I took a well needed and deserving break from updating and posting on here, I have missed it but I enjoyed not being so stressed for about 2 weeks. But we are in 2021, it’s a new year to discover more new horror media to consume! First movie I watched of the year was a happy accident.
I wanted to watch the remake first but it wasn’t available on Prime anymore (maybe I can try Shudder) but instead, I watched the original and I enjoyed it a lot.
Let’s talk about the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
This movie is available through prime, by the way. So where to start with this film? This is during the 50s and 60s peak of scifi, b-movie craze (The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, THEM, Little Shop of Horrors), mostly 50s since the next decade starts to change and be more serious, more gore, suspenseful, less gimmicky with content. The plot is very simple and effective; an invasion is happening in California (spreading) where pods are producing replicas of citizens but it cannot complete until the “real” or “original” person falls asleep.
I love how it was shot, very noir style. It is a mystery and thriller inside of a sci-fi/horror and I enjoy that it is multi faceted. You do start to care for our main protagonist who when we meet him, he is very distraught, tired, he has seen and experienced things and of course, others think he’s crazy (until the ending) but the movie is really his recollection of how things slowly started to change over the course of days.
Our protagonist is a doctor, a well trusted, respected, likeable man who with his patients, are experiencing delusions or they no longer need his help with a future appointment canceled. They don’t need him and they seem okay but then we hear and see stories of citizens who are just very much concrete that a loved one is not themselves. In between all that, our doctor has reconnected with his former love, the chemistry is still clearly there and we just watch them slowly watch their world change.
The characters are interesting. I like the build up of little hints here and there of something being wrong and showing us what’s wrong. The pods and the reveals were cool for that time period, very simple but effective.
There aren’t any dislikes that I can think of off the top of my head.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers stars Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan and Carolyn Jones, directed by Don Siegel. I give Invasion of (…) a 4.5 out of 5.
Shots of Horror 