Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1956 American science-fiction horror film directed by Don Siegel and produced by Walter Wanger. It is adapted by Daniel Mainwaring from Jack Finney's 1954 science-fiction novel The Body Snatchers, originally serialized in Collier's magazine.Warren 1982 It stars Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, with supporting roles played by Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes and Ralph Dumke.
The film's storyline concerns an extraterrestrial invasion that begins in the fictional California town of Santa Mira. Alien plant spores have fallen from space and grown into large seed pods, each one capable of producing a visually identical copy of a human. As each pod reaches full development, it assimilates the physical traits, memories, and personalities of each sleeping person placed near it until only the replacement is left; these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion. Little by little, a local doctor uncovers this "quiet" invasion and attempts to stop it.
The black-and-white film was exhibited in 2.00:1 Superscope and shot in the film noir style. Daniel Mainwaring adapted the screenplay. The film was an independent productionHollywood Independents: The Postwar Talent Takeover - Google Books (pg.5) but distributed by Allied Artists Pictures as a double feature with the British science-fiction film The Atomic Man (and in some markets with Indestructible Man).McGee, Mark Thomas; Robertson, R.J. (2013). "You Won't Believe Your Eyes". Bear Manor Media. . Page 254
The film premiered on February 5, 1956. Largely ignored by critics upon release, it proved a financial success and has been retrospectively praised as one of the best and most influential science-fiction films of the 1950s, spawning several remakes and other derivative works. The slang expression "pod people" that arose in late 20th-century U.S. culture refers to the emotionless duplicates seen in the film. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Plot A psychiatrist, Dr. Hill, is called to a Los Angeles hospital, where a man named Dr. Miles Bennell is being held in custody. Miles recounts the events leading up to his arrest and arrival at the hospital.
In the nearby town of Santa Mira, Miles sees a number of patients suffering from the belief that their relatives have been replaced with identical-looking impostors. Psychiatrist Dr. Dan Kauffman assures Miles that these cases are merely a mass hysteria. Miles's ex-girlfriend Becky Driscoll has recently come back to town after settling a divorce, and they rekindle their relationship. The couple are called to the home of Miles's friend Jack Belicec, who has found a body in his basement. It has no features or fingerprints, but under their observation it takes on the features of Jack. Remembering that Becky's father was uncharacteristically emerging from his basement, Miles searches there and finds a duplicate of Becky. When Miles calls Dan to the scene, the bodies have disappeared, and Dan tells Miles that he is falling for the same hysteria.
Distraught by the incidents, Jack and his wife Teddy spend the night at Miles's place. They find duplicates of themselves emerging from pods in Miles's greenhouse and conclude that the townspeople are being replaced while asleep with copies. Miles tries to make a call to authorities, but the operator claims that all lines are busy and he cannot be put through, so Jack and Teddy drive off to seek help in the next town. Miles and Becky realize that all of Santa Mira's inhabitants have been replaced. They hide at Miles's office for the night.
They observe truckloads of the pods arrive downtown. Chief Nick Grivett directs the others to take them to towns to be planted and used to replace their populations. Dan and Jack arrive at Miles's office with pods for Becky and Miles, and say they and Teddy are now members of an extraterrestrial race that arrived on Earth through seeds which sprouted the pods. After their takeover, humanity will lose all emotions and sense of individuality.
Using misdirection, Miles and Becky overcome and knock out their captors, and leave the office. To avoid recapture, they pretend Dan succeeded in replacing them with emotionless pod people. However, Becky screams at a near-traffic accident, exposing their humanity to the aliens. An alarm is sounded and the couple flees.
The couple hide in a mine outside town. After their pursuers move on they hear music, and Miles leaves Becky to investigate. He sees a farm with hundreds of pods being loaded onto trucks. Miles returns to find Becky succumbing to fatigue. Upon kissing her, he realizes that she has been replaced by a pod person. Becky sounds the alarm as Miles runs away. Desperate, he screams at the drivers on the highway for help.
Miles finishes his story. A driver is wheeled into the hall on a gurney after having been injured in an accident. The attendant recounts that the man had to be dug out from under a load of mysterious pods coming from Santa Mira. With a key detail thus confirmed, Dr. Hill now believes Miles's story. He alerts the police to block the roads in and out of Santa Mira and calls the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Cast
Production Novel and screenplay Jack Finney's novel ends with the extraterrestrials, who have a lifespan of no more than five years, leaving Earth after they realize that humans are offering strong resistance, despite having little reasonable chance against the alien invasion.
Budgeting and casting Invasion of the Body Snatchers was originally scheduled for a 24-day shoot and a budget of US$454,864. The studio later asked Wanger to cut the budget significantly. The producer proposed a shooting schedule of 20 days and a budget of $350,000.
