Review #511: 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (1956)

The first of many adaptations of Jack Finney's novel 'The Body Snatchers', - which was originally serialised in Colliers Magazine in 1954, - Don Siegel's film set the science fiction template for cinema narratives about control, and the subversion of individualism. Whilst it has been reported by Finney, Siegel, and others involved in the production, that no political or metaphorical message was intended (they all simply thought that they were making a thriller), the simple story of aliens quietly invading our world and replacing us with emotionless replicas, was an irresistible package that was open to many contemporary interpretations.

The America of the 1950's was one of social convention and conformity, and the desire to present an habitually formal appearance. The outsider who sees behind this veneer is a dangerous person, transgressing from normal linear passages. The teenagers of America (as seen in James Dean's Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955)) were a dangerous new opponent to the hypocritical values of the countries proverbial "dream". Therefore, the pervading consensus in political and social attitudes was to distinguish individualism, and to suppress those random and spontaneous desires.

In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kevin McCarthy's Dr. Bennell's hysteria is revealed at the start of the film, his recollection of the past days events, told not only to clear his own anxiety-riddled memory, but to also defend his sanity, to confess his erratic behaviour as non-conformist, and to logically explain the reason he "stood out from the crowd". In the next scene the doctor is calm, respectable looking, merging into small town life. He begins to hear reports about people behaving unusually. Close family friends becoming devoid of emotion over night. In a later scene, Bennell and Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), an old friend of the doctors, watch a haunting image from a window. A congregation gathers in the town centre, as pods (the alien, plant-like objects that duplicate the humans) are distributed for the indoctrination of their children and loved ones. A violent response to the rise of adolescent rebellion, from the formative generation, but also a more sinister political philosophy.

When the pod people begin enveloping the inhabitants of Santa Mira, their ideological conspiracy is an easy metaphor for the political machinations of McCartyism, the propagandist attack on communism, and the perceived danger to American values; or a reflection on the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the 1930's. In these context's, it is the loss of personal freedoms and individual rights, brought on by political conformity, that transforms the population into zombies. Without these fundamental human emotions and freedoms, we are simply mechanisms to order. Nothing unique comes from that. As Dr. Bennell discovers the ramifications of conformity, he disputes the outcome; he doesn't want to lose love, anger, frustration, or grief. These emotional reactions to the various obstacles of life or essential to our originality.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn't at all unique in its themes. Many of the decades science fiction films were expressing similar fears of invasion (The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), War of the Worlds (1953)), but Siegel's was a far more subtler production, than some of the more lavish special effects driven movies. Partly, no doubt, to the minuscule budget. But the film is still effective today, the pace building tension throughout, and revealing increasingly horrific and terrifying images. Over fifty years later, it is consistently the best adaptation of the source novel, and the alarming themes of global control and political corruption, are still relevant (possibly more insipidly) in the twenty-first century.


Directed by: Don Siegel
Starring: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Marc Ivamy