Directed by Don Siegel
A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.
Walter Wagner's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, La invasión de los usurpadores de cuerpos, Ruumiinryöstäjät, They Came from Another World, The Body Snatchers, Sleep No More, Utrolige hendelser i Santa Mira, 우주의 침입자, 신체 강탈자의 침입, 외계의 침입자, Die Dämonischen, L'invasione degli ultracorpi, L'Invasion des profanateurs de sépultures, La invasión de los ladrones de cuerpos, Inwazja porywaczy ciał, Världsrymden anfaller, A Terra em Perigo, Οι Ανθρωποι του Τρόμου, De stjålne kroppe, פלישת חוטפי הגופות, ボディ・スナッチャー／恐怖の街, Testrablók támadása, Vampiros de Almas, Вторжение похитителей тел, Merihten Saldıranlar, 天外魔花, Вторгнення викрадачів тіл, La Invasión de los suplantadores, Invaze lupičů těl, La invasió dels ultracossos, L'invasion des profanateurs de sépultures, Инвазија трећих бића
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The best horror movies are the ones set in broad daylight, with a legitimately terrifying concept that that doesn’t overstretch the reality of your imagination. Not a single jump scare, not a single loud noise. Just pure dread.
Not having the movie end with his sweaty, dirty crazed face looking right at you screaming “They’re here already! You’re next!” as the final shot is such an L
I was really rooting for the couple's escape, even though I knew it wouldn't make any difference since the beginning spoils everything
"An epidemic of mass hysteria" that would later become the ferocious playground of Romero is drawn by Siegel here in the kind of ruthless, blunt-force B-noir economy that would make The Twilight Zone a hit. Such a straight shot of pure thriller narrative movement and paranoid science-fiction mood first and foremost that it makes a lot of sense that it was malleable to whatever political read anybody wanted and still wants out of it: anti-McCarthy, anti-communist, anti-suburban conformity, etc. All of which are valid to varying degrees, which is part of the reason this premise has been so consistently attractive to remake.
In this case it’s broadly used to take picture-perfect 50s Americana and have it poisoned with unreality, which…
I WANT TO LOVE AND I WANT TO BE LOVED
I WANT YOUR CHILDREN
I DONT WANT A WORLD WITHOUT LOVE OR GRIEF OR BEAUTY I'D RATHER DIE
Something is a little bit odd about the residents of Small Town USA in Don Siegel's tale of paranoia at its most paranoid. The Good Doctor. Forrest Gump-esque run. X-ray. Insurance salesmen are shady, if you don't believe me watch the Fargo TV series. Pretend Uncle? Ultra sexy Becky Driscoll. Pretend Mommy? The Lawnmower Man. Danny the Shrink. Jukebox dancing. Jack doesn't look like Jeff Goldblum. Cuckoo clock. The ultimate John Doe. Morticia Addams? It's alive? I've heard that line before. Badass doctors smoke cigarettes. I'm sacred of creepy basements. Body double? Nick the Cop. If you don't want fingerprints, find some acid. The way Becky Driscoll looks in her jeans. Cellar dweller. Speedy recovery. Bootleg photosynthesis. I wish my…
The pod people of today are just anti vaxxers change my mind
The film ends on a note of optimistic uncertainty. But of course we now know that the pods won.
Adapted by Daniel Mainwaring from Jack Finney's 1954 sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers, this film ingeniously positions sleep as a liability and an adversary. Falling asleep is natural relaxation and a prerequisite, but here it's the mechanism of termination, with arguably it’s sweeping themes simultaneously incorporating commentary on McCarthyism and of the threats of social consonance. It's director Don Siegel, one of the outstanding Hollywood genre directors, took merely nineteen days to shoot the movie and it involved no second-unit work. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a harrowing cinematic nightmare which possesses one of the most extraordinary conclusions ever filmed.
Geoff T's Hoop-Tober 6.0 Challenge
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
The 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a personal favourite of mine, but it’s earlier version had curiously evaded me for years, until now. While I can't deny my love for its remake, this 1956 original surprisingly (for me, at least) manages to be just as brilliant on its own merits, if not better in some ways. A widely intense sci-fi shocker that holds up better than most.
Santa Mira, California is an ordinary American town undergoing a very unordinary phenomenon, in which people are convinced that their friends and family aren't who they appear to be (or the 'Capgras delusion'). Dr. Miles Bennell is one of the…
Love when a genre thriller is just a twilight zone episode script riffed out to about 90 minutes
This 1956 science fiction thriller has a cool concept and is even more interesting taking into account all of the societal pressures responsible for its conception. It is also one of the somewhat rare examples of a film that has a remake that was far superior to the original, typical of sci-fi as seen with The Fly and The Thing. Its analogies to the Cold War paranoia of Communism are easy to see. It is about creatures from outer space that can assume exact likenesses to those around you, making it very difficult to distinguish your friends from your enemies. Just like that Red Commie Menace. Old Mrs. Everett next door could very easily just be…
