Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
The best description of what a Monster Movie is can be found in an article within "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" by Peter Nichols and David Langford (first published 1979, available on-line since 2011) which outlines summarizes its tried-and-true format and addresses the Philosophical resonance of a hugely popular Sub-Genre of SF,F&H:
"If the monster movie has an ultimate moral, it is about the fragility of the Age of Reason in which we supposedly live... [It is] indeed, a questioning of the very nature of civilization. Thus, one of our most apparently childish genres asks some of the most unanswerable questions of our world."
One thing that it remarkable is that Monster Movies (and books) are of such diversity, yet most exist within a format that, when outlined, seems so restrictive:
"The peaceful beginning; the first intimations that something is wrong; half-seen glimpses of the monster; disbelief of the first reports; attacks of increasing ferocity in which the monster is fully revealed; the fight back against the monster and its destruction. Often there is also the revelation in the final frames that more monsters are hatching."
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" stands of one of the most perfect examples of the classic-structure Monster Movie ever made. Its linage demonstrates the above-described conflict between Commonality and Unnaturalness that is essential to the Monster Movie, and its ideas had been evolving slowly in our culture long before such Unnaturalness required a Rationalistic Explanation in our fictions. "Invasion of the ..." has roots in our Folklores of Doppelgangers and Demonic Possession but is adapted to a changing world through the theme of Alien Invasion. This Mutation of our relationship with the Monster is of equal importance because though our fears are still lurking in the oldest, most primitive, part of our brains but our contexts are ever-changing.
The transition from Folklore to modern SF is too long and obscure to detail here, but a few 20th c. SF antecedents to this film must be mentioned. John W. Cambell’s novella "Who Goes There?" (filmed twice (1951 & 1982) both under the title of "The Thing") introduced a remarkably similar menace to "Invasion of the …" ready to occupy the whole of our World, but that story restricted to a lonely outpost beyond the edge of our Civilization and manned by Scientific Experts who must fend it off, first with pure Reason, then Animalistic Savagery.
Less than a generation later, Robert Heinlein brought the menace to the heart of our Civilization in his 1951 Near-Future Thriller "The Puppet Maters" (also filmed twice, "The Brain Eaters" (1951) and then under the original title (1994)), an explicit anti-Communist allegory in which they-who-only-pretend-to-be-us or they-who-are-no-longer-us are subverting the whole of the USA with Apocalyptic speed. Heroic Secret Agents must learn what they are, and Kill them, Before Time Runs Out.
Jack Finney’s 1955 novel "The Body Snatchers" borrowed enough thematically from "The Puppet Masters" that it is sometimes unfairly called a Rip-Off. Finney’s masterstroke was to move the tale to an exactly Contemporary and completely mundane setting, the Upper-Middle-Class Suburb of Mill Valley, California (in the film it became the fictional town Santa Mira which is now the stuff of legend, having become the name as the setting of numerous SF,F&H novels and films). There are no Secret Agents, and the Scientists are no more exalted than local Doctors. Sometimes illogically plotted, it still manages to be scary in ways the more accomplished "Who Goes There?" and "The Puppet Maters" are not.
This film Adaptation (the first of four direct Adaptations) captures everything good in the novel and cleans up all the messes. The Screenwriter was Daniel Mainwaring, maybe with some uncredited assistance from Sam Peckinpaugh (Mainwaring bitterly denied this and threated to sue), and the Director was Don Siegel, all future Hollywood giants. Though none would ever be strongly associated with the SF Genre, as these three developed as Writers and/or Directors, their reputations would rest on Noir-ish tension and forceful narrative economy and immediacy, all things on full display here. The dialogue of the climax, wherein the Hero, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) runs into busy traffic ranting the warning, "You're next! You're next! You're next!" has become a SF film catchphrase on par with "Keep watching the skies!" and "Klaatu, barada, nikto." ("The Thing from Another World" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" respectively (both 1951)).
This film's narrative economy was all too rare in '50s Exposition-and-Ideology-driven SF and was something the Filmmakers had to fight-for. Producer Walter Wanger seemed obsessed with adding a preface speech and/or narration and tried to obtain rights to speech by former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill or recruiting Writer/Director/Actor Orson Welles and Writer Ray Bradbury to provide some text, he even wrote a speech himself. Thankfully, for the film, he was stymied at every turn.
But that does not mean the film went forward without Studio interference. The Screenwriter and Director were satisfied the above-described ending, with Miles ranting and no one listening, but the Monogram/Allied Artists studio insisted it was too down-beat. They insisted a prologue and epilogue be added during post-Production, promising Humanity would fight back against the Invasion. In a way, this was more similar to the novel's clumsy ending, wherein the Aliens realize Human resistance was serious enough that taking our Planet wasn't worth the huge effort for limited rewards.
