't have any other time to watch it. And so that was the sacrifice that I made. You better sayn't even nice Christmas.

God, Mike, You're due for a fruit basket for sure. All Right, we're going to take another break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages. In the year twenty thirteen, one ordinary man, you are nothing but a drifter who found a pack of mail, one simple act. I know you'll do what's right, and suddenly the future will never be the same. Jill Am Killer Star, United States quit.

From the Academy Award winning director of Dances with Wolves. The United States postmar. Kevin Costner gets out. Hope The Post Win starts December twenty fifth at a theater near you. That's right, We'll be back next week with a look at the nineteen ninety seven epic post apocalyptic sci fi film The Postman.

Until then, I want to thank my co host Ben and Bill. So Ben, what have you been up to lately, sir? Just working on a few films. There's an Australian film called Shiver that I have no idea when it's coming up because it's still been in process at the moment. But that'll be a good one to keep an eye out for.

That's the first Australian film shot in Antarctica, and was dabbling a bit in an A twenty four film that looks absolutely rad that I can't really talk about, so I get to be nice and mysterious this time. But other than that, pretty quiet here traveling around Japan prepping for a Suji Terrriama episode. When you get around to doing him, Mike. I will definitely do another. We did Pastoral a few years ago.

I would love to do throw Away your Books or even Farewell to the Arc. You know some of those yeah, good old Kalle Skinski shutters, Yeah, yeah. I visited his museum. That was the hell of an experience and I highly recommend that. And for those listen people listening, if you ever get to Kyoto, look up the Toy Film Museum.

Amazing experience run by an old couple out of their home, and it gave us a person to a round show us. Their paper film was printed on paper and just incredible collection of old cinema artifacts and just amazing. So definitely check out the Toy Film Museum if you're interested in film history out there. But other than that, trying to get back onto writing from my letterbox. You can find me there under Dissolved Pet One Word and on Blue Sky's Dissolved Pet as well, where I'm mainly talking to myself and raving about Widow's Bay at the moment, and that's pretty much.

My wal life and Bill, how about yourself. I've mostly been working long hours with my day job, and I've been trying to finish up some projects that I can't talk about yet for home video stuff at night. So just been kind of busy. I think. When I have time to edit them again, I will be returning my Supporting Characters podcast.

I did have a new season that was in progress with people like Willow, Caitlin maclay, Keith Gordon. A regular of your show was Ryan Verral, Jimmy McDonough, Fran Simoni from Radiance, Heidi Honeycutt. So plenty of long conversations, longer than podcasts are supposed to be. Phone I read conversations for people to check out. I think the last thing that came out from my home video work was Amanda Rayes and I did an audio commentary on the Arrow four K for Salem Slot.

The Toby Hooper. So we did the mini series version, so that's out there, and I think I did Goodbye Columbus and Baby It's You for fun. I did a bunch of commentaries, but that's the last thing I did. But trying to find time to get back to editing my own show and finish up a few things. That's what I'm working on.

Thank you so much guys for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community.

If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over with the world by loving your women. Am I fell in love with an alien be whose skin was jelly, whose teeth were green. See and the big bug eyes and the death Gray Blair feet like water winds, purple Blair. I was over the moon.

I asked a fatter my place, and then I married the monster from outer space. The days were omber. The knights were spent in a red free furnished shocks age and said we're a cyborg. She have served up moon means dun super wrapping on her laser meat and needing nutrisure to keep up the face. When I'm married the monster from out a space.

We won't tell tanticle in how you could, since then the earth lakes would not understand. They go nuts nuts when we got off the must machinis extra toy steel, not like cause it is, but enough for with another race, but for me as from out a space. A cimnitic fit of rage. She pissed off to another age. She lives in nineteen ninety nine with a new boyfriend.

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