There's something strange happening in the small town of Santa Mira, California.
There are reports of a contagious delusion, of people who claim their own dear family
members are not who they appear to be, that they have been replaced by imposters.
One man, a Dr. Miles Bennell, was found assaulting cars on the freeway outside
of town, telling a mad tale of an invasion from the stars by malicious
seed pods that give birth to nearly perfect copies of human beings.
In the mid-1950's, Hollywood producer Walter Wanger set about making a film
version of Jack Finny's recent serialized novel, The Body Snatchers.
With a script written by Daniel Mainwaring, Wanger brought on Don Siegel to direct.
Due to studio pressure, the film had to be done on a very tight budget of only
three hundred fifty thousand dollars and a scant 20 days for principal photography.
Under such constraints, Wanger and Siegel were forced to hire virtual
unknowns in the lead roles. Kevin McCarthy played protagonist Dr. Bennell,
and Dana Winter played the primary love interest, Becky Driscoll.
Because of studio-mandated reshoots and other complications, the final budget
of the film came closer to $400,000 and took 23 days to film.
Several ambitious ideas had to be discarded, including a voice-over
narration that Wenger tried to hire the legendary Orson Welles or famed
science-fiction author Ray Bradbury to deliver.
Wanger and Siegel fought with the studio over the final cut of the film,
but ultimately, it was released in Superscope format in February of 1956.
It made over a million dollars in its first month, despite film critics basically
ignoring it. Many theaters promoted the release with papier-mâché seed pods and
life-sized posters of the actors.
Let's make one thing very clear: Invasion of the Body Snatchers is,
contrary to popular belief, NOT about communism.
Jack Finney, the writer of The Body Snatchers novel, vehemently and repeatedly
denied having any political message to his story, and the filmmakers behind the 1956
film are just as strong in their denials. The book and film are about a man and a
woman finding the ability to trust and love other people, after suffering through
their own separate divorces. The movie expands on the novel's core theme
by turning it into a credo for never letting the difficult trials of life
force you into abandoning "love, desire, ambition, and faith."
The villainous pod people, who are stand- ins for people who have given up, argue
that love never lasts, and they urge Miles to abandon his dreams and embrace his
more cynical and nihilistic impulses. The story, therefore, is about being given
a choice to either pursue your dreams or descend into fatalism.
Given the politics of the 1950's, it's easy to see how this idea can be misinterpreted
as a point about the individualism of capitalism versus the somber conformity
of communism, but such an interpretation is, to put it bluntly, just plain wrong.
Failing to understand this is one of the primary reasons its more recent remakes fail.
2007's The Invasion, for example, bogs down the personal stakes
with heaps of meandering political messaging that clouds the emotional
impact of the underlying horror. When characters are more concerned
with espousing beliefs about the pharmaceutical industry,
discussing the perils of disingenuous international diplomacy, and twirling
their moustaches in corporate boardrooms than in having actual character
development, the political baggage vastly outweighs any human connection
the audience can make with them. 2007's The Invasion is therefore less
frightening, because there is no compelling emotional reason for Dr. Bennell--
a woman in this version--to let go of her humanity. She's still a divorcée, but unlike
the original Dr. Bennell, she doesn't seem to be too tormented by this, nor does she let
it define her character. Instead, she is given a son she loves with all the
selflessness a good mother should, and so she isn't even remotely tempted to give in.
1956's Dr. Bennell, on the other hand, is clearly a more vulnerable character.
Sure, he hides his pain under a veneer of self-deprecating humor and sly charm,
but he is not an emotionally healthy man, as evidenced by his stated attitudes
towards love and marriage early in the film. It is only through Becky Driscoll,
herself another wounded divorcée, that he finds the ability to open himself up again,
to find a reason not to succumb to the pods, and that is a connection he
finds throughout the course of the story. Granted, there is a pretty significant
difference between the novel and the 1956 film when it comes to Dr. Bennell's
relationship to Miss Driscoll. In the book, they both escape unscathed, and
their determination to fight to the end is strong enough to convince the pods to
abandon Earth and try their invasion elsewhere. While this ending is cheap,
it does fall in line with the uplifting point Jack Finney was trying to make.
Of course, in the movie, things don't turn out so well, with Becky getting body
snatched at the climax and leaving Dr. Bennell alone to rail like a madman at
the traffic on a California freeway. This subverts Finney's story, but in so doing,
it makes it a far more powerful example of horror. I happen to think it makes for a
much better ending, as proven once again by the more recent remakes that tried to
have happier endings. The original cut of the film ended there,
with Miles screaming "You're next!" directly into the camera. The final cut's
bookends, with Miles telling the story and convincing the military to go into
Santa Mira to stop the invasion, was shot afterwards at the insistence of a studio
that refused to let the film end on such a dour note. Interestingly enough, test
audiences seemed to like the bleaker ending, but the major Hollywood studios
of the 1950's were rarely ever daring enough to let something like that slip through.
This is not to say all the studio interference was necessarily a bad thing.
They also insisted on several cuts to tone down the humor,
which was apparently much more rampant in the original cut.
Perhaps this was done to offset the brutal ending, but the studio felt it
made the tone too inconsistent. Test audiences actually agreed on this, too.
Though the original cut is lost to time, it's hard to imagine how more humor
could work in this film, seeing as how what humor is there--mostly
Miles making nervous jokes to mask his emotion--is more than enough. Any more
would probably feel out of place, given the harrowing stakes of the story.
In 1994, the United States National Film Registry selected 1956's
Invasion of the Body Snatchers for inclusion in the Library of Congress for
being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." It is considered
today to be one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made,
landing a spot in the top ten by the American Film Institute. Its influence is
profound, and though it is often overshadowed by its 1978 remake,
which will be the subject of my next video review, it cannot be brushed aside.
And that's all for today, fellow Earthlings. If you like what I'm doing here,
please let me know in the comments, after giving this video a like and
subscribing to the channel, of course. For more on my opinions of Jack Finney's
novel and the four--yes, four--film adaptations, you can find written reviews
for them on my website at emagill.com. I'll put links in the description.
As I said, I do intend to cover the 1978 version next, so be on the lookout for that.
Until then, this is The Unapologetic Geek, telling you to never be ashamed
of what you love, as long as you're not hurting anybody.
"They're like huge seed pods!" "This must be the way that body
in my closet was formed. Miles, where did they come from?"
"Havin' fun?"