Comparison of Two B-Horror Films from the Fifties

Walter Wanger’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Roy Del Ruth’s The Alligator People offer two excellent examples of B-movie cinema’s depiction of domestic partnership in the 1950s. Although both examples are dynamically different, there are underlying similarities between the two that demonstrate a status quo that was prevalent prior to the sexual revolution the following decade. The importance of keeping the relationship in tact and staying together until all possible hope is lost is apparent in both films and demonstrates 50s culture’s preoccupation with the perfect domestic space. This depiction of the male/female partnership, coupled with B-cinema’s tendency toward fantasy and exaggeration, offer a caricature-like portrait of perceived notions about domesticity during the early Cold War.
Both Invasion and The Alligator People offer us couples who start out their relationships in the mold of normal happy people. Becky and Miles have a flirtatious relationship, with Becky tenderly thwarting Miles advances and Miles, as the persistent all-American, taking Becky’s rejection on the chin and proceeding undeterred. Conversely, in Alligator, Joyce and Paul Webster are newly-weds, and it is implied in the back-story that it was Joyce who was the pursuer who after some effort was able to win a proposal from Paul. Both Miles and Joyce transform from pursuer to protector within their relationships after their tranquility is threatened. Miles, while trying to protect himself from the body snatchers, is obsessed with protecting Becky as well, and Joyce, after her husband mysteriously disappears, becomes obsessive in her search for him. The survival of normal life, threatened by soul stealing pods or radioactive cobalt that turns men into hand-luggage, seems intrinsically tied to the survival of the male/female bond which, if broken, means doom for humanity.
The character of Becky in Invasion gives us some ideas of what the notions for women were in the 1950s. Becky is coy, intelligent and independent for the first scenes of the film, but when normal life is threatened she becomes almost pathologically dependant upon Miles. Miles is forced to carry, cajole, push, drag and grope Becky through the remainder of the film. Becky, as the weaker member of the couple, can only maintain her independence when it is not threatened, and Miles must act as her protector when it is.
Joyce is no less a model for the Cold War wife. She is more independent than Becky throughout the conflict of the narrative, but her motivation revolves completely around saving her marriage, even if it means being able to truthfully call her husband “lizard lips.” The fact that her husband mysteriously abandoned her at a railway stop leaves her undaunted, and she endures lecherous, hook-handed drunks and snake filled swamps to preserve her dream—to be happily married. Becky is acting independently in order to once again become dependent upon her husband.
Both Joyce and Miles make it through their trauma scarred but in tact. Their significant others, however, aren’t so lucky. Becky becomes a pod-person and Paul becomes a half-man/half-alligator who runs off into the swamp and gets swallowed by quick sand while Becky watches. This time, Becky opts not to “stand by her man.”
The depiction of both relationships demonstrates how the protection of the male/female relationship coincided with the 50’s fears of cultural disruption. The couples in both films are unwilling to separate, and both put the male/female union above the urge for individual survival until it is absolutely necessary to give up. In this way we can see that these male/female relationships act as an allegory (or, in the case of the The Alligator People, an alligatory…sorry, I couldn’t resist) for the importance Americans in the 1950s put on preserving domestic partnership.