Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
This year’s “The Invasion,” an inept and laughable movie, is the fourth version of Jack Finney’s science-fiction novel “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” which was first published as a Collier’s magazine serial. In his review of the 2007 incarnation, Roger Ebert asked, “How many references in the same movie can you have to the war in Iraq and not say anything about it?”
By contrast, Don Siegel’s 1956 “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” never once mentions Communism but manages to work both as a satire of Red paranoia and as an indictment of Soviet-style assaults on individual freedom. The premise is simple: Aliens invade Earth (the movie begins with the camera descending ominously through the clouds) and replace humans with automatons that grow in giant seed pods. Placid and implacable, the pod people promise a soulless utopia, free from messy emotion or unpredicatble behavior. They must be defeated because, in their world, there’s no need for love.
Siegel carries off this concept with both tension and humor, making his hero a recently divorced family doctor in sleepy Santa Mira, Calif., whose patients come to him and complain that their relatives — who, to the untrained eye, appear perfectly normal — are somehow not their relatives. Then, a day or two later, the folks who wanted to see him insist that they’re perfectly fine and must have been mistaken. But Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) remains convinced that something isn’t right in his town, and his suspicions are confirmed when his neighbor, Jack (King Donovan) discovers a body on his pool table — a body that isn’t exactly dead and could be his twin, except it has no fingerprints.
Siegel’s movie, considered a high-end “B picture” at the time, moves swiftly and confidently, yet unlike “The Invasion,” it’s not always in a hurry and takes time to establish a coherent milieu, peopled with ordinary folks we care about. It has some touching adult romance between Miles and Becky Driscoll (the fetching Dana Wynter), who’s also recently divorced. Their marital status pegs them as outsiders in their community, and eventually they become Santa Mira’s only hope against the pods. There’s invention in the storytelling and the special effects, and Siegel, working in black-and-white “SuperScope,” with the rarely used (but beautifully proportioned) 2:1 aspect ratio, creates some killer images, like a point-of-view shot out a window of the town square that reveals the horrifying extent of the pod-planting operation. Later, he stages a kiss between the leads that’s simultaneously heartbreaking, terrifying and dramatically satisfying.
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is burdened with a clunky, tacked-on framing device that seeks to assuage the fears of the audience, but you can feel the passion behind the scene that should have been the ending, with Miles running through traffic, raving about the invasion and screaming, “Does anyone believe me?” Of course, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. You can see the (just) rejection of raving Red Scare lunatics in the mildly annoyed faces of the motorists who ignore Miles, but the movie also warns against complacency, a failure to acknowledge that not everyone believes the American way of life is best. What an entertaining movie. It’s chilling and funny and smart, all in 80 confident minutes.