Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956)
Fuelled by paranoia and dripping with low-key terror, Invasion
of the Body Snatchers put the fear of pod into audiences
across the world.
Based on Jack Finney's novel The Body Snatchers
(serialised in Collier's magazine in 1954), the movie was filmed
on a B-movie budget, but the results were strictly A-grade.
A prologue sets the tone as seemingly mad Dr. Miles Bennell
races across a San Francisco highway, trying to warn the passing
cars about some threat.
Taken to a hospital, Miles tells his terrible tale in
flashback: The young doctor returns to his small-town home of
Santa Mira, California, to find several patients complaining that
their loved ones haven't been acting like themselves lately. Miles
is curious, but he's distracted by the presence of ex-girlfriend
Becky Driscoll, who's back in town after a divorce. As Miles tries
to woo Becky, he begins investigating the source of this strange
condition in town.
One night, over dinner with friends Jack and Theodora, Miles
and Becky discover that the source of their trouble is the sudden
appearance of several large, plant-like pods.
As the pods grow, they take the form of their intended human
victims, then replace them with soulless, emotionless replicas.
Since the pod people look just like their victims, there's no way
of knowing who's on the side of humanity, but it soon becomes
clear that in Santa Mira at least, the pods are firmly in control.
Since the mystery of the pods was never fully explained in the
film, scholars and film buffs have read a variety of meanings into
the film, treating it as an allegory on everything from Communism
to McCarthyism.
Regardless of deeper meanings, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers was armrest-gripping entertainment.
Released with little fanfare, the movie became a sizeable hit,
and its legend only grew over the ensuing years. "Pod
people" entered the national language, as critics and
audiences alike kept returning to the film in re-releases and on
television.
A 1979 re-release removed both the prologue and an epilogue
that had been added at the studio's urging, but both the original
version and the director's cut remained in circulation.
In 1978, a new Invasion Of The Body Snatchers was
released, starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum,
Veronica Cartwright and Leonard Nimoy. Neither sequel nor remake,
the new film took place in San Francisco, where the pod invasion
began around the same time as Santa Mira's infestation.
A third version, Body Snatchers, arrived in 1993, again
transposing the location. Now set on a military base, the film
followed a similar, pod-based story.
The two later versions caused their share of nightmares, but
the social climate had changed since 1956.
The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers remains a
classic example of Cold War-era paranoia, a favourite both of film
scholars and those who just like a good scare before bedtime.
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