Initially, Wanger considered Gig Young, Dick Powell, Joseph Cotten, and several others for the role of Miles. For Becky, he considered casting Anne Bancroft, Donna Reed, Kim Hunter, Vera Miles, and others. With the lower budget, however, he abandoned these choices and offered the part to Richard Kiley, who had just starred in The Phenix City Story for Allied Artists. Kiley turned the role down and Wanger cast Kevin McCarthy, an Academy Award nominee five years earlier for Death of a Salesman, and relative newcomer Dana Wynter, who had done several major dramatic roles on television.LaValley 1989, pp. 25-26.
Future director Sam Peckinpah had a small part as Charlie, a meter reader. Peckinpah was a dialogue coach on five Siegel films in the mid-1950s, including this one,Weddle 1994, pp. 116–119. and reportedly worked as an uncredited script doctor for it.
Principal photography Originally, producer 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 Jack Finney described in his novel.LaValley 1989, p. 25. In the first week of January 1955, Siegel, Wanger, and screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring visited Finney to talk about the film version and to look at Mill Valley. The 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 went on to make up the fictional town of "Santa Mira" for the film. In addition to these outdoor locations, much of the film was shot in the Allied Artists studio on the east side of Hollywood.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers was shot by cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks in 23 days between March 23 and April 27, 1955. The cast and crew worked a six-day week with Sundays off. The production went over schedule by three days because of the night-for-night shooting that Siegel wanted. Additional photography took place in September 1955, filming a frame story on which the studio had insisted (see Original ending). The final budget was $382,190.
Post-production The project was originally named The Body Snatchers after the Finney serial, but Wanger wanted to avoid confusion with the 1945 Val Lewton film The Body Snatcher. The producer was unable to come up with a title and accepted the studio's choice, They Come from Another World and that was assigned in summer 1955. Siegel objected to this title and suggested two alternatives, Better Off Dead and Sleep No More, while Wanger offered Evil in the Night and World in Danger. None of these was chosen, and the studio settled on Invasion of the Body Snatchers in late 1955. The film was released at the time in France under the mistranslated title (literally: Invasion of the defilers of tombs), which remains unchanged today.
Wanger wanted to add a variety of speeches and prefaces. He suggested a voice-over introduction for Miles.LaValley 1989, p. 126. While the film was being shot, Wanger tried to get permission in England to use a Winston Churchill quotation as a preface to the film. The producer sought out Orson Welles to voice the preface and a trailer for the film. He wrote speeches for Welles' opening on June 15, 1955, and worked to persuade Welles to do it, but was unsuccessful. Wanger considered science-fiction author Ray Bradbury, instead, but this did not happen, either. Mainwaring eventually wrote the voice-over narration himself.
The studio scheduled three film previews on the last days of June and the first day of July 1955. According to Wanger's memoranda at the time, the previews were successful. Later reports by Mainwaring and Siegel, however, contradict this, claiming that audiences could not follow the film and laughed in the wrong places. In response, the studio removed much of the film's humor, "humanity", and "quality", according to Wanger. He scheduled another preview in mid-August that also did not go well. In later interviews, Siegel pointed out studio policy was to not mix humor with horror.
Wanger saw the final cut in December 1955 and protested the use of the Superscope aspect ratio. Its use had been included in early plans for the film, but the first print was not made until December. Wanger felt that the film lost sharpness and detail. Siegel originally shot Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Superscope was a post-production laboratory process designed to create an anamorphic print from nonanamorphic source material that would be projected at an aspect ratio of 2.00:1.Hart, Martin. "Superscope." The American WideScreen Museum, 2004. Retrieved: January 13, 2015.
Original ending
Both Siegel and Mainwaring were satisfied with the film as shot. The original ending did not include the flashback framing, and ended with Miles screaming as truckloads of pods pass him on the road.LaValley 1989, p. 125. The studio, wary of a pessimistic conclusion, insisted on adding a prologue and epilogue suggesting a more optimistic outcome to the story, leading to the flashback framing. In this version, the film begins with Bennell in custody in a hospital emergency ward, telling a consulting psychiatrist (Whit Bissell) his story. In the closing scenes, pods are discovered at a highway accident, confirming Bennell's warning, and the authorities are alerted, likely stopping the pod distribution and resolving the extraterrestrial threat.
Mainwaring scripted this framing story and Siegel shot it on September 16, 1955, at the Allied Artists studio. In a later interview, Siegel complained, "The film was nearly ruined by those in charge at Allied Artists who added a preface and ending that I don't like." 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 [...]."Siegel 1993