ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - February 5th
"INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS" released in 1956
A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates, in this first film adaptation of Jack Finney's science fiction novel The Body Snatchers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
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Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns from a convention to the small town Santa Mira and is welcomed by his nurse and friend Sally Withers (Jean Willes) at the train station. She reports that several patients had come to see him while he was traveling. While driving to his office with Sally, Miles stops the car when a boy runs into the road. Soon he learns that the boy insists that his mother is not actually her, then he meets in his office his former girlfriend Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), who has just divorced and returned from England. Becky tells that her cousin Wilma Lentz (Virginia Christine) insists that her Uncle Ira (Tom Fadden) is not him. Miles invites Becky to have dinner with him and he meets his friend, the psychiatrist Dr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman (Larry Gates) who reveals that the population of Santa Mira is paranoid with mass hysteria, imagining doubles of their relatives. Miles and Becky go to a restaurant and Miles receives a phone call from his friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan) asking him to go to his house. Miles and Becky visit Jack and his wife Theodora 'Teddy' Belicec (Carolyn Jones) and they show a partially developed body with Jack's characteristics on the pool table and they go to Miles' house. Then Miles goes to Becky's house and finds a body identical to her in the basement. Miles brings Becky to his house and in the morning, the group finds seedpods with doubles of them. Soon they discover that the population is being replaced by emotionless doubles while asleep. They unsuccessfully try to contact the authorities in other cities and discover that they are under siege by the pod people. Will they have the chance to flee from Santa Mira?
TRIVIA: The film was almost called "The Body Snatchers" after Jack Finney's serial, but it sounded too similar to the Val Lewton film The Body Snatcher (1945). After several such titles as "They Come from Another World", "Better Off Dead", "Sleep No More", "Evil in the Night" and "World in Danger", the studio finally settled on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".
Top: Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) and Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) struggle to escape Santa Mira;
Above: Theodora 'Teddy' Belicec (Carolyn Jones) watches uneasily over the partially replaced body of her husband, Jack (King Donovan)
Originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954, Jack Finney's science fiction novel about a small town being invaded by seeds that have drifted to Earth from space, the film rights were picked up by Academy Award winning producer Walter Wanger shortly after its original publication. Wanger quickly hired Don Seigel to direct, who then brought on Daniel Mainwaring to collaborate on the screenplay (the two having worked together on The Big Steal, in which Mainwaring used the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes). Development of Invasion of the Body Snatchers began in the immediate aftermath of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Hollywood Blacklist - where industry professionals were denied unemployment after being accused (mostly falsely) of being subversives or Communists - and many involved in pre-production believed Seigel and Mainwaring's screenplay (as well as Finney's original novel) was a subtle statement against McCarthyism. Actress Dana Wynter (who plays Becky Driscoll) later agreed with that sentiment, although she didn't recall the mention of any political statements on-set, while star Kevin McCarthy (who played the character Dr. Miles Bennell) believed the film to be an attack on "Madison Avenue" attitudes - interestingly, Siegel joked that the pods actually represented movie industry executives!
Initially, Wanger considered Gig Young, Dick Powell, Joseph Cotten, and several others for the role of Miles, and Anne Bancroft, Donna Reed, Kim Hunter, Vera Miles and others for the part of Becky - but due to the low budget of the picture, Wanger abandoned these choices and cast Richard Kiley, who had just starred in The Phoenix City Story for Allied Artists. However, Kiley turned the role down and Wanger soon cast two relative newcomers in the lead roles: Kevin McCarthy, who had just starred in Siegel's An Annapolis Story, and Dana Wynter, who had done several major dramatic roles on television. McCarthy didn't particularly like the script because he felt that, in streamlining the novel for the screen, depth of character was lost. He thought it was a mistake that these fairly sophisticated, educated characters had such bland dialogue and manner of relating to one another, "lacking the curves and nuances that you often hear in the conversation of ordinary, mature men and women."
