They come from another world to occupy bodies in this world!

It was such an original idea for a movie, alien seed pods taking possession of people, body and soul, with only two people aware of what was happening.  The idea became less original, the recreation less frightening—less everything—when studios insisted on remaking the first-filmed version, unnecessarily, as it turned out.

In 1978, the first remake retains the original’s title.  It’s the turn of Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams to fight the power of the pods and their assimilation into “pod people,” now with the added twist in the end that the sole survivor is different.  Being a pretty good follow-up as remakes go, one advantage is a strong performance by Sutherland, but the film goes on too long, with too many needless diversions, and, yes, it isn’t all that scary, the vivid color notwithstanding.

More recently, in 1994, the third version was called Body Snatcher.  This time, the characters of Gabrielle Anwar and Billy Wirth battle the world takeover of the seed pods.  Sure, the unique method of pod-to-human metamorphosis is unique, thanks to the forty-year advance in special effects, but the acting is amateurish, the story falling short of the horror of the original.

Ignoring the general record of remakes and the downward slippery slope taken by the previous two versions, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and director Oliver Hirschbiegel, who had created quite a different movie, a masterpiece, with Downfall (2004), dauntlessly cranked out yet a third clone in 2007.  All should have known better.  Plagued by re-shoots and script overhauls required following Hirschbiegel’s submitted film, The Invasion, as it was called, ended up a half notch above a bomb.

Enough with remakes!  And the original movie so insulted by these recyclings?——  Why, Invasion of the Body Snatchers of course from 1956, not to be confused with the Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi The Body Snatcher of 1945.  It is by far, all along, the best film of the lot, and, to this day, remains one of the most chilling of horror/science fiction films—and, at the same time, one of the most subtle, without shedding any blood or killing anyone.

The exceptional acting of Kevin McCarthy is a standout.  The terror and wide-staring eyes of his first sight of a seed pod cracking open to reveal the still forming body of someone he knows and, in the end, when he kisses his love and realizes she has become an emotionless nonentity are reminiscent of James Stewart’s stare of panic in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) when, after leaving his mother’s house, he realizes she doesn’t recognize him, that he is bordering on insanity.

Adding to the film’s terror, the upfront, unrestrained Carmen Dragon score, complete with a frenzied piano, demands attention, insistently making itself a part of the film.  This starkness is matched by Ellsworth Fredericks’ equally naked black-and-white cinematography in the style of film noir.  Fredericks’ camera is, again, a key asset in Sayonara (1957) and Seven Days in May (1964).

Some copies of the film contain a prologue and epilogue that Universal demanded on its initial release.  Two psychiatrists (uncredited Whit Bissell and Richard Deacon) attend a man who insists, “Will you tell these fools I’m not crazy?  Make them listen to me before it’s too late!”

The doctors agree to listen, and the man, who says he’s Dr. Miles Bennell (McCarthy), also a psychiatrist, begins: “Well, it started . . . for me, it started last Thursday . . . ”  This introduces a flashback.

Like most horror films, good, bad or indifferent, it all begins quite innocently.  It seems that Miles suddenly has patients who believe their relatives have been taken over by imposters—a little boy, for instance, who says his mother is not his mother.

A former girlfriend of Miles, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), has just returned to Santa Mira after a divorce.  She is living with her cousin Wilma Lentz (Virginia Christine, a veteran of ’40s horror films, including The Mummy’s Curse, 1944), who says her uncle isn’t Uncle Ira.  Becky accompanies Miles when he goes to see the distressed woman.

“There’s no emotion,” Wilma says about her uncle.  “None!  Just the pretense of it.  The words, gestures, the tone of voice—everything else is the same, but not the feeling.”  Miles insists that Ira (Tom Fadden) is her uncle.

A fellow psychiatrist, Dr. Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates, the bigot Endicott in In the Heat of the Night, 1967) assures Miles and Becky that the two cases are simply evidence of an “epidemic of mass hysteria.”

Miles receives an urgent phone call from his friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan) to come to his home.  Jack has found a body that strangely resembles him, but its physical features seem unfinished—and it has no fingerprints.  Later, Miles finds a body in Becky’s basement that, partially developed, is approaching a semblance of Becky.

The next night, Miles has Jack and Becky, along with Jack’s wife “Teddy” (Carolyn Jones) over for a cookout.  In Miles’ greenhouse, they find giant seed pods cracking open, the forming, bubbly shapes inside bearing resemblances to those in the house.  Miles surmises that the citizens of Santa Mira are being replaced while they sleep by exact but emotionless copies of themselves.  After Miles is unable to reach federal authorities—the operator claims all lines are busy—he sends Jack and Teddy to the next town for help.

Miles and Becky then take refuge in his office and try to stay awake.  They make it through the night, waiting for Jack to arrive with help, but next morning, from the office window, they see trucks arriving in the town square loaded with seed pods for distribution to nearby towns.

When Jack does arrive—Miles, unawares, unlocks the door for him—he is accompanied by Kauffman.  Both have now become “pod people” and they place two seed pods in the next room for Becky and Miles.  Kauffman explains how seeds, traveling through space and landing in a farmer’s field, sprouted pods capable of duplicating people.  He says, “Love, desire, ambition, faith—without them, life’s so simple, believe me.”

While Jack and Kauffman stand guard in the next room, waiting for their two hostages to fall asleep, Miles fills two hypodermic needles with an instant-acting knockout drug, kicks a medical table to attract attention, and when the two burst through the door, quickly injects them with the drug.

Miles and Becky attempt to walk casually out of the building, but Becky forgets the zombie-like demeanor they have affected and shows emotion when a dog is nearly run over by a truck, and the townspeople are after them.

They flee and hide in an abandoned mine.  Later, hearing a choir of voices, Miles leaves to investigate, warning Becky to stay awake.  Over a hill, he discovers vast greenhouses and trucks being loaded with pods.  When he returns to the mine and kisses Becky, he realizes she must have fallen asleep, for she is without emotion, without the love she once felt for him.

She alerts the mob and Miles now flees to a busy highway where he staggers from vehicle to vehicle, warning drivers of the danger, to no avail.

The flashback over, both doctors, having heard this incredible tale, agree Dr. Bennell is insane.  At that moment an hysterical man is brought into the office, talking incoherently about pods and a corpse with no fingerprints.  One doctor gives an order to alert the police.  Miles, exhausted and with dual expressions of bewilderment and hope, can only wonder if the police will come in time or if——

It doesn’t seem possible that such a horrifyingly satisfying film, with the clean appearance of being well made, was shot on a low budget and in only nineteen days—some say twenty-four, including post-production and the extra time for night-for-night shooting demanded by director Don Siegel.

Of course, too, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is representative of its time, and much of the disturbing undercurrent of the film reflects Joseph McCarthy’s infamous House Un-American Activities Committee hearings—talk about “abuse of power”!

“In my practice,” he says, “I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away.  Only it happened slowly instead of all at once.  They didn’t seem to mind. . . .  All of us, a little bit, we harden our hearts, grow callous.  Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.”

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNJB363yql8[/embedyt]