Seigel was furious, "The film was nearly ruined by those in charge at Allied Artists who added a preface and ending that I don't like ... Wanger was very much against this, as was I. However, he begged me to shoot it to protect the film, and I reluctantly consented."
Seigel also didn't like the title which added "Invasion of ..." to Finney's original title to avoid confusion with the earlier film "The Body Snatcher" (1945). During production, Actor McCarthy came up with a different title inspired by a line from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" which Siegel loved, "Sleep No More," but he wasn't allowed to use it. And, as it happens, the Studio's title did cause confusion in the poor translation into French, "L'invasion des profanateurs de sépultures" or "Invasion of the defilers of tombs."
Actress Dana Wynter, who player the female lead, Becky Driscoll, also thought the title was cheesy, "How can I admit to my parents that I'm doing a picture called 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' for God's sake? They'll think I'm demented!" That same year she'd win a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer for "The View from Pompey's Head" and a serious Actresses simply don't star in movies with names like that.
Film Historian Rob Nixon wrote, "The biggest problem Siegel and company had with the studio was over the use of humor. Siegel, Mainwaring and Wanger had scripted scenes with humor in them, and McCarthy said the actors improvised some during shooting. When the film was still in the work print stage, Siegel and Wanger decided to try it out in front of a preview audience behind the studio's back. Much of the humor was still in the film at that point, and the audience response went from shrieks to screams to laughter and back again. Siegel had sneaked a tape recorder into the theater so they could prove to the studio just how great the reception was to their rough cut. But studio head Steve Broidy hit the roof when he found out and wanted to know why the audience was laughing in places. He ordered any trace of humor removed."
Its plot-points are now the short-hand for all thrillers of Identity Paranoia: A neighbor, Wilma Lentz (Virginia Christine), starts insisting her uncle is an impostor, "There's something missing. Always when he talked to me there was a certain look in his eyes. Now it's gone. There's no emotion. The words are the same, but there's no feeling." Has she gone over the edge? Or do you trust her statements like you would've had she said something less remarkable? Do you believe her when she later is more-rational sounding, but now speaking with an unnaturally flat affect?
The dialogue is full of simple, even bland, sentences that become progressively more menacing with the Characters increasing realization of the Uncanny:
Miles: "At first glance, everything looked the same."
Becky: "I knew something was wrong, but I thought it was me."
Becky: "I knew something was wrong, but I thought it was me."
Actor McCarthy didn't like that aspect though, saying he would've expected the "the curves and nuances that you often hear in the conversation of ordinary, mature men and women," especially because the physical threat had metaphysical implications.
Unlike "Puppet Masters," it’s a Political Parable but without a specific Ideology. This makes it more comparable to "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) than "The Puppet Masters" in that it was consciously making a Social Statement, but one that was opened-ended enough that it could be applied to many things in the ever-mutating Zeitgeist of the USA's prevalent Rages, Disillusionments, Dissatisfactions and ambiguous Fears. It pushed buttons, but in its Surreal qualities, it forced the audience to decide for themselves exactly which buttons got pushed. It has alternately been described as a warning of Communist Subversion (reflecting the Director's Ideological stances) or as an attack on Sen. Joe McCarthy’s/HUAC’s anti-Communist Witch-Hunts (reflecting the Screenwriter's Ideological stances).
Critic Robert Sklar, "'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' stands alone in representing ... an allegory, raising questions about contemporary society that could not be confronted as directly in a realist manner. But the question is, an allegory of what? ... Was it a warning ... against communistic ideology that turns friends and neighbors into squadrons of malevolent drones? ... Yet was it not also, more subtly, critical of postwar America and the strains of an acquisitive, competitive society from which individuals might welcome relief?"
Critic Michael Dodd argues it is both, "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."
Production Supervisor Walter Mirisch wrote of this in his well-titled Autobiography, "I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History," and supported Dood's assertion, but in doing so, trivialized the film, "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."
No, this was a lot more than "pure and simple," on the other hand, I totally appreciate him getting progressively more annoyed by Agenda-Pushers.
I lean slightly towards the anti-McCarthy interpretation only because the film was made in Hollywood and not someplace else.
Senator McCarthy is the best remembered of the Red-Scares Villains, but not really that Witch-Hunt's heavy lifter, that would unfold in the Federal House of Representatives, through HUAC, not the Federal Senate where McCarthy was. This was era of the Hollywood Blacklist which began in 1947, and at that time McCarthy was still considered a Moderate Republican. That year's winner of the Best Picture Oscar was "All the King's Men"; the film won two other Oscars and its Director, Robert Rosen, was nominated for a fourth. That same year, Rossen and 18 others were dragged before HUAC and later Blacklisted. According to Katrina Vanden Heuvel's "American Victims: A Study of the Anti-Communist Crusade (1982), more than 15,000 people in various professions were directly affected, and it didn't end in Hollywood until 1960 when Director Otto Preminger went public with his intent to hire legendary Screenwriter and Blacklist Victim Dalton Trumbo and he didn't care who objected. Over time, HUAC was less-and-less feared, more-and-more publicly despised, but not finally abolished until 1975.
