I Married a Monster from Outer Space

(1958)
Directed by Gene Fowler, Jr.
Written by Louis Vittes
Starrring Tom Tryon, Gloria Talbott, Peter Baldwin
IMDB Entry
Full Movie at the Paramount Vault.

It certainly has one of the most sensational titles from the 1950s, but I Married a Monster from Outer Space plays down the sensationalism in a story that is remiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatcher. It also has similarities to another great SF film of the era, It Came From Outer Space.

It starts out at a bachelor party.  Bill Varrell (Tom Tryon) is returning home when he hits a body in the road.  But when he checks, it’s disappeared.  Perplexed, Bill is accosted by a monster, who takes him over.

The marriage goes on, and his bride Marge (Gloria Talbott) notices strange things about him – he can see in the dark and he appears to not know things he should.  After a year, she begins to realize that her husband isn’t her husband.  But by that time the town is infested with these doppegaengers, who keep her from calling for help.

The monsters – aliens – are basically men dressed in rubber suits, but that’s normal for movies before CGI.  What makes it interesting is the subtext; it’s quite clear that Marge and her “husband” are having sex, even though she hasn’t gotten pregnant. 

The movie portrays 50s paranoia, though the monsters end up being fairly benign.

The cast and director and even the writer were working in televion and probably hoped to make the leap into features.  All worked for years afterwards, though stardom eluded them. 

The biggest star, and most successful career belongs to leading man Tom Tryon.  He grew tired of acting about ten years later and started writing horror novels.  The Other was a best seller and a movie, and he had most of his books made into films or TV miniseries.

Root Boy Slim (music)

(1944-1993)
Wikipedia Entry

I’ve always been attracted to weird music.  And as this Christmas season is upon us, I started thinking about Root Boy Slim.

Root Boy was born Foster MacKenzie III.  As his real name might indicate, he was raised in a wealth family, in private schools and eventually at Yale.*  But Root Boy was too wild to stick with his WASP upbringing; he loved being outrageous and shoking and soon was fronting a blues band.

After school, he moved home to the Washington, DC area** and formed “Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band” which developed a reputation for bizarrely theatrical shows and songs about politics an culture.

A self-published record was noticed by Warner Brothers Records, and Root Boy was signed to a contract.  The single was the delightful “Christmas at Kmart.”


The album was filled with songs scornfully commenting on the current scene.  The most successful song was “Boogie ‘Til You Puke,” a scathing takedown of the college disco scene.  Other songs included “I Used to be a Radical,’' “Dare to be Fat,” and “You Broke My Mood Ring.”  Toot Boy had a growly blues voice*** and looked far from a rock star.  His songs were fairly witty, but though the album had some airplay, it was not a success.

After that, Root Boy went from record company to record company, with various band changes,****  but little success.  Their last original album came out in 1990; Root Boy died in 1993.
______________________________________________
*Where he was a fraternity brother of George W. Bush, a year younger than him.  Bush banned him from the fraternity house when he returned after graduation.

**Once, high on LSD, he jumped the White House fence and actually made it to the door. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

***Similar to Captain Beefheart, though the Captain was a far more original songwriter.

****He once appeared in the Albany area as “Root Boy Slim and the Black Silk Stockings.”

White Heat

(1949) Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, suggested by a story by Virginia Kellogg
Starring  James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brien, Margaret Wycherly
IMDB Entry

The gangster film was an relic of the 30s.  Usually produced by Warner Brothers, and often starring some combination of James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson or George Raft, the genre gave such great films as The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, Scarface, and The Roaring Twenties.  One of the last of the genre – which focused on the rise and fall of a bad guy – was White Heat.

Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) is a sociopath, long before the word was common.  The movie starts out with the robbery of a mail train, where Jarrett cold-bloodedly murders the crew – and one of his gang.   He holes up with his wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) and his mother (Margaret Wycherly), but when the police find them out, he confesses to a lesser crime that he says he committed at the time of the robbery and is given a short sentence.  Unconvinced he really is innocent, the police put an informant (Edmone O’Brien) in prison to gain Cody’s confidence to put him away, as well as capture some of his associates.

