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Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1956 science fiction film. It stars Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, King Donovan and Carolyn Jones and is based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954). The film has been remade twice and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. The screenplay was adapted from Finney's novel by Daniel Mainwaring (who also wrote the film noir classic Out of the Past), along with an uncredited Richard Collins. It was directed by Don Siegel, who went on to make The Killers and Dirty Harry.
Plot synopsis Set in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California (actually shot in Sierra Madre, a town east of Pasadena), the plot centers on Dr. Miles Bennell (played by Kevin McCarthy), a local doctor, who finds a rash of patients accusing their loved ones of being impostors. Another patient is an old flame, recent divorcee Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), who tells him that her cousin has this same strange fear. Assured at first by the town psychiatrist (Dr. Dan Kaufman, played by Larry Gates) that the cases are nothing but "epidemic mass hysteria," Bennell soon discovers, with the help of his friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan), that the townspeople really are being replaced by simulations grown from plantlike pods, perfect physical duplicates who kill and dispose of their human victims. The "pod people" are indistinguishable from normal people except for their utter lack of emotion. The pod people work together to secretly spread more pods—which grew from "seeds drifting through space for years"—in order to replace the entire human race. The film climaxes with Bennell attempting to escape the pod people, flee the town with Driscoll and warn the rest of humanity. (The scenario of a hero trying to escape from an isolated town where he has learned that the inhabitants are not truly human is reminscent of the plot of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth.") The film was originally intended to end with a crazy-seeming Bennell screaming desperately to unheeding motorists, "You're next!" The studio, wary of such a downbeat conclusion, insisted on adding a prologue and epilogue to the movie that suggested a more optimistic outcome to the story, with the FBI being notified and presumably saving the day. These scenes were deleted in a 1979 re-release after the first remake appeared, paring the movie down to 76 minutes. Themes The film has been read as both an allegory for the loss of personal autonomy under Communism and as a satire of McCarthyist paranoia about Communism during the early stages of the Cold War. (Given that the screenwriter was a target of the blacklist, some say the former message is unlikely to have been intended.) Siegel has suggested that the film's central theme is the loss of individuality in modern life: Many of my associates are certainly pods. They have no feelings. They exist, breathe, sleep. To be a pod means that you have no passion, no anger, the spark has left you.... Of course, there’s a very strong case for being a pod. These pods, who get rid of pain, ill-health and mental disturbances, are, in a sense, doing good. It happens to leave you in a very dull world but that, by the way, is the world that most of us live in. It’s the same as people who welcome going into the army or prison. There’s regimentation, a lack of having to make up your mind, face decisions.... People are becoming vegetables. I don’t know what the answer is except an awareness of it. That’s what makes a picture like Invasion of the Body Snatchers important. * This theme is directly expressed in the film by McCarthy's character, who says at one point: In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind...All of us--a little bit--we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear. * Later, the psychiatrist Gates, himself turned into a pod person, gives a speech that sounds like Siegel's musings on the attractions of conformity: Your new bodies are growing in there. They're taking you over cell for cell, atom for atom. There is no pain. Suddenly, while you're asleep, they'll absorb your minds, your memories and you're reborn into an untroubled world...Tomorrow you'll be one of us...There's no need for love...Love. Desire. Ambition. Faith. Without them, life is so simple, believe me. * Despite the reported political connotations of the film, lead actor Kevin McCarthy said in an interview included on the 1998 DVD release that no political allegory was intended. * Related works | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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