Quote:Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1956 American science fiction horror film produced by Walter Wanger, directed by Don Siegel, that stars Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.
The black and white film, shot in Superscope, was partially done in a film noir style. Daniel Mainwaring adapted the screenplay from Jack Finney's 1954 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers.[2] The film was released by Allied Artists Pictures on a double bill with the British science fiction film The Atomic Man.
Themes [edit]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers
Some reviewers saw in the story a commentary on the dangers facing America for turning a blind eye to McCarthyism, "Leonard Maltin speaks of a McCarthy-era subtext."[17] or of bland conformity in postwar Eisenhower-era America. Others viewed it as an allegory for the loss of personal autonomy in the Soviet Union or communist systems in general.[18]
For the BBC, David Wood summarized the circulating popular interpretations of the film as follows: "The sense of post-war, anti-communist paranoia is acute, as is the temptation to view the film as a metaphor for the tyranny of the McCarthy era."[19] Danny Peary in Cult Movies pointed out that the addition of the framing story had changed the film's stance from anti-McCarthyite to anti-communist.
[15] Michael Dodd of The Missing Slate has called the movie "one of the most multifaceted horror films ever made", arguing that by "simultaneously exploiting the contemporary fear of infiltration by undesirable elements as well as a burgeoning concern over homeland totalitarianism in the wake of Senator Joseph McCarthy's notorious communist witch hunt, it may be the clearest window into the American psyche that horror cinema has ever provided".[20]
In An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, Carlos Clarens saw a trend manifesting itself in science fiction films, dealing with dehumanization and fear of the loss of individual identity, being historically connected to the end of "the Korean War and the well publicized reports of brainwashing techniques".[21]
Comparing Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, Brian Neve found a sense of disillusionment rather than straightforward messages, with all three films being "less radical in any positive sense than reflective of the decline of [the screenwriters'] great liberal hopes".[22]
Despite a general agreement among film critics regarding these political connotations of the film, actor Kevin McCarthy said in an interview included on the 1998 DVD release that he felt no political allegory was intended. The interviewer stated that he had spoken with the author of the novel, Jack Finney, who professed no specific political allegory in the work. DVD commentary track, quoted in Feo Amante's homepage.[23]
In his autobiography, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, Walter Mirisch writes: "People began to read meanings into pictures that were never intended. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an example of that.
I remember reading a magazine article arguing that the picture was intended as an allegory about the communist infiltration of America. From personal knowledge, neither Walter Wanger nor Don Siegel, who directed it, nor Dan Mainwaring, who wrote the script nor original author Jack Finney, nor myself saw it as anything other than a thriller, pure and simple."[24]
Don Siegel spoke more openly of an existing allegorical subtext, but denied a strictly political point of view: "[…] I felt that this was a very important story. I think that the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them. I think so many people have no feeling about cultural things, no feeling of pain, of sorrow. […]
The political reference to Senator McCarthy and totalitarianism was inescapable but I tried not to emphasize it because I feel that motion pictures are primarily to entertain and I did not want to preach."[25]
Film scholar J.P. Telotte wrote that Siegel intended for pods to be seductive; their spokesperson, a psychiatrist, was chosen to provide an authoritative voice that would appeal to the desire to "abdicate from human responsibility in an increasingly complex and confusing modern world."[26]
Legacy[edit]
Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[31] In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten" — the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres — after polling more than 1,500 people from the creative community. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was acknowledged as the ninth best film in the science fiction genre.[32]
The film was also placed on AFI's AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Thrills, a list of America's most heart-pounding films.[33] The film was included on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.[34] Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 29th scariest film ever made.[35] Time magazine included Invasion of the Body Snatchers on their list of 100 all-time best films,[36] the top 10 1950s Sci-Fi Movies,[37] and Top 25 Horror Films.[38]
Related works[edit]
Template:Rewrites section There are several thematically related works that followed the novel and its film adaptations, including Val Guest's Quatermass 2 and Gene Fowler's I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Robert A. Heinlein had treated this subject in a novel, The Puppet Masters, written in 1950 and published a year later. This novel was plagiarized in the 1958 film The Brain Eaters and adapted in a 1994 film with the same title.
A Looney Tunes parody of the film was released titled, Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers (1992). The adaptation was directed by Greg Ford and places Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, and Porky Pig in the various roles of the story.
The May 1981 issue of National Lampoon featured a parody titled "Invasion of the Money Snatchers"; the gentile population of Whiteville is taken over by pastrami sandwiches from outer space and turned into Jews.[40]
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