Reel Memories No. 97 – Invasion of the Body Snatchers

It’s interesting to me how people view films. Many of us view them much as we do life itself. If we tend to be paranoid, we see a conspiracy in the making of the film. If we tend to be satirical, we might see the story as a parody. A few of us might even look at the movie as if it were exactly what it purports to be, entertainment.
Such is the case with the film we’re going to look at today. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) was viewed as an example of the fear of an invasion from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Others viewed it as a condemnation of Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt for communists during the 1950s. The writer, Jack Finney; the director, Don Siegel; the producer, Walter Wanger concurred with Walter Mirisch who wrote in his biography, “I thought we were making movies,
not history.”

The story is set in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California. It was actually shot in Santa Madre. A local doctor, Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), returns to his hometown to find a number of his patients accusing their close relatives and friends of being imposters. One of them is his former sweetheart, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), who tells him that her cousin Wilma has similar fears about her uncle Ira.
Dr. Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates) assures Bennell that it is nothing but an epidemic of mass hysteria. However, the doctor discovers that the townspeople are in fact being replaced by simulations grown from plantlike pods. These physical duplicates kill and dispose of their human victims. Except for their utter lack of emotion, the pod people appear to be identical to humans. It seems that the seed from which these pods grow has been floating through space waiting for an
opportunity to replace the population of earth.
The film ends with Bennell and Driscoll attempting to escape the pod people and warn the rest of humanity. When Driscoll falls asleep, she succumbs to the invasion and becomes one of the aliens. In the final scene Driscoll is running from one car to another telling people that the invaders are coming. Looking into the camera he yells, “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!”
The film has been remade a number of times, but the American film Institute has selected the 1956 version as the ninth best film ever made in its genre.
Today we give a reel memories salute to the cast, crew, director and producer of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
William V. Reynolds is the author of “Murder in the Okefenokee” available at
doubleeagleenterprises.com and Amazon.com or ask for it at your favorite bookstore.