Cagney is electric as Cody.  He’s a character with no morals at all, and also one who is completely unpredictable.  What’s even more interesting – and quite creepy – is his fixation on his mother.  She supports him in all his endeavors, treating him as her little boy.  And Cagney’s scene when he discovers his mother is dead is one of the most emotionally raw in film of the time.

Wycherly’s mom is also memorable, a woman nearly as psychotic as her son. The movie is also known for its finale, when Cody finally gets to the top of the world.

After White Heat, things had moved toward noir.  In the late 50s there was a short revival of the gangster film, and, of course, The Godfather made great use of the genre.  But White Heat marked the end of the era of Warner Brothers gangster films in the pure form.
______________________________________________
*Trivia alert:  The third guy down from Cagney when his question is passed along is Olympic Decathlon Champion Jim Thorpe.

The Old Dark House

(1932)
Directed by James Whale
Written by Benn W. Levy from the novel from J. B. Priestly
Starrring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond., Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, Elpeth Dudgeon,Brember Wills
IMDB Entry
Full Movie on Youtube

The original Frankenstein was a sensation, making Boris Karloff a star and putting director James Whale on the top of the Hollywood heap.  His next venture into horror was also something of a classic and defined the genre of “Strangers caught in a creepy house during a story” subgenre of horror:  The Old Dark House.

The movie starts by showing Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) driving with their friend Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) in a vicious Welsh storm.  The roads wash out, and they are forced into stopping at an old, dark house for shelter.

He house is home to the Femms:  Horace (Ernest Thesiger), wanted by the police and trapped in their house and Rebecca (Eva Moore), slightly deaf and somewhat of a religious fanatic.  Their mute butler, Morgan (Boris Karloff) skulks around the premises.

They are soon joined by two other travelers:  Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his chorus girl “friend” Gladys (Lilian Bond).  And there are other people in the house:  Horace’s centenarian father (Elspeth Dodgeon*) and his brother Saul (Brember Wills), both locked away from the others.

There is conversation and romance, creepy matters and attacks.  Nothing too terrible by modern standards, but the dialog and characters drive the plot.

Karloff is an fine menace,** but it’s really an ensemble piece.  Each actor gets a moment to show his stuff.  Laughton is great as the rich ne’er-do-well, while Thesiger is just enough off to make him worth watching.  And the entire production is shot in a dark and moody with the deep shadows characteristic of German Expressionism.

To modern eyes, there’s a fascinating gay subtext.  Whale open about being gay – far more than most in his era -- and Laughton was considered by many to be at least bisexual.  There’s a scene at the end with some homoerotic overtones and a comment that arguably was the first use of the word “gay” to mean homosexual in a mainstream source.

In any case, the film was successful, and spawned many imitators, so much so that the situation became a cliché.  Though the acting is crude by current standards, the film stands out for its humor and its concentration on character.

Whale continued his winning streak of horror with The Invisible Man and his masterpiece Bride of Frankenstein (which also included Karloff and Thesinger), and with the musical Show Boat. 

The others in the cast were also very successful.  Laughton and Douglas won Oscars and Massey was nominated for one.***  Gloria Stuart is best known to modern audiences today as Old Rose in Titanic, and nearly all the rest worked regularly in films into the 1950s or later.

The film became forgotten partly due to rights issues and partly because it was sandwiched between Whale and Karloff’s two Frankenstein films.  But it still had plenty to offer viewers today.

_______________________________________________
*She was billed as John Dudgeon and is clearly intended to be an old man.  It’s an interesting piece of casting, possibly chosen because a woman’s voice was thought to be more like that of an old man.

**There’s an amusing title card that assures the audience that Karloff really is the same actor from Frankenstein.

***A side note is that Massey played Jonathan Brewster in the movie version of Arsenic and Old Lace, a character who was supposed to look like Boris Karloff.  Karloff played the role on Broadway, but was not released to play the role on film.