"Invastion of the Body Snatchers" (1956)

Starring: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes

First, the Lowdown: A small town in southern California is invaded by an insidious alien metaphor.

“I went to my apartment yesterday – and everything had been replaced with an exact replica.” – Steven Wright.

Santa Mira – tiny, semi-urban, quiet, peaceful. The town motto is probably “A Place To Be Somebody.” The Levittown architectural schism hadn’t yet hit, so most of the houses are still colonial and individually unique. Dr. Miles Bennell returns home from a conference after receiving an urgent telegram from his nurse. Seems that a strange malady has been sweeping over the town, and his office is backed up with patients - but when Bennell finishes his day, nothing more serious than a concussion has come in.

To add to the sense of strangeness, a friend refers him to Wilma Lentz who has concerns about her Uncle Ira. Sure, Ira seems okay enough as he trims the lawn in his cardigan, smoking a pipe, but Wilma knows that something is different with him – and can’t say what. Ira still acts like Ira, but isn’t, and that is wigging out Wilma considerably.

Bennell consults with the town psychiatrist, Dr. Kauffman, who tells him that his office has been backed up with similar cases: people are seeing soulless duplicates instead of their friends and relatives. Kauffman feels that it’s merely a low-level wave of hysteria and that it should pass in a few days, Bennell isn’t so sure.

A phone call from Bennell’s answering service interrupts a dinner date with Becky Driscoll, an old flame that he’d been trying to court. It’s an emergency call from Jack Belicec, a writer and friend of Bennell’s. When Bennell arrives, nothing is wrong – except for the body on Belicec’s pool table. Upon examination, the body is only vaguely defined: it’s got a nose, mouth, limbs, and appropriate appendages – but there’s no detail, not even fingerprints. Bennell drops Becky (a lot of B names in this movie) off at her father’s to get some rest while he decides what to do. While Belicec and his wife wait for his return, the body’s eyes have opened, and its hand has acquired a cut on it – the same cut that Jack got only minutes before.

Thoroughly panicked the Belicecs hole up at Bennell’s house to figure out what has happened. An off-hand comment leads Bennell to suspect something similar is happening at Becky’s place too – so he rushes off to investigate. Breaking into the basement, Bennell finds a vaguely shaped body in the coal chute, so Bennell spirits Becky away to his place and calls the police.

Bennell calls the police to look into the matter, only to find out that the bodies at both the Belicecs’ and Becky’s basement have mysteriously disappeared. Furthermore a body matching the description of Jack’s double was found on a burning haystack. Chided, but nonetheless scared, Bennel and company retire for the evening.

The next day, Bennell finds that people who were previously in a state of anxious paranoia are now blandly calm. Wilma approaches him to apologize for her earlier histrionics about her Uncle Ira, who is now back to normal. Bennell has no explanation for the sudden shift of everyone’s attitude, but it has him more worried than ever.

Back at home, Bennell and company are trying to calm their nerves with a backyard barbecue when an odd sound coming from the greenhouse catches Jack’s attention. Inside lay four giant seed pods, each hatching a humanoid duplicate that are gradually taking the features of Bennell, Becky, Jack and his wife. After coming to the realization that there isn’t just some mass hysteria of people accusing each other of being imposters, but that they really ARE imposters, the foursome decide to get out of dodge with all haste.

This movie is a classic. It has the classic stamp all over it. Chances are if you go to your video store it’ll probably BE in the “classics” section instead of sci-fi or horror. It’s a milestone movie that helped bring science fiction to a broader audience. And on top of it, it’s a tight little story with a central idea (remember when sci-fi writing used to be about those?) that even the straights can get.

And yet, it does nothing for me.

Maybe it’s because I’m not from the McCarthy era, maybe I’m just jaded and cynical nowadays. For some reason the original version of Snatchers always comes off like a extended episode of The Twilight Zone to me. Yeah, I’ve read essay after essay pointing out the pro- and anti-communism messages in the movie. Both director Don Siegel and the story’s author have denied any connection or hidden message.

Personally, I think that there’s a message even more subtle than the “better dead than Them” subtext. Consider this: In 1952, Levitt & Sons were ramping up production of “Levittown II” in Pennsylvania. An egregiously homogenized housing project designed to cheaply manufacture homes for quick sale. As proved with New York’s Levittown, the concept was embraced by the property-starved masses (many of which were returning from war), but condemned by the academics as something that would only encourage banality and stymie cultural growth. (I’ll leave it to you guys to ponder on whether they were successful or not.) So, in conclusion, I think that Snatcher’s real message was a stance against the creepy wave of conformity that was beginning to rise in our nation and the subsequent death of individuality of the masses.

Line of the movie: “The mind is a strange and wonderful thing, I’m not sure it’ll ever be able to figure itself out.”

Three and a half stars. Take what you want, but eat what you take.