Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: in a small town, weird things start happening as the townsfolk who look seemingly normal turn into emotionless robots with only a few becoming aware of the differences. No, it’s not the plot to The Faculty. Despite the 1955 short story by Jack Finney and four movies based off of it (one of which we even covered last year), I have not seen any version of this tale but it seems so common because it has been remade and homaged (or in the case of The Faculty almost blatantly ripped off) countless times over the years. Yet, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a short and creepy thriller even though everything seems cliched by now.
Doctor Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns home to Santa Mira, California with reports that most of the town wanted to see him for undisclosed reasons. Now though, everyone seems to be healthy and normal aside from the little boy who is almost mincemeat after running into the street trying to escape his mother or the woman who declares that her uncle is not really her uncle but an imposter with the same appearance and memories. Bennell quickly dismisses the claims and refers the woman to the town psychiatrist. Later while dining with love interest Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), Bennell receives an urgent call and goes to the home of Jack and Teddy who have found a body in their house without any defining features or even fingerprints. Soon Bennell, Becky, and company discover the town is no longer occupied by humans, just empty shells of their former friends and colleagues.
Even though it seems overdone (since it kind of is), the story behind Invasion is still quite effective, enhanced here by great performances and the beauty of black-and-white cinematography. This is, in a way, a more frightening tale than a typical zombie or slasher film primarily because the protagonists are mostly in the dark about what is happening and even once they do figure things out, there is no way of telling who is human and who is not. This uncertainty has strong roots in the ongoing Cold War when the film was made and the fear and paranoia can be easily supplanted with enemies of the state or something else more common in the natural world.
Thanks to the great performances and the direction by Don Siegel, most everything in the film is suspenseful and even a bit off-kilter before we learn of what is really going on. The one problem with the film that is apparently widely hated is the opening scene showing that Bennell has escaped Santa Mira and is telling the story to a doctor elsewhere. This, and his accompanying spotty narration, almost remove any real tension since we know that he will survive. Yet, as the film wound down, I was still waiting for the “downer” ending that the rest of the movie commanded but due to alleged studio tinkering, we receive a happy-ish ending instead. Again, I haven’t seen any of the other films based off of the same story so I don’t know if that’s a common theme but I hope not.
Comments
Post a Comment