"They're here already! You're next!"

It's interesting that some of the greatest horror movie classics of all time were B-pictures often made on shoestring budgets (consider, for instance, the original "Halloween," "Night of the Living Dead," and "Cat People"). Slotting nicely within this formula is arguably the best scary movie of the 1950s, Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," which works across many subgenres, including the paranoid political thriller and the alien invasion sci-fi flick. Over 60 years later, the original continues to hold us tight in its suspenseful grip. Here are some of the reasons why, as discussed yesterday at CineVerse:

WHAT DID YOU FIND DIFFERENT, REFRESHING OR UNEXPECTED ABOUT INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS?

• The story moves along at a fast clip, building tension with a quickening pace and unrelenting directorial style. 
• The opening and ending feel tacked on and forced, as if the filmmakers were bowing to pressure from censors and popular thought that the film was too bleak and frightening. There seems to some hope at the conclusion, as if suggesting that we need to wake up and begin to fight back; the last words are “it’s an emergency!” 
• There isn’t much “sci-fi” here; lots of fiction, but not much science. In other words, the aliens look just like us, and there aren’t many special effects and no spacecraft or otherworldly technology shown. 

WHAT THEMES ARE AT WORK IN THIS MOVIE?

• Fear of infiltration from outside forces—including infiltration of political forces like communism. This film examines “society’s fear of the things that lie outside its rigid conservative confines,” according to reviewer Richard Scheib. The subtext explores Americans’ paranoia about communist infiltration into our society (with the pod people being conformist, non-emotional, unthinking communist clones). 1950s America was absorbed with the McCarthy communist witch hunts and was also fretful about the bomb. 
• The peace and sanctity of small town suburbia is a myth; fear, anarchy and corruption can occur in a town with white picket fences. 
• The survival of the nuclear family is under threat. 
• The mind can figure out everything except itself, as the psychiatrist character says in the film; this reinforces the notion of the mysteries of human existence, and the existential dilemma of never being able to truly know yourself—which suggests that we are vulnerable to infiltration by outside forces. 
• The value and sanctity of being an authentic human being who has his/her own mind and emotions. 

WHAT OTHER FILMS COME TO MIND AFTER VIEWING THIS REMAKE?

• They Live 
• Seconds 
• Conspiracy/political thrillers from the 1970s (e.g., Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor, etc.) 
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (terror of falling asleep) 
• Alien and The Thing (remake): two other films featuring gross-out effects depicting aliens infiltrating the human body 

OTHER FILMS BY DIRECTOR DON SIEGEL

• Dirty Harry 
• Escape From Alcatraz 
• The Killers 
• The Shootist