Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Fast Facts:

- Kevin McCarthy. What ever did happen to him? He was pretty good in this, right? Huh. We never heard from him again. But then I IMDBed him, and it turns out he’s still working and is in at least 3 movies in 2009! HE'S 95 PEOPLE.

- Also, Sam Peckinpah was in this. He played the gas man in Kevin McCarthy’s basement. Oh, Sam. Scaring the bejeezus of out people even back then.

- Directed by Don Siegel, who went on to “Dirty Harry” fame.

- I looked up the filming locations to this, thinking “what a nice little hamlet of California this is.” Turns out it was just West Hollywood. But back in 1956, West Hollywood was a nice pleasant hamlet. California has really hit the shitter.


Just Cold Reviewin'

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a classic 1956 sci-fi "they're all out to get you" film about aliens who send seeds to earth that grow pods. These pods birth human replicas, who replace exsisting humans. They replace their human counterparts by aborbing their mind (telepathically) when they're sleeping. So then the human dies, and an alien version of them with no emotions comes to life the next morning.

It’s fascinating to see how the central threat of thriller plots change over time to reflect society’s fears. Nowadays, it’s bombs and gunmen and jihad. But back then, it was aliens, which were often a thinly-veiled metaphor for Communists, as Communism was often perceived by Americans as a soulless system where everything was the same and there was no diversity. Those Soviets were a comin’, and they were gonna brainwash everybody OVERNIGHT! Yes, that did not happen. But it could’ve!

No one’s really afraid of aliens anymore—we’re way too self-absorbed to care what’s beyond Earth. Remember when society wasn’t that way? Like prior to 1970?

"Body Snatchers" is a classic sci-fi “us against the world” plot (and then eventually just Kevin McCarthy vs. the world, once his ladyfriend does the ONE thing she’s not supposed to do and falls asleep). The allegory is that people are asleep to the changes in the world around them, that there’s an apathy to an enemy invasion. People in this pleasant California hamlet (fictional Santa Mira) don’t wise up and fight the invader until it’s too late.

You can read a lot of things from this movie, like the tiresome concept of eternal vigilance—which has been used for preemptive strikes against terrorist harboring countries and to activism to prevent the gays from getting married. Sometimes change is good, and it’s even slightly ambiguous whether these aliens are ruining the world or making it better (they try to sell McCarthy on a world without pain and suffering, because these alien drones don't feel anything). Of course the aliens aren't making things better: they’re killing everybody, which Kevin McCarthy takes issue with.


One of the most frightening aspects of thrillers is when the protagonist knows something to be true, and no one will believe them. “Body Snatchers” executes this nicely. As the viewer, we’re totally with Kevin McCarthy (I mean, who wants to be destroyed by aliens in their sleep, right?) But no one will listen to him!

The ending is a positive one--those official men in suits, the doctors at the hospital, finally start believing McCarthy, when his story is corroborated by an EMT (were they called that back then?) who just rescued a truck driver, and recalls that the driver’s load was a bunch of strange-shaped pods. So the doctor suddenly totally believes McCarthy, and orders all the highways closed (um, doctors can do that? ) So yay, America will save the day! Hey, it was 1956. We were still optimistic.