I Married a B Movie

Last night, after sitting through the star-studded, bloated, literal circus melodrama of Cecil B. DeMille epic The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), I decided to cleanse my cinematic palette with something low-budget and decided on the titillatingly titled I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958). Greatest Show may have won Best Picture, but for my money, IMMFOS was more fun to watch.

IMMFOS was originally created by Paramount to be the top-billed flick in a horror double-feature with The Blob. Color film and a new actor named Steve McQueen quickly flipped that billing, and IMMFOS would wind-up on the historical backend of drive-in theater fare. But there are some intriguing touches that elevate this B movie to at least a B+.

IMMFOS uses the post-Invasion of the Body Snatchers red scare device where alien invaders don't make a big show of their arrival with giant flying saucers and death rays. Instead, they take over the bodies of our friends and neighbors and plot a takeover from within.

Whereas Body Snatchers' pod people were indiscriminate in the sex of who they took over, IMMFOS gives the genre a gender-twist. Only the men of bucolic Norrisville are victims of the alien body switch. This leaves women in the position of having to discover the intergalactic plot- well, one woman anyway.

Marge (the wide-eyed Gloria Talbott) is confused why her betrothed Bill (the luscious Tom Tryon) is late to the altar. It's just not like him. The awkward way he navigates the honeymoon night might have set-off alarm bells too, but Bill is hot, so it's assumed Marge overlooked it.

A year later, though, she's concerned about how Tom has stopped drinking, sets off dogs whenever he comes near, and there is no bun in her oven. The answer that he's been taken over by a race of aliens doesn't occur to her until she follows him into the woods one night and watches him get a methane recharge.

At this point the film plays with the trope that Female Gothic Films have well-trod: a woman is trapped in a marriage with a husband she doesn't know and has to fight society's stigma that she is crazy for thinking that marriage is not all that it's cracked up to be. Women's issues are an area that sci-fi/horror films didn't often cover with notable exceptions like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (which came out the same year), so it's intriguing to see it handled so blatantly here.

Marriage is made fun of by all the men as a freedom-killer, and for women, marriage is a danger not only to them- but to the world. Even the fact that it's an all-male alien invasion force hints at a pre-Stonewall society of dudes who don't need dames except for species survival purposes. Fun stuff for 1958!

The movie looks like it's shot on the backlots of TV studios (because it was), but the effects work of John P. Fulton (of Hitchcock and Ten Commandments fame) is really a hoot!

Talbott is appropriately terrified (she excelled playing a bitch of a daughter in All That Heaven Allows) and Tom Tryon is eye-catching (yes, he was a big ol' mo who would wind-up dating a cast member from A Chorus Line and a porn star.)

Tab Hunter competitor Ty Hardin appears handsomely under the name Ty Hungerford (which is a step-up from his birth name, Orison Whipple Hungerford, Jr.). "God he was everywhere on TV and in the movies in the Fifties and Sixties" actor Ken Lynch gives the town doctor his distinctive brand of earnest go-getter-ness. And even pugilist, turned actor, turned restauranteur "Slapsie" Maxie has a couple scenes.

So go marry a space monster. It's better than being in a circus.

Seeing Double!

Well, classic film friends, it's time once again for that end of Summer treat of treats- The 3rd Annual Film Forum Summer Double Features Festival! Just like it used to be in olden times, you can pay for one ticket and stay through two movies! Unlike in olden times, the two movies have been specially curated by film wizard, Bruce Goldstein, to highlight/connect an actor, director, genre, or maybe just a title.

Here are my picks for the best of the festival, starting Friday, August 24:

The Last Detail/Five Easy Pieces

Before he became a leering parody of himself, Jack Nicholson was the quintessential '70's actor. He instinctually portrayed the man who vainly struggled to fit into the world, and found rebellion to be the surest escape. In Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The Last Detail (1973), Nicholson does some of his best work. In Five, he's the disaffected pianist who pisses off his family by rejecting his talent and working in an oil field. In Detail, he's a Navy grunt who takes pity on a wayward seamen. Nicholson's ease with masculinity but discomfort with the rules that defined a man made for an explosive combination that would be his stock in trade for his Seventies career earning him three Oscar noms and eventually a win for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

But Nicholson's not the only reason to watch these two flicks. Five was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and his co-star Karen Black is a dim-witted spitfire with a monologue that nabbed her an Oscar nom as well. Not to mention you get to see Sally Struthers engaged in some very un-Little Goyl activities.

