Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) (BFI Blu-Ray BFIB1430-TM)

The BFI’s latest restoration offering is a BluRay edition of a true classic of science fiction cinema, 1956’s ’Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, directed by Don Siegel. For those who are inexplicably unfamiliar with this film, here’s the idea.

Growing numbers of residents of an anonymous Californian town seem to be suffering from a mass delusion; they believe that close friends and relatives are not ‘real’, they have become someone else. The delusion spreads at an alarming rate, and only a few seem unaffected. That’s the entire plot, but what a web they weave with so little spider silk.

Dr Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns to town, meeting up with his old, recently divorced girlfriend Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) and is struck by the strange local events of the last few days. Seeing Becky’s psychiatrist uncle, Dr Kauffman (Larry Gates), a skeptic who assures everyone that the stories have no substance to them, they still do not feel reassured. The alarm is raised when Dr Bennell’s friend, Jack Belicec (King Donovan) finds a body with features very similar to his own, although not fully formed, in the house. Then they find another body in the house, this one with the similarly undeveloped features, but of Becky. The bodies disappear while they call to get Dr. Kaufmann to come to the scene, and his skepticism increases.

The atmosphere gets ever more hysterical as evidence emerges that these ‘duplicate’ people are being grown in large seed pods, and they discover that the growth continues apace when the originals are asleep. Our crew realise that their only hope is to stay awake from now on. Outside, lorries are arriving and taking inert seed pods to neighbouring towns to replace their human population with copies.

The sheer speed that the population of this small town – and presumably the country’s too, is replaced by unemotional alien duplicates is truly terrifying. That well-worn sci-fi trope, that only a few lucky souls know what is really happening, is central to the plot, and the questions, what do they want, where do they come from and why us, are never answered. The relentless march of the duplicate people and the inevitability of their victory almost places ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ in the zombie genre. The final shots leave you disturbed and hungry for a sequel, with maybe a happy ending, but as we know, it never came.

Many critics look upon Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a Cold War parable, a ‘Red Scare’ film and they may well be right, but let’s just keep our disbelief in suspension and enjoy it for what it is; one of the finest science fiction films ever made, and re-made.

Scenester

26/10/21

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