Synopsis
… there was nothing to hold onto—except each other.
A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1956 Directed by Don Siegel
Cast
Kevin McCarthy Dana Wynter King Donovan Carolyn Jones Larry Gates Kenneth Patterson Virginia Christine Jean Willes Ralph Dumke Guy Way Bobby Clark Beatrice Maude Whit Bissell Richard Deacon Robert Osterloh Guy Rennie Eileen Stevens Tom Fadden Jean Andren Everett Glass Sam Peckinpah Dabbs Greer Marie Selland Harry J. Vejar J. Pat O'Malley
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Make-Up
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Alternative Titles
La invasión de los usurpadores de cuerpos, Ruumiinryöstäjät, They Came from Another World, The Body Snatchers, Sleep No More, Walter Wagner's Invasion of the Body Snatchers
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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…
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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…
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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.
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🎃(Halloween Movie Fest 2021)🎃
(Criterion Laser Disc Collection)
Something strange is brewing in the town of Santa Mira, as more and more people suddenly become shells of their former selves.
"Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us."
With the 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers being so good, I was not anticipating that the original classic would hold up so well. This is the story of how an outbreak of alien pods has begun to duplicate the population, and eliminate their remains. I enjoyed the noir style of this film with the main character being a doctor with doubts about these outlandish claims at first. Until he…
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Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a horror film with very little onscreen horror. Instead, the horror is that of idea and of suggestion. It is the creeping horror of paranoia, of the fear that you or your loves ones are not what they seem. This horrific idea flows through Siegel's film, effortlessly gripping any audience susceptible to these fears.
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" follows Kevin McCarthy's Santa Mira, California doctor as he is faced with patients complaining of loved ones acting differently or not being themselves at all. When the doctor pokes around the phenomenon, he finds that his town is under siege by forces turning the townsfolk into emotionless, soulless shells of their former selves.…
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t̲h̲e̲y̲’̲r̲e̲ ̲a̲l̲r̲e̲a̲d̲y̲ ̲h̲e̲r̲e̲ ̲!̲
Just such a classic. I saw this back in history class of my senior year on communism in hollywood or whatever. Seeing it now it still holds up very well and I appreciate it more now.
I’m kinda half tempted myself to just run out in the middle of the street like Kevin McCarthy and scream to the top of my lungs but not because of aliens invading but for more pizza cuz I just ran out while watching this movie :( hahaha I just imagined my face bouncing on the screen yelling for food lol
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Given the prevalent concerns in America regarding nuclear armament and the threats posed by Soviet imperialism in the wake of the Second World War, it’s no wonder that so many Hollywood films of the 50s played into these social fears and anxieties. Don Siegel’s adaptation of Jack Finney’s source text is understandably regarded as one of the most effective sci-fis to have been born out of this particular “Cold War paranoia” mindset. Here, these fears were manifested by the presence of an invasive alien species, who arrive from space via radioactive spores, which then develop into giant incubatory “seed pods”, capable of yielding identical replicas of individual human beings, thus allowing the invaders to infiltrate the population of a small…
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Critics have always screamed 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an allegory against McCarthyism blindness at the time, but I only see that if I really bend over backwards to make the connection; unlike 1986’s “The Fly” as an allegory for AIDS devastation, the connection there was easy to see. Heck, 1978’s “Invasion” was a clear-cut allegory on New Age conformity and how the so-called maximization of human potential was to band together in groups. Themes aside, the most shocking thing about this classic original is that it takes place at a time when Kevin McCarthy’s caring doctor will actually see and evaluate patients pro bono without first asking for a PPO insurance card. It becomes terrific ham-and-cheese overacting…
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Classic sci-fi thriller about the fears and paranoia prevalent in the 50's! (McCarthyism, Red Menace, General fear of those whom are different or of the unknown)!
Paranoia gone unchecked led to this and many other great Sci-Fi films back in the 50's and 60's!
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It'd been years since I last saw this, and although (of course) I remembered the story's loose outline, many of the smaller details startled me. A few thoughts on that:
• It looks and sounds exactly like top-shelf film noir! The sequences where Miles and Becky flee from "the police" are especially reminiscent of movies like Detour or Dark Passage, and even James Wong Howe could hardly have improved on all the headlights and flashlights slicing through the night. The film's photography progressively hems in its remaining human characters, penning them first in Miles' office, then beneath the slats of a mineshaft floor. Invasion is among the leanest, most suffocating nightmares in all of cinema.
• What if you didn't…
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Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, given when the film was made, but I wasn't expecting this to be so damn Noirish! An unexpectedly appropriate pick for Noirvember. It's there in the visuals, in black & white Superscope, DOP Ellsworth Fredericks's sumptuous shadowplay creating a palpable atmosphere of small town paranoia; it's in the way the story is relayed via flashback with a hardboiled voiceover courtesy of Kevin McCarthy and it's there in the bleak af resolution. "You're next!"
Like most sci-fi of the blacklist era, the invasion by stealth is an obvious metaphor for the Red Threat but in Body Snatchers, that seems to extend to a critique of post-war America - an anxiety that homogeneity and conformity is gradually eating…
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"They're here already! You're next!"
I'm back on the Moviedrome wagon, with just six films to go before I've finished season 1. Up next is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel's sci-fi classic about people in a small town being replaced by alien impersonators. To say that it's been influential on the genre is something of an understatement, but I was curious to see how the movie itself would hold up.
As it turns out, Invasion of the Body Snatchers holds up quite well. Since most viewers know the premise going in, Siegel's direction and the ensemble's performances immediately force the viewer to suspect every town member, and pay attention to background actors for any hint of passivity in…
