From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers released in 1956.
Starring:
Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates
Directed by:
Don Siegel
Genre:
Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
Not Rated
Budget:
$417,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
7.7
The Synopsis is:
A small-town doctor, Miles Bennell, learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.
I have to tell you that I am so excited to finally review this film because this is one of my favorite old school black and white sci-fi classics.
It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by The Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Ranked #9 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Sci-Fi" in June 2008.
Included among the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.
Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
Included among the American Film Institute's 2001 list of the top 100 Most Heart-Pounding American Movies.
That gives you an idea of what an impact it had on cinema.
The idea for the film began as a science fiction serial in Colliers Magazine in 1954 before becoming a novel, The Body Snatchers published in 1955 written by writer Jack Finney.
It was about the real town of Mill Valley, California becoming invaded by seeds that have drifted to Earth from space, which proceeds to grow pods that replace human beings.
The book was greeted with mixed reviews. It was blasted for being unscientific. However, few could deny that it was an excellent horror story.
Prior to this, a similar movie about aliens where humans are transformed was Invaders from Mars in 1953. It’s another favorite of mine.
Hollywood noticed this and snatched up the rights to the novel in a heartbeat. Since then, there have been several movies based on this book, but this one was the very first. Others included remakes in 1978, 1993, and 2007. It was also the basis of the 1998 movies The Faculty and Disturbing Behavior, which I have previously reviewed, as well as the 2019 movie Assimilate.
The screenplay for “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was given to Daniel Mainwaring and the title was changed from "The Body Snatchers" to differentiate the film from some prior works of a similar name. Some other interesting titles they considered were, "They Come from Another World", "Better Off Dead", "Sleep No More", "Evil in the Night" and "World in Danger". I personally enjoy the title as it became, but “Sleep No More,” sounds pretty cool.
Film director and screenwriter David Samuel Peckinpah worked as a dialogue coach on the film and
claimed that he overhauled the script, however, his claims were not backed up by the crew and pushed Daniel Mainwaring to threaten to file an official complaint with the Writers Guild of America, forcing Peckinpah to drop these claims publicly.
What I find about the story is how it starts out with a hysterical man raving about something to a doctor at a hospital, setting us up for a really wild ride. It may have been a little ham fisted, but it lets the audience know the adventure will eventually mature into this.
The hysterical man recounts that he is Dr. Miles Bennell, a divorced successful doctor in the small fictional town of Santa Mira in California.
Initially Miles gets a few patients claiming that their relatives and spouses have been physically replaced. The impostors retain the same memories, but they are unable to duplicate the same personality traits and emotional nuances.
Oddly enough these patients claim nothing is wrong the next day and are cured of their hysteria which raises even more suspicion.
At first Miles shrugs it off as an "epidemic of mass hysteria". At the same time, his former girlfriend, Becky Driscoll, has recently returned after a divorce, rekindling a romantic connection between the two. He’s operating on logic and trying to make sense of it, so Miles is very casual about the way he’s handling this which is in quite contrast to his hysterics in the opening scene.
As the story continues, Miles discovers body doubles in plant pods affirming the accounts of his former patients. This is part of an alien invasion, where pods are placed close to a human subject while they sleep. The double grows more and more like the subject until it consumes the individual completely.
It’s a fascinating and terrifying idea of being overtaken while asleep. We all need sleep and thus, there is no escape leaving us vulnerable to biological invasion.
That is creepy and I think that is why I enjoy the concept. It plays on so many fears. It plays on the fears of losing the essential material that makes you who you are, the ego, identity, and transforms the subject into a kind of hive drone. This is the same concept that made Star Trek’s Borg so scary back in the years of The Next Generation TV series.
Humans value their humanity and individuality.
Alongside that fear is the fear of seeing the people you rely on in your life change and the alienation of not being able to relate to others in the world around you.
It doesn’t beat you over the head with it. It’s subtle.
The lore of the aliens from the book is that “space spores” drifted through the cosmos and arrived on planet Earth after consuming entire planets. In the film, the events just start to happen on Earth.
I was waiting patiently for that moment in the film when we can get some insight into what they were doing and why. We don’t get much of an explanation. They are simply invading Earth, replacing humans and “you are next”.
There is an implication that the humans would theoretically retain their existence in this “new body”. Which brings up the question are you, you in your body? And what happens to the original human bodies in this film? The situation never arises to show that. It may have been due to the budget constraints on the film. It leaves you with questions, but it doesn’t add details to make it impossible for you to imagine the answers off screen.
Once duplicated, the memories of the human being are intact, but humanity is gone. According to one of the pod people, Dr. Dan Kauffman, without “love, desire, ambition, and faith” life is so simple. Everyone can get along with each other because they are working for one cause.
