Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1956  NR  SCIENCE FICTION  1h 20min
CAST— Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Virginia Christine
MUSIC— Carmen Dragon  DIRECTOR— Don Siegel  BASED ON— The Body Snatchers (novel), by Jack Finney

     You’d better stay awake for this one, a classic sci-fi chiller for the conspiracy theorist in all of us. In your average Small Town, U.S.A., everything appears as normal as can be. But if you look beneath the surface you may notice subtle changes in the people you know and love. Dig deeper behind the scenes and you just may find the shock of your life: strange oozing pods replicating human-esqe bodies that suspiciously look like those you see in your local Wal-Mart. What’s this…? There seems to be a pod-person that resembles you! Perhaps you should scram. Suddenly the townspeople form en masse and pursue you, trying to lull you into a false sense of security, claiming that mindless pod-people make for a better world. You’d better make a choice: try to elude them, or call it a day and hit the sack. During the time of the film’s release popular forms of entertainment were perfect breeding grounds for atomic-age freak-out films; why not give audiences a dose of the “Red Scare” as well? This film is widely believed to be a social commentary, saturated in negative jargon concerning commies. And for once, paranoid film critics may have something there; an air of imposing oppression does spread throughout the film. Whether you watch it for its significance as a classic of the genre or just for fun, it will hopefully leave an impression long after that “I Like Ike” bumper sticker peels off. Deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.
OUR RATING— ***
REMADE AS— Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1994), The Invasion (2007)