Initially, Wanger considered Gig Young, Dick Powell, Joseph Cotten, and several others for the role of Miles, and Anne Bancroft, Donna Reed, Kim Hunter, Vera Miles and others for the part of Becky - but due to the low budget of the picture, Wanger abandoned these choices and cast Richard Kiley, who had just starred in The Phoenix City Story for Allied Artists. However, Kiley turned the role down and Wanger soon cast two relative newcomers in the lead roles: Kevin McCarthy, who had just starred in Siegel's An Annapolis Story, and Dana Wynter, who had done several major dramatic roles on television. McCarthy didn't particularly like the script because he felt that, in streamlining the novel for the screen, depth of character was lost. He thought it was a mistake that these fairly sophisticated, educated characters had such bland dialogue and manner of relating to one another, "lacking the curves and nuances that you often hear in the conversation of ordinary, mature men and women."
TRIVIA: During its original release, papier-mâché pods were on display in theater lobbies, as well as black-and-white cutouts of Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter running frantically away from a crowd of pod people.
Top: Becky watches in horror as a pod hatches;
Above: With Santa Mira now overrun with pod people, Miles and Becky are chased through the streets by the alien replicants!
Originally, Wanger and Siegel wanted to film Invasion of the Body Snatchers on location in Mill Valley, California, the town just north of San Francisco, that Finney described in his novel, location proved too expensive and Siegel with Allied Artist executives found locations resembling Mill Valley in the Los Angeles area, including Sierra Madre, Chatsworth, Glendale, Los Feliz, Bronson and Beachwood Canyons, all of which would make up the town of "Santa Mira" for the film. With a shooting schedule of 20 days (and a budget of $350,000) and no second unit to assist with pick up shots, the cast and crew were required to work six days a week. The pace of the shooting meant there was little time for the actors to rest between takes of the exhausting chase sequences. And there was no time to discuss scenes - Wynter said the actors were always responsible for mentally rehearsing their characters and actions before jumping in front of the cameras.
Production Designer Ted Haworth came up with a fairly simple and inexpensive (about $30,000 total) idea for creating the pods and for the most difficult effect when the pods burst open, revealing the likenesses of the actors. The actors had to have naked impressions of themselves made out of thin, skin-tight latex, which involved being submerged in the very hot casting material with only a straw in their mouths to breathe through, which was grueling for the actors, especially Carolyn Jones (who plays "Teddy" Belicec), who was claustrophobic. Wynter recalled, "I was in this thing while it hardened, and of course it got rather warm! I was breathing through straws or something quite bizarre, and the rest of me was encased, it was like a sarcophagus. The guys who were making it tapped on the back of the thing and said, 'Dana, listen, we won't be long, we're just off for lunch [laughs]!' In the end, we had to be covered except for just the nostrils and I think a little aperture for the mouth."
The last sequence was shot, not on the actual Hollywood Freeway (as depicted in the film), but on a little used cross-bridge. Cars were driven by stunt drivers, although Siegel said later that McCarthy was in real danger of getting hit, because the sequence was shot at dawn and he was near complete exhaustion. Production finally wrapped, going over schedule by three days because of night-for-night shooting that Siegel wanted, on 27 April, 1955.
Production Designer Ted Haworth came up with a fairly simple and inexpensive (about $30,000 total) idea for creating the pods and for the most difficult effect when the pods burst open, revealing the likenesses of the actors. The actors had to have naked impressions of themselves made out of thin, skin-tight latex, which involved being submerged in the very hot casting material with only a straw in their mouths to breathe through, which was grueling for the actors, especially Carolyn Jones (who plays "Teddy" Belicec), who was claustrophobic. Wynter recalled, "I was in this thing while it hardened, and of course it got rather warm! I was breathing through straws or something quite bizarre, and the rest of me was encased, it was like a sarcophagus. The guys who were making it tapped on the back of the thing and said, 'Dana, listen, we won't be long, we're just off for lunch [laughs]!' In the end, we had to be covered except for just the nostrils and I think a little aperture for the mouth."
TRIVIA: The tunnel scene where the hero hides briefly from the townspeople was filmed at Bronson Cave in Griffith Park, but the location would later come to be more famously known as the Bat Cave from the 1960's Batman TV series!
The last sequence was shot, not on the actual Hollywood Freeway (as depicted in the film), but on a little used cross-bridge. Cars were driven by stunt drivers, although Siegel said later that McCarthy was in real danger of getting hit, because the sequence was shot at dawn and he was near complete exhaustion. Production finally wrapped, going over schedule by three days because of night-for-night shooting that Siegel wanted, on 27 April, 1955.
Above: Miles Bennell: They're here already! You're next! You're next!
Invasion of the Body Snatchers was originally meant to end with Miles screaming as truckloads of pods pass him by, but Allied Artists were wary of a pessimistic conclusion, insisted on adding a prologue and epilogue to the movie suggesting a more optimistic outcome to the story, which is thus told mainly in flashback. In this version the film begins with a ranting Bennell in custody in a hospital emergency ward. He then tells a consulting psychiatrist (Whit Bissell) his story. In the closing scene pods are found at a highway accident, confirming his warning. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is notified. For the prologue, Wanger wanted a Winston Churchill quotation as a preface, with Orson Welles doing the narration. When they couldn't persuade Welles, Wanger tried to enlist science-fiction author Ray Bradbury, although he declined as well. In his autobiography Siegel added that "Wanger was very much against this, as was I. However, he begged me to shoot it to protect the film, and I reluctantly consented […]". During test screenings, much of the film's original humor and humanity was subsequently cut when the audience found it difficult to follow and laughed at all the wrong moments. The studio insisted on edits because it wasn't policy of the day to mix humor with horror.
Released on February 5th, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was largely ignored by critics on its initial run, despite grossing over $3 million at the box office. Contemporary critics, however, have since agreed that the film is one of the best science-fiction horror films of the 20th century, with Leonard Maltin describing Invasion of the Body Snatchers as "influential, and still very scary". Tom Huddleston of Time Out wrote, "This modest, sci-fi-inflected 1956 horror movie may come to be seen as the defining metaphorical work of the twentieth century", with Tim Robey from the Daily Telegraph adding, "[the film is] brilliantly placed, however unwittingly, to illustrate America's political paranoia from both ends."
Hollywood would remake Jack Finney's novel a further three times between 1978 and 2007; Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), - directed by Philip Kaufman starring Donald Sutherland - Body Snatchers (1993), and The Invasion (2007), starring Nicole Kidman and produced by The Wachowskis siblings. However, in reference to critical acclaim and box office gross, only the 1978 version came close to matching the original Invasion of the Body Snatcher's success. In 1994, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", ensuring the movie's legacy as a cult classic horror film for generations to come.
Released on February 5th, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was largely ignored by critics on its initial run, despite grossing over $3 million at the box office. Contemporary critics, however, have since agreed that the film is one of the best science-fiction horror films of the 20th century, with Leonard Maltin describing Invasion of the Body Snatchers as "influential, and still very scary". Tom Huddleston of Time Out wrote, "This modest, sci-fi-inflected 1956 horror movie may come to be seen as the defining metaphorical work of the twentieth century", with Tim Robey from the Daily Telegraph adding, "[the film is] brilliantly placed, however unwittingly, to illustrate America's political paranoia from both ends."
Hollywood would remake Jack Finney's novel a further three times between 1978 and 2007; Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), - directed by Philip Kaufman starring Donald Sutherland - Body Snatchers (1993), and The Invasion (2007), starring Nicole Kidman and produced by The Wachowskis siblings. However, in reference to critical acclaim and box office gross, only the 1978 version came close to matching the original Invasion of the Body Snatcher's success. In 1994, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", ensuring the movie's legacy as a cult classic horror film for generations to come.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 98%
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