I have always associated that with the aliens personal psychology as individuals. However as a hive, they exert their self love in preservation, desire and ambition in the invasion, and the faith in telling the humans that they have no choice.
What is quite fun and dare I say beautiful about the film is that it's simply put together with lots of twists along the way. It's not worried about telling us everything about the aliens or why they are doing what they are doing. The film tries to keep everything from Mile’s point of view to help the audience feel what it must be like to be in that situation. He doesn’t know much about what’s happening and neither do we, so the surprises in the film were more psychologically impactful.
Most of the film features our protagonists on the run. The actor playing Miles was Kevin McCarthy, who said he had got lot of cramps from running around so much during the 19 days of filming. Kevin was a theater actor from New York who worked with director Don Seigel once before.
He was the pulse of the film for me. I enjoyed how he casually portrays Miles in the beginning of the film allowing the audience to like the character before he slowly matures him into a man broken from his experience of losing the love of his life and seeing his home town dissolve in front of his eyes. The character has been through so much, hasn’t slept in days and Kevin portrays this incredibly.
One of the most iconic moments of the film is when Miles leaves Becky for a few moments and returns to kiss her. Instantly he knows it isn’t her and the look on her face sends chills to the audience as we realize that Miles is the last man standing in the small town of Santa Mira. The situation seems utterly hopeless. Technically, the film could have ended there, but the film revs into overdrive with another memorable scene as Miles tries to warn passing cars on the freeway.
In the book Becky is not snatched and they both survive the invasion in which the aliens abandon their plan and leave Earth because humans resisted too much. The book’s ending was a point of criticism for many people because it was hard to understand why the aliens would simply leave Earth after having such a grand upper hand over the humans. Don Siegel originally intended to end the film with a more bleak outcome than the novel, however, the studio imposed that there be a more hopeful ending.
I think that the ending was so good at meeting in the middle of the two ideas and was a bit more theatrical for the film with armed forces being gathered up against the invasion. However, I would have loved to have seen Don’s intended ending.
After test screenings, much of the film's original humorous dialogue was cut because there were complaints of the audience laughing when they weren’t supposed to. It’s hard to tell if that was the right decision or not, but I for one felt that the tone of the film had consistency, being more lighthearted in the beginning and more serious as the characters and the audience learn more about what is happening to Santa Mira.
One thing about this film that I find is so special is the way that the special effects are used so masterfully minimally.
The project only had a $15,000 budget for special effects. Although it pales in comparison to what can be done today, the work was effective, showing us just enough to serve the story with the tools of the day.
Some could criticize the body doubles for not looking like they were alive, but because the creatures were still developing it still works. At least for me it did.
The pods as well were a straight forward design, but it worked for what it needed to represent in the film and I loved that it was so simple.
The sound design used when our protagonists find the pods opening the greenhouse was masterfully done. There is a distinctive popping sound, crackle and wet gushy sounds that are so cringey and disgusting. It matches the horrific discovery and surprise of the scene.
Seeing all of the townspeople meeting at the square distributing the pods was a chilling sight to let the audience know just how widespread this invasion had become and how widespread it could get. There is a terrifying hopelessness about that moment.
Papier-mâché pods were on display in theater lobbies during the release of the film with a black-and-white cutout of Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, who plays Becky running away from a mob of pod people. I could just imagine how much fun it must have been a kid at that time and see such a thing.
The film did moderately well at the box office, but was well respected critically as more and more people interpreted the film as a political commentary.
In the novel the aliens consume worlds in the name of survival and compare this to the way humans have colonized and assimilated indigenous lands in the past. Although this idea brushes upon deeper historical social and political commentary, it was always intended to be a light science fiction work, from the writer and also the filmmakers.
This film also became popular a little after McCarthyism, which was a campaign in American history carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy in the period 1950–54. This involved weeding out “communists” hiding among Americans to appease the fears that they would gradually turn the country into a communist territory. The idea was that your next door neighbor could be a communist and you’d never know it and as much as it had some similarities to the story of the book and the film, it was a complete accident.
I suppose you could attach many allegories to the subject matter because it deals with the primal fear of the loss of humanity and being conquered physically and mentally from the inside out. That just creeps me out. How about you?
Rather than being an all out horror film, full of jump scares and music stings to tell you when you should jump out of your seat, it’s more of a psychological thriller with horrific implications and lots of room for you to imagine the details. That is why I love this wonderful classic sci-fi film.
My Rating:
9.1
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it. If you did, I’ve got over 100 of these videos, so go on and browse the channel to see more reviews from me like this. Subscribe if you haven’t done so already and hit the bell icon to be the first to be notified of my next video. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
If you enjoy my content and want me to continue you can help at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/retronerdgirl
Follow Retro Nerd Girl on twitter: https://twitter.com/Retro_Nerd_Girl
Like Retro Nerd Girl on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/retronerdgirl
No comments:
Post a Comment