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Watch 1958's "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" a sci-fi horror allegory for ideological fanaticism [1]

['Mark Frauenfelder']

Date: 2023-05-18

Someone has uploaded the science fiction horror movie, I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), to the Internet Archive. I have never seen it before. From the description, it seems similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955), and I Am Legend (1954).

Created during Cold War-era McCarthyism these books/movies are entertaining in their own right, but are also allegories for ideological takeover, the kind we are seeing today with populist phenomena like Trumpism and QAnon,

In Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, individuals' identities are taken over by alien pods. This transformation turns them into unrecognizable, conformist versions of their former selves, reflecting the alteration of individuals under the sway of persuasive, divisive rhetoric.

Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is about the anguish of standing alone in a society that has uniformly succumbed to a dangerous ideology. It embodies the isolation, fear, and conflict that one feels when surrounded by those who have been swept up in a cultlike political movement. Critic Mathias Clasen describes it as a work born from "an anxious artistic mind working in an anxious cultural climate."

I Married a Monster from Outer Space explores personal relationships torn apart by ideological fanaticism. It encapsulates the fear and uncertainty people feel when beloved family members transform into unrecognizable zealots.

From Wikipedia:

There's more! Again, from Wikipedia:

Film scholar Harry M. Benshoff suggests that the film features a blatant subtext of male homosexuality, citing the lead character of Bill's preference to "meet other strange men in the public park" rather than stay at home with his wife.

Watch it here:

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