#47: INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

It's a smaller moment, but there's a shot of all the townspeople converging at a central spot that I found effectively creepy

BEST LINE

"They're here already! You're next! You're next, you're next, you're next!

- delivered directly to camera

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

97%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"One of the best political allegories of the 1950s, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an efficient, chilling blend of sci-fi and horror."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates."

DIRECTOR

Don Siegel

MAIN CAST

Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones

THOUGHTS

• It wasn't quite the movie I expected. I thought there would be more uncertainty, more paranoia about who was safe and who had been turned. While there's a little bit of that early in the movie it soon becomes pretty straightforward - what the protagonists think is happening is definitely happening and there's not much uncertainty there. At this point, however, the movie does gain a manic, breathless quality that I appreciated and found quite entertaining
• There are some pretty memorable visuals throughout. The body on the pool table, the pods in the greenhouse, even just the appearance of the pods themselves, all very effective in a cheap sci-fi sort of way
• Towards the end there was a danger of falling asleep that I liked, in a way that reminded me of A Nightmare on Elm Street. What's scarier than the fear of falling asleep, something that everyone needs to do eventually, and something that gets harder and harder to resist the more time passes? This did call into question the actual m.o. of the aliens, though. So the pods are used to create exact duplicates of people, and the pod person replaces the real person at some point when they're asleep. But in the case of female lead Becky, she falls asleep for a second and instantly becomes a pod person - it's not like her body is replaced with the duplicate that has been created for her. So what's the point of the duplicates even existing?
• Fun fact: a director I've talked about before has a small acting role in this movie! Sam Peckinpah, director of The Wild Bunch, was a dialogue coach for Invasion of the Body Snatchers and made a brief appearance as Charlie the metre reader
• Finally, as a genre, science fiction has often been used to comment on the times in which the work was made. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is unique in this regard because it's been interpreted a few different ways, including two that are diametrically opposed - some saw it as anti-McCarthyism, while others saw it as anti-communism. Complicating the matter, the author of the source novel, Jack Finney, said that he intended no specific political commentary, and the filmmakers never stated their intention one way or the other, either. Interpret it as you will!

Up next: Not to go into it with too many pre-conceived notions, but I suspect that the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers might have the paranoia that I expected from this one