Directed: Gene Fowler Jr.
Written: Louis Vittes
Produced: Gene Fowler Jr.
Cinematography: Haskell Boggs
Edited: George Tomasini (Hitchcock’s editor)
With: Tom Tryon as Bill Farrell, Gloria Talbott as Marge Bradley Farrell, Ken Lynch as Dr. Wayne
Monsters begin in Morrisville.
The story is predicated on the idea that an alien race from the Andromeda constellation has the technology for intergalactic space travel but has little or no understanding of genetics.
Paging Frier Mendel.
The boys at the Golden Palomino Bar&Circlejerk are celebrating the last night of freedom for one of their own. The next day Bill Farrell will be sacrificed on the altar of Holy Wedlock. From the next day on there will be no night out with the boys and all it comprises: drinking to excess, sleeping in his car, puking on his shoes, hollering at schoolgirls, picking-up waitresses, shooting up road signs, and weekends spent holed up in Mexican whorehouses.
Billy boy is an insurance salesman. You’ve been warned.
It will be evenings at home with wifey, television, playing cards with neighbors, TV dinners, and bowling league on Thursdays. In other words, a cold earthly hell not even Jean Paul Sartre could imagine.
Bill downs his glass of bourbon and bids his pals a final free man goodbye. On the drive home he stops to avoid a body in the middle of the road. Someone did not make it home from choir practice after too many shots of Everclear and Kool Aid. Now, pickled and prone.
As he is about to render assistance he is assaulted and enveloped by a cheap optical of a dark oily cloud and spirited away. Oh, the humanity! Cue: Laura Nyro singing Wedding Bell Blues.
Next morning fiancé Marge is beside herself with worry when Bill is late for the wedding. “So, the son of a bitch is standing me up to face my fat bridesmaids and I-told-you-so mother. I’ll cut his balls off if I catch him, that . . oh, hi honey, we were worried sick. ”Signs of trouble to-be surface on the wedding night. Bill appears not to know the first move is on him. He’s complaining about a thunderstorm while new wife is in bed, hot, moist and willing.
Cut to: a year later and Marge is at Doc Wayne’s office wanting to know why she is not yet pregnant. Sex education in the 50s being what it was, this is not surprising.
X Ray note. Doc Wayne shows her an abdominal radiograph as part of her examination as to why she has not conceived. According to the law of Bergonie and Tribondeau, “the radiosensitivity of a biological tissue is directly proportional to the mitotic activity and inversely proportional to the degree of differentiation of its cells”.
In other words, you do not subject women of childbearing age to radiation for fear of genetic damage to offspring. The only thing the radiograph showed was that Marge had gas. (John Welsh, R.T., C.R.T.)
In an effort to warm things up at home, Marge buys Bill a puppy for the first anniversary. Big mistake. The dog don’t like Bill and he don’t like the dog. Somebody call PETA! Fido dies in captivity. Exeunt Dog, wuff.
Marge begins to notice none of the married women in her group of friends have become pregnant, (but you don’t hear them complaining about it.) Maybe all the boys are shooting blanks. They are sure walking funny.
That night, Marge turns-in early, hoping it will motivate Bill to some slap and tickle and hide the salami. But nooooooo, Bill slips out of the house for a late-night meeting with a strange man in the park.
Marge sees him leave and follows. Meanwhile: in another part of the forest.
Bill is outside at the poorly hidden alien scout ship. Marge arrives just in time to witness a butt-ugly alien emerge from Bill’s body and enter the spaceship.
Marge is beginning to suspect something is amiss.
Next day, Marge confronts Bill. He explains he and his bros are on Earth replacing human men because all the women on his faraway planet are dead due to a misunderstanding at Central Casting and Earth women as needed to be the mothers of a new race of butt-uglies. No woman wants to be the mother of an ugly kid so she declines the honor. It’s enough of a crapshoot with human fathers.
Bill explains butt-uglies don’t have emotions, but now encased in human form he is starting to learn what love is…She tries to convince the chief of police of this mass abduction, but wouldn’t you know it, he’s one of them. Ha! Doc Wayne delivered her, he’ll believe her. He forms a posse of men he knows to be human as their wives have just given birth. To the alien ship and vengeance!
Bill suspects the worst and heads for the ship, hot on the heels of the posse. The men in the posse had the foresight to bring along two big mean dogs, which is a good thing as bullets have no effect on the three butt-uglies who deployed outside the spaceship. The dogs make short work of them.
Inside the spaceship the posse finds the real men of Morrisville hung-up like suits in a closet. The illegal butt-uglies aliens get what’s coming to them, and it ain’t a Green Card. Or women.
Butt-ugly Bill never learns what love is, and turns into a bucket of slime. The real Bill is reunited with Marge to begin their life together as middle-class drones in 1950s America. You know, when America was great.
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