I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 18 minutes, rated 6.3 by 2,900 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Yankee.
Verdict: Better than the title.
Tagline: I didn’t wanna do it!
The night before his wedding strapping Youth is body swapped with an alien (the monster of the title) who has come to Earth on a mission. The females of his world, we learn later, are infertile, and the mission is to determine if his kind can mate with earthlings to renew their species. Now in a semi-zombie state Youth goes ahead with the wedding but … well, his anatomy is new to him and there were no sex education lessons on the 1950s flight to Earth and he doesn’t know what to do.
His newly wed wife, true to the 1950s, concludes his frigidity and confusion is her fault and tries her wiles to seduce him. No sale. Meanwhile, his fellow aliens are body swapping with other young men and soon they effectively seal off the town. While most of the other aliens are as lost as Youth, one or two take out their frustrations with ray guns. A shoot out ensues.
Wife figures out that the problem is Youth, not her, and he confesses his extraterrestrial identity to her. She tries to tell others — a doctor, a police officer, a Republican — who, true to the 1950s, dismiss her reports as female hysteria. Cringe but true.
We never get to the mating, much to the disappointment of the Fraternity Brothers.
In hindsight much of it seems an unwitting commentary on the gender stereotypes and roles of the time and place. The condescending doctor was particularly irritating. It blends several Sy Fy tropes: alien invasion albeit low key, body snatching, isolated locale, disbelieving soon-to-be victims, and so on.
True to the 1950s, Youth was himself driven out of Hollywood as a homosexual shortly after this film. He took up a second career as a writer with success. Wife went into television with about a hundred credits. This seems to have been her only feature film leading role.