Trumbo called the era, “The Time of the Toad" (title of his 1950 Non-Fiction written while he was in Prison for Contempt of the contemptuous HUAC). The Blacklists threat swirled around every motion picture, effecting decisions on all content, even content that which didn’t seem related to the Cold War. Screenwriter/Director Philip Dunne, who avoided Persecution despite loudly Protesting HUAC, said, "The
blacklist made us both self-conscious and self-censoring." Author Patrica Bosworth, whose father, Attorney Bartley Crum, was ruined and driven to Suicide by USA Government Persecution, wrote, “The blacklist was clearly taking the guts out
of American films, which no longer dealt with social or moral issues.”
The big studios' attempt to sanitize almost all forms content resulted in pushing the most substantive content to Independant studios like this film's still pretty minor Monogram/Allied Artists and into the marginalized Genres. The soon-to-be notoriously Right-Wing Director Don Seigel was raging about the Industry's Enforced Conformity and Lack of Substance with this film. At the time he was still up-and-coming so still on the Fringes, inevitably making many of his Colleagues those forced to the Fringes as the sought Political Refuge. Meanwhile, Screen Writer Mainwaring, though never Blacklisted, was as notoriously Left-Wing as Seigel was Right- and acted as a Front for Writer Paul Jarrico, putting his name to Jarrico's scripts because Blacklisted Jarrico's was allowed to sell his work (not this one though, not one Mainwaring's script for the Classic Noir "Out of the Past" (1947) where Mainwaring chose the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes for himself).
Siegel was perhaps in a better mood than Mirisch when he wrote, was clearer, "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."
Critic Georges Sadoul, "Though one of the subtlest films of the genre, containing little graphic horror, it is also one of the most passionate and involving. Its style is typical Siegel: energetic and violent, with clever use of natural locations to create a moody, threatening environment."
The film's condemnation of Conformism became part of our Cultural Lexicon with the phrase "Pod People" (an amusing headline for a 2004 CBS News report about the popularity of the Apple I-Pod music device was "Invasion of the Pod People"). The phrase generally refers to all cliques that disdain individual expression and threatening opinion. Critic J.P. Telotte wrote of the seductions of being a Pod Person, the type that that would "abdicate from human responsibility in an increasingly complex and confusing modern world."
Though the "Snatching" of the title doesn't have the Victim's consent, after they've been replaced, their Doppelgangers' much chilling lines speak as if the victims had been converted, not stolen:
Doctor Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates): "There is no need for love or emotion. Love, ambition, desire, faith - without them, life is so simple."
Nurse Sally Withers (Jean Willes) as she's lowering a pod in a baby's playpen: "There'll be no more tears."
And, of course, there's Hero Miles' famous line, "Don't fall asleep!" because the Monsters can only Snatch you when your unawake and unaware, a Plot-Point laden with symbolism.
This unsubtle reference to Cultism begs some complex balancing because it is not only the film's Threat, it's close to being a Metaphor for the film's setting, one of America’s newly minted, post-WWII Suburbs where Conformity thrived (and was mocked, as in the hit song by Malvina Reynolds "Little Boxes" (1964)). The Heroes are trying to save Civilization, but the Nightmare they Battle often seems a continuation, in the form of Parody, of the very thing they stand to lose.
It's the opposite of "Blue Velvet" (1986) where the Threat hides beneath the surface of the Sunlit World, here the Sunlit World is a reflection of the Threat itself. This is not the destruction of the American Dream, but the dissatisfaction of what that Dream turned out to be.
The shooting schedule was a generous-sounding 23-days but that doesn't factor-in huge number of settings which were especially heavy on Location Shooting. There were also numerous Chase Scenes done without Stunt Doubles. Actors described having little time to discuss an up-coming scene and being near-constant exhaustion. The rhythm of the film anticipated Seigel's later Crime Dramas and Westerns with Actor Clint Eastwood.
Great stories emerged from behind the scenes. Siegel Pranked Actress Wynter by sneaking into her house and hiding a Pod-prop under her bed and she became hysterical when she found it. (Well, that's Siegel's version, Wynter said that Siegel merely left it on doorstep and she almost "broke my neck" tripping over it when leaving her house at dawn.)
