Editorials
They’re Here Already: The Perpetual Relevance of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ [Gods and Monsters]
In Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretorius, played by the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, raises his glass and proposes a toast to Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein—“to a new world of Gods and Monsters.” I invite you to join me in exploring this world, focusing on horror films from the dawn of the Universal Monster movies in 1931 to the collapse of the studio system and the rise of the new Hollywood rebels in the late 1960’s. With this period as our focus, and occasional ventures beyond, we will explore this magnificent world of classic horror. So, I raise my glass to you and invite you to join me in the toast.
People often ask what possible relevance old movies could have for us today. These questions are almost never applied to Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a film as applicable to today as it was to 1956 when it was first released. It is the most influential paranoia film of all time, with impact that goes far beyond its official remakes. For sixty-five years, its story and images have induced nightmares, its power and craft have been celebrated, and its political themes and implications have been scrutinized. But ultimately the film endures simply because it is a great story well told. It is tightly plotted and briskly paced; well written, directed, and acted; and has a universal and chilling premise: what if the people you know and love aren’t really the people you know and love?
The film is based on The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, originally published as a three-part serial in Collier’s Magazine in 1954. Producer Walter Wanger was so taken by the story that he bought the film rights before the third part had even run. It was then handed over to screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring to write the adaptation. Wanger discovered Don Siegel through his 1954 film Riot in Cell Block 11 and immediately sought him out to direct. Siegel brings the kind of gritty reality he became so well known for in films like Dirty Harry (1971) and Charley Varrick (1973) to the fantastical subject matter. The grounded nature of Body Snatchers is one of the reasons why it endures while so many other sci-fi/horror films of the period have faded into obscurity.
The story of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is fairly straightforward. Small town doctor Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns home to Santa Mira to discover something strange. A number of his patients claim that their relatives are not really their relatives. Jimmy (Bobby Clark), a young boy, screams in fear that his mother is not his mother. He visits Wilma (Virginia Christine), the cousin of his old school sweetheart Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), who claims that her Uncle Ira is simply not her Uncle Ira. She says that he looks like him and remembers everything that Uncle Ira would down to the smallest detail. “But Miles, there’s no emotion—none. Just the pretense of it. The words, gesture, the tone of voice, everything else is the same but not the feeling.” She claims that he lacks a certain look in or behind his eyes, as though he no longer had a soul or any spark of humanity.
As Miles and Becky begin to rekindle their old flame after each have been through a divorce (described in this code era film as “visiting Reno”), Miles is called to the home of his friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan) and his wife Teddy, played by the future Morticia Addams, Carolyn Jones. Jack shows Miles a mysterious body laying on his pool table that has only vague features that lack any real detail and no fingerprints. Teddy is convinced that the body looks like Jack. Soon after, large seed pods are discovered in Jack’s greenhouse and more bodies emerge from them that look like Miles, Becky, and Teddy. Miles and Becky soon learn that many in the town have been replaced by these copies. The film continually builds in dread and paranