INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS: Blu-ray re-issue (Allied Artists, 1956) Olive Signature Edition

Shot on a shoestring budget of approximately $350,000, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) has since become one of the most successful independent movies ever made. The film’s enduring legacy is largely due to its perfectly timed initial release; coming as it did at the height of the Joseph McCarthy witch hunts in Washington and Red Scare and, better still, at the crux of America’s burgeoning atomic age fascination with fanciful tales about cosmic terrors from outer space. Many postmodern critics and political historians have reinterpreted Daniel Mainwaring’s screenplay as an indictment of declining individualism in America, linking the mysterious consumption of human beings by cloned pod people to the perceived communist threat gripping the nation. According to Don Siegel, nothing could have been further from the truth. At the time the film went into production, its producer Walter Wanger was persona non grata in Hollywood, following a private incident involving his wife, actress Joan Bennett and her agent/lover, Jennings Lang into whose crotch Wanger pumped a bullet. Released from prison after a four month stay for his crime of passion, Wanger quickly realized his professional cache, accrued from several decade’s worth of solid contributions to American movie art, had evaporated. No longer thought of as an A-list producer, Wanger turned his energies to making quality B-movies with an edgy underbelly instead.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel, simply titled ‘The Body Snatchers’. Allied Artists, the studio distributing the film, thought the title too close to the 1945 Val Lewton horror classic, ‘The Body Snatcher’ and asked Wanger and Siegel to come up with alternatives. None of their suggestions proved satisfactory however, and eventually the studio simply added ‘Invasion of’ ahead of the novel’s original title – for once, an inspired bit of executive meddling. Wanger had wanted to shoot the film in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco.  As this proved too costly, the film’s fictional town of Santa Mira was cobbled together from location work done in Sierra Madre, Chatsworth, Glendale, Los Feliz, Bronson and Beachwood Canyons, as well as incorporating some studio backlot magic. After a pair of disastrous sneak previews, Allied Artists ordered all of the more light-hearted material cut from the film. They also decided that a pro- and epilogue were needed to preface and close the story on a more optimistic note. Wanger tried like hell to convince Orson Welles to do it and failed. He also desperately wanted Gig Young or Joseph Cotten as his star. No dice. In the end, Wanger settled on relative unknown Kevin McCarthy instead – paving the way for one of the truly iconic sci-fi performances in film history.

In hindsight the pro- and epilogues, as well as the voiceover narrations that bookend the film do alter the impact of the story; arguably to its own detriment. They diffuse the immediacy of the narrative to that of a time already passed and with its seemingly open-ended resolution, nevertheless to imply the imminent danger to mankind has been narrowly averted. Our story opens in the emergency ward where Dr. Hill (Whit Bissell) is called in to treat a hysteric brought in by the police. The man in custody is also a doctor, Mile Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), who has just been through a harrowing and fantastical ordeal in his hometown of Santa Mira. It seems that Bennell has witnessed the takeover of his quiet town by an alien race; pod people who are outwardly identical to the humans they have consumed, but lacking in any sort of emotional response. Understandably, Dr. Hill is a sceptic. But he asks Bennell to relay his story for the record anyway. And so, both Hill and the audience regress into the extended flashback from Bennell’s memory that began at the start of the weekend just concluded. We see Bennell, a kindly local physician returning from a medical conference to find his former flame, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) concerned over her cousin, Wilma Lentz’s (Virginia Christine) sudden paranoia. Wilma claims that their Uncle Ira (Tom Fadden) is not who he claims to be – or more to the point, that he has somehow ‘changed’ from his usual self.

Wilma’s fears are not so easily quelled or dismissed by Bennell, especially after he experiences multiple cases of the same strange behaviour cropping up in some of his regular patients. Psychiatrist and close personal friend, Dr. Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates) assures Bennell that the cases are merely some odd passing hallucination, possibly infectious, but from which the sufferers will ultimately awaken just as easily after their fleeting anxiousness. Bennell and Becky attempt to rekindle their romance. But that same evening Bennell’s good friend, Jack Belicec (King Donovan) implores him to come to his house. Arriving at the private residence, Bennell and Becky are shown a body discovered by Jack that has begun to vaguely take on the contents of his own physical form. Jack’s wife, Teddy (Carolyn Jones) is understandably terrified. Bennell takes Becky home. Later he telephones her, but becomes alarmed when she does not answer his call. Bennell then rushes to her home where he finds a likeness of her being grown from a pod in the cellar. Awaking the real Becky from her slumber, Bennell takes her to the Belicecs to telephone Kauffman. But by the time the doctor has returned, both corpses have vanished.

Kauffman encourages everyone to get some rest and suggests that perhaps Bennell has become infected with the same paranoia as his patients. Yet, throughout the next day, Bennell begins to sense the town he has known and loved all his life has changed. People seem distant and unlike themselves. That evening Bennell, Becky, Jack and Teddy discover giant pods growing in the Belicec’s greenhouse. They conclude the town has been overrun with copies of the men and women who used to live there. Unable to call for help, Bennell tells the Belicecs to make a break for the outskirts of town, to drive all night if they have to and warn the outside world of what has happened to Santa Mira. In the meantime, Bennell and Becky hide out in Bennell’s office to escape being found out by the rest of the town’s people. The next morning the pair witness the entire town square transformed into an epicenter for the transportation of more pods to neighbouring communities. Kauffman and Jack arrive at the office. At first, Bennell is relieved. But then, he realizes both men are pod people who have come to claim him and Becky. After a struggle, Bennell and Becky manage to flee, are pursued by the town’s people – all pods – but make their way across the barren landscape on the outskirts to an abandoned mine where they narrowly avert being discovered by hiding under some loose floor boards.

Becky collapses from exhaustion and in her weakened, sleepy condition is transformed into a pod person. Forced to leave her clone behind Bennell takes off on foot for the main highway. He finds the road crammed with unsuspecting tourists headed back into the city…or have they already become pod people spreading their extraterrestrial demon seed to the unsuspecting neighbourhood communities? “They’re here!” Bennell insists, “You’re next!” The film should have ended here. Instead, this scene dissolves back to the emergency ward. Dr. Hill remains as unconvinced as ever by Bennell’s fantastical narrative. Alerted to a highway accident by his nurse where the hospitalized ‘victim’ had been driving a truckload of pods, Dr. Hill suddenly realizes Bennell is not crazy, reaches for the telephone and demands to speak to the FBI in order to put the surrounding communities on high alert. 

This will probably sound like sacrilege to most, but personally, I have always preferred the 1978 Philip Kaufman remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers starring Donald Sutherland. Siegel’s original is artfully shot, with solid performances. I really cannot fault the film on most levels. But it doesn’t seem to send that unsettling chill down my spine the way the ’78 version continues to do. I do not believe my reaction to the remake has anything to do with its superior SFX either. In the original, the pods were made mostly out of paper and their ooze was little more than an air compressor making bubbles and suds beneath the surface, luminously photographed for maximum effect by cinematographer, Ellsworth Fredericks.  But the prototype ‘50s sexual politics seems very skewed, or at least, woefully strained throughout the film. All of the women are treated with a kind word and a pat on the head as though they already belong to some infantilized pod set of brainless sex kittens and pathetic wallflowers that need their husbands, casual mates or dates to guide them through this apocalyptic labyrinth. Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy have a queer on-screen chemistry. She seems infinitely more interested in him than he does in her – even on a purely platonic level. Frankly, I have never found Kevin McCarthy convincing as a romantic lead or otherwise on the screen and in this, arguably his defining moment in movies, his glassy-eyed hysterics that cap off the show are less believable with each renewed viewing. I can certainly appreciate Invasion of the Body Snatchers as the cultural artifact that introduced the iconography of ‘pod culture’ into our movie pop culture. But beyond that, this version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers really doesn’t do it for me: advanced apologies to pod aficionados all over the world.

Olive Films certainly did fans no favors with their initial Blu-ray release of Invasion of the Body Snatchers back in 2012. Although it was an improvement over the various DVD incarnations, chiefly for being framed in Superscope for the first time, there were both telecine issues and edge effects. Olive’s Signature re-issue is the real deal for lots of reasons. For starters, the aforementioned anomalies have been corrected. It’s still composed in Superscope, but the greenish tint has been corrected. Invasion of the Body Snatchers looks gorgeous in B&W with stunning cinematography by Ellsworth Fredericks. The picture was originally shot in 1:85.1, then reformatted during post production to accommodate the more anamorphic proportions of ‘Superscope’. When Wanger first saw this down-conversion of the image he was horrified by what he deemed as a softening and loss of fine detail. None of these shortcomings is detected on this new Blu-ray. In fact, Invasion of the Body Snatchers sports a crisp and snappy image with lots of fine detail and a light smattering of indigenous film grain. Contrast has also been improved. The audio is original mono in DTS and nicely cleaned up for a smooth acoustic presentation.

Perhaps the best part about Olive’s Signature reissue is the extras. Wow! A ton of goodies await, including 2 audio commentaries: the first by film historian, Richard Harland Smith; the second, featuring Joe Dante hosting Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. We also get some stellar featurettes: “The Stranger in Your Lover’s Eyes” hosted by the son of the director, Don Siegel, Kristoffer Tabori: “The Fear is Real” with Dante again, accompanied by Larry Cohen weighing in on the movie’s cultural significance, “I No Longer Belong: The Rise and Fall of Walter Wanger” -  a nearly half hour discussion piece by Matthew Bernstein, another half hour featurette - “Sleep No More: Invasion of the Body Snatchers Revisited” with McCarthy and Wynter, and a host of fan-based luminaries, and finally, “The Fear and the Fiction: The Body Snatchers Phenomenon” – at under ten minutes, much too brief, with only sound bites from McCarthy, Wynter, Landis, Mick Garris and Stuart Gordon. From 1985, Olive has unearthed another McCarthy interview hosted by Tom Hatten. There are also puff pieces to explore the movie’s locations and its ‘name’.  We get a ‘stills gallery’ of rare documents detailing aspects of the film’s production, an essay by Kier-La Janisse, and finally, the original theatrical trailer. Bottom line: Olive’s Signature re-issue of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a must have for fans and likely, the definitive home video version of this sci-fi cultural touchstone.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

5

EXTRAS

5+