Wynter's performance was praise-worthy she wasn't happy with it. Years later she said, "I was boring in it. There was no edge. If you're lucky, you develop a bit of that as you get older. And you develop a bit of humor. In your first picture, you're so terrified that you're going to do everything wrong that you just play everything straight. So, it's nothing I'm proud of. Now, I was happy to be in it, especially because of Kevin and because of Don, and it was a fun thing to do. But I'd just as soon forget it." She went on to great success in TV.
McCarthy was more successful still, eventually shifting to Comedy and was still acting into 90s, almost to the day he died in 2010. Of this film he said, "It's got some masterful things in it. It's undeniably a classic, that's for sure. Here we are still talking about it forty years later."
Art Director Ted Haworth came up with practical FX that still hold up and are still chilling today. When the Pods open, they reveal incomplete Doppelgangers of the Characters. The Actors had to have their bodies cast while wearing thin, skin-tight latex and then be submerged in the hot casting material with only a straw in their mouths to breathe through. This was grueling for all, worst for Actress Carolyn Jones, who was claustrophobic.
"Invasion of the ..." shares a few more things with the later, more graphic, "Night of the ..." The Pod People and the Zombies are clearly cousins in Metaphor. As for production, they were both shot very effectively in a Documentary-style (two very different versions of Documentary-style, but still Documentary-influenced), B&W during the color era, on a small budgets and brutally tight schedules ("Invasion of the ..." final budget was $420,000 and "Night of the ..." was barely more than 10% of that). They both gave birth to long legacies of remakes and rip-offs ("Invasion the ..." has three official remarks (1978, 1993, & 2007, and the first two these are interesting in their own rights, "Night of the ..." was remade once (1990) and launched two franchises each from both original script's co-Writers), both ultimately inspiring far more homages and imitations than the works it, themselves, borrowed from.
This film was released with little fanfare and therefore received relatively little contemporaneous critical attention, not unsurprising for a SF/Horror film, but a little odd considering Actor McCarthy was a recent Oscar Nominee, Writer Mainwaring was of increasing in prominence and Wagner was one of Hollywood's leading Producers and devoted to this project. Seigle wasn't prominent yet, but the trio Mainwaring, Wagner, and Seigel had already had one hit under their belts, "Riot in Cell Block 11" (1954). But other things weighed against them, such as Wagner's prominence was in temporary decline having recently served a Jail Sentence for trying to Murder fellow Producer Jennings Lang, who allegedly was having an affair with Wagner's wife (interestingly, the marriage survived more than a decade after this).
Despite the inattention, the film brought in more than $1 million in its first month of release and ultimately grossed $2.5 million (4.5 times the original budget) in the USA alone by the end of that year. Despite the poorly translated title, it was even more popular in Europe, where it was shown with the original ending still intact. The great Critic/Director François Truffaut raved about Siegel in Cahiers du Cinema, perhaps the world's most important film magazine at the time. Truffaut was the guy who coined the phrase "Auteur Theory" and though Siegel didn't have the power to really be one yet, one could see in this film he was fighting toward that goal, and yes, he would become one the great USA Auteurs over the next two decades.
Wrote Critic Kevin Hagopian of the pre-fame period in Siegel's career, "Director Don Siegel spent the 1950's making concise, elegant little B films like 'Crime in the Streets,' 'Private Hell 36,' and 'Baby Face Nelson.' Siegel's capacity for filmmaking invention was matched only by his talent for chicanery; he snuck onto the majors' backlots to steal shots, worked through the night to save money, and found nearby locations that always seemed to look as if no one had ever photographed there before. He found hungry young actors to play his leads and worked with them diligently to extract the best performances. To prop them up, he filled his scenes with strong character actors, many of whom were personal friends. (That's director Sam Peckinpah, playing a sinister gas meter reader in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.') No one could stretch a B budget into A quality like Siegel."
Despite having a list of good films already, Seigel reputation was held back his absolute best work to-date was uncredited contribution to other people's acknowledged Masterpieces. It could easily be called his Break-Through film and was later called a "fatalistic masterpiece" and "a touchstone for the sci-fi genre." He could've easily dominated the Genre, but oddly avoided in the future (maybe not oddly, after 1957, even though there were more and more SF films being released in the USA, their quality took a remarkable downturn because of lack of studio support). He returned to SF,F&H only by Directing two episodes for the TV show "The Twilight Zone" (1963 & 1964) and the border-line SF Spy feature "Telefon" (1977). His oeuvre proved to be Tough-Guy Crime Thrillers but about a decade before "Telefon" was made, he was quoted as saying, "This is probably my best film."
Among the film’s honors:
In 1993 is that it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In June 2008, the American Film Institute listed it as the ninth best film in the SF Genre.
It made at least twelve different "100 Scariest Moments/Best Horror/Best SF" lists.
TIME magazine included it on multiple lists, 100 all-time best films, top 10 1950s Sci-Fi Movies, and Top 25 Horror Films.
Trailer:
Comments
Post a Comment