{"id":1897,"date":"2009-10-06T23:06:57","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T03:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/?p=1897"},"modified":"2022-10-23T09:26:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-23T13:26:13","slug":"pod-people-film-festival-invasion-of-the-body-snatchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/pod-people-film-festival-invasion-of-the-body-snatchers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pod People Film Festival: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For a pulpy 1950s horror flick relating the strange tale of an invasion of giant brussels sprouts, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/em> is a startlingly gory, paranoid nightmare positively loaded with political subtext.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its themes of identity, mistrust, and subversion have remained relevant and influential for decades, inspiring three official remakes and even left-field homages like Robert Rodri\u00adguez’ high school melodrama The Faculty<\/a><\/em>. Not only has “pod people” entered the lexicon, its screenplay is highly quotable (“They’re here already! You’re next!”) and sometimes even rather poetic: “There’ll be no more tears.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie can be a bit frustrating to modern science fiction aficionados used to high levels of pseudo-scientific detail. The aliens’ life cycle seems illogical and not fully thought-through, to the extent that it harms the plot. It seems a victim simply must be in proximity to an alien pod for it to begin to grow into your shape. We also learn that a pod absorbs its host’s memories when it sleeps, but we see Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) duplicated after falling asleep alone in a cave devoid of any visible pods. What happens to the original bodies? How do the pod-born duplicates wind up wearing the host’s clothes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake<\/a> is more clear on the process, with the added benefit of allowing for more explicit gore and female nudity to tart things up a bit. The 2007 remake Invasion<\/a> solves these problems by sidestepping the issue entirely, featuring a breed of aliens that literally invade your body – a mild condition which is, it turns out, curable. Ask your doctor, or better yet, date one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kevin
Eat your brussels sprouts! Or you’re next!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As Matthew Dessem points out in his analysis of The Blob<\/em><\/a> for the Criterion Contraption<\/a>, certain 1950s horror and sci-fi movies beg to be interpreted as metaphors for key atomic age issues: Godzilla<\/em>, The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/a><\/em>, and The Blob<\/em> among them. But these monsters look just like us. So let’s give it a shot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Interpretation one: the movie manifests a generalized fear of a homogenized American culture. A pod person is discovered in an intermediary state, totally devoid of individual characteristics, like a mannequin. Perhaps America’s fabled melting pot, brought to an absurd conclusion, could result in a dead-end monoculture of of uniform religion, politics, and behavior.<\/li>
  2. Interpretation two: the story is a thinly veiled metaphor for McCarthyism, the contemporary Red Scare that envisaged insidious Communist sleeper cells already among us, threatening to undo American churches, families, private wealth, and government.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    In either interpretation, the invaders are convinced their systems of belief are correct, and honestly believe they are helping us by absorbing us into their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Kevin
    Pod person in the corner pocket.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The premise may be deliciously cynical, but the movie does end on a possible note of hope. Our hero Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) manages to reach some uninfected human authority figures, and corroborating evidence helps him convince them to mobilize against the threat. But does this call to action come too late?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    From the perspective of 2009, America looks increasingly polarized and partisan. If the pod people are already here, which side are they on? As Sarah Palin might say, the Real America? I’m sure they only want to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\n\n\n

    Welcome to The Pod People Film Festival, our third mini movie retrospective. After catching up with Ridley Scott<\/a> and George A. Romero<\/a>, we now take a look at four adaptations of Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers<\/em>, plus one unofficial homage \/ satire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)<\/li>
    2. Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/a> (1978)<\/li>
    3. Body Snatchers<\/a> (1993)<\/li>
    4. The Faculty<\/a> (1998)<\/li>
    5. The Invasion<\/a> (2007)<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      For a pulpy 1950s horror flick relating the strange tale of an invasion of giant brussels sprouts, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a startlingly gory, paranoid nightmare positively loaded with political subtext. Its themes of identity, mistrust, and subversion have remained relevant and influential for decades, inspiring three official remakes and even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2],"tags":[378,591,697,694,90,693,695,696,698,699,85],"class_list":["post-1897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2-stars","category-movies","tag-alien-invasion","tag-cold-war","tag-dana-wynter","tag-don-siegel","tag-horror","tag-invasion-of-the-body-snatchers","tag-jack-finney","tag-kevin-mccarthy","tag-mccarthyism","tag-red-scare","tag-science-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1956.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa9lhB-uB","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1902,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/pod-people-film-festival-invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1978\/","url_meta":{"origin":1897,"position":0},"title":"The Pod People Film Festival: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)","author":"Chad Ossman","date":"October 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Philip Kaufman's re-imagining of Don Siegel's 1956 classic paranoid nightmare Invasion of the Body Snatchers immediately signals its uniqueness with a strange and beautifully abstract opening sequence. Psychedelic spores float off the surface of an alien planet, traverse through outer space, and fall to Earth as gelatinous rain. 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Frank Oz's The Stepford Wives (2004) was sabotaged by cast members dropping out, extensive reshoots, and competing script revisions that left significant logical plot holes in the finished film. 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