Detail was directed by Harold & Maude auteur Hal Ashby and also featured an Oscar-nommed supporting performance from Randy Quaid as the childlike AWOL dufus that Nicholson is tasked with retrieving. Robert Towne was Oscar-nommed for the screenplay and would go on to win the next year for another Nicholson classic, Chinatown (1974).

Badlands/Carrie

Sissy Spacek started her movie career with a bang. As homicidal gal pal, Holly, in Terrence Malick's harrowing murder-opus Badlands (1973), Spacek creates an initial impression of freckles and sweetness.

But through the picture, she helps her murderous boyfriend Kit (an impossibly young Martin Sheen) in a cross-state killing spree, evolving into a complicit and complicated woman. The performances from these two actors are spellbinding- and that's saying something as Malick's camerawork with the endless Texas prairie and radiant sunsets competes for our attention.

Three years later, Spacek would again play an innocent hiding darker, blood-soaked urges in Brian de Palma's horror classic Carrie (1976). So much has been written about this movie that it would be a waste of pixels for me to try and find something original to say.

It is a standout for the genre in this time period, period. I once sat in an audience packed with Carrie fans (and Piper Laurie) who knew what was coming at the end- and we all still screamed our fool heads off.



Taxi Driver/Mean Streets

This double feature doubles-up on several items: Direction by Martin Scorsese, performances by Robert De Niro, and the grubby setting of Seventies New York City.
Taxi Driver (1977) is an unassailable classic with distinctive direction from Scorsese, chilling Oscar-nommed performances from De Niro and Jodie Foster, and a posthumous Oscar nom for film score maestro Bernard Herrmann. It's a sick, dark chocolate of a movie- but wow, it holds up.

Before Taxi Driver though, Scorsese, De Niro, and New York cut their teeth on Mean Streets (1973). While his later work gets the majority of the attention, Mean Streets is a fascinating watch to see how the elements of Scorsese's direction that would become his signature style were all there from the beginning.

Morally ambiguous (or downright moral-less) protagonists, a loose- improvisational dialogue style, and a visually cynical view of the New York streets are the center of this tale about a hood who dreams of bigger crimes and greater glory. One particular scene employs inventive, swirling camerawork to bring the audience into a sprawling barfight- almost by centrifugal force. Scorsese always had it, and Mean Streets proves that.

Desperately Seeking Susan/After Hours

Who would have thought of doing a Rosanna Arquette/80's New York double feature? Apparently Mr. Goldstein- and it's a fantastic idea! Both released in 1985, these two cultural gems set in New York City offer a more lively and eccentric view of the Big Apple as it crawled its way back from being told to "Drop Dead."

Desperately is best remembered for helping launch the media domination of a girl named Madonna. Having released her Like a Virgin album only six months earlier, Madonna was becoming a pop star- but wasn't content with just ruling the airwaves. She wanted to be a movie star too.

It didn't hurt that her hit song "Get Into the Groove" was on the soundtrack and the accompanying hit video with clips from the movie had young girls (and gays) flocking to the theater to see their newfound idol of music, fashion, and chutzpah. Madonna's made many attempts since Desperately to conquer the big screen, but her most natural, genuine performance happened in this film. Oh yeah. Rosanna Arquette's in it too.

If after seeing Taxi Driver and Mean Streets you think Scorsese would not be a good candidate to direct a comedy, think again! Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) plays a square microprocessor who falls down the rabbit hole into the quirky art world of Soho. At a time where there are no smartphones, ATMs, or Venmos Paul goes from whacky misfortune to whacky misfortune all with the hope of making it with the screwy object of his desire, Marcy (Arquette playing screwy well).

With a supporting cast full of notables like Cheech & Chong, Linda Fiorentino, Terri Garr, Catherine O'Hara, John Heard, and a pre-Balki Bronson Pinchot, After Hours proves that Scorsese could find comedy on the grungy streets of New York as much as he found drama.
"Is That All There Is?" indeed.

If you want to go from double-vision to triple-vision, I HIGHLY recommend you check out the documentary Three Identical Strangers (2018). This is one of those times where I can barely tell you anything about this film without spoiling it, so all I'll say is this story of triplets separated at birth is an emotional rollercoaster ride with twists and turns that will leave you with your mouth hanging open. Director Tim Wardle dispenses and reveals facts to us in such a way that the film plays more like an ingenious suspense story than a documentary. I literally gasped and yelled at the screen. Don't miss this one. Also, the triplets have a cameo in Desperately Seeking Susan.

How's that for making connections, Film Forum?