I Married a Monster from Outer Space *** (1958, Tom Tryon, Gloria Talbott, Peter Baldwin, Ty Hardin) – Classic Movie Review 3696

Aliens are employing Bill Farrell (Tom Tryon) to control the Earth in producer-director Gene Fowler Jnr’s cheap and cheerful 1958 sci-fi cult movie, made for just $175,000 by Paramount. Poor Marge (Gloria Talbott) finds that being Tryon’s new wife is trying, because poor old Bill has been abducted by an alien that takes his shape and marries Marge the next day.

However, time goes by and one day Marge realises Bill is a different man, follows him into the woods, finds he is an alien and spots his spacecraft. When she tries to tell to Washington and the FBI, she finds the aliens have taken over key personnel.

Fowler’s entertaining Body Snatchers-style movie has a great title, amusing rhubarb-faced, eerie three-clawed monsters (the Alien is played by Charles Gemora), creaky effects and some spooky scenes in the manner of the same director’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957).

Playing Mac Brody, Ty Hardin (star of the 68-episode four-season TV Western series Bronco 1958-1962 as Bronco Layne) is billed as Ty Hungerford. This is his third movie in his first year of filming. The scene on the beach gives cinemagoers their first look at Hardin’s bare chest. Hardin was born Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr on 1 January 1930 in New York City. Ty came from childhood nickname Typhoon.

Ty Hardin died on 3 August 2017, aged 87.

Also in the cast are Peter Baldwin (as Officer Hank Swanson), Robert Ivers, Chuck Wassil, Valerie Allen, Ken Lynch, John Eldredge, Maxie Rosenbloom, Bess Flowers, James Anderson, Jean Carson, Jack Orrison, Steve London. Valerie Allen, Helen Jay, Arthur Lovejoy, Alan Dexter and Mary Treen.

It is written by Louis Vittes and was remade for TV by director Nancy Malone as I Married a Monster in 1999, with Susan Walters, Richard Burgi, Tim Ryan, Barbara Niven and Richard Herd.

Emmy-winning TV director Peter Baldwin died at 86 on 10 November 2017, aged 86. He appeared in Paramount’s Stalag 17, Little Boy Lost, The Ten Commandments, The Tin Star and Teacher’s Pet before going on to become a prolific TV director from the Sixties to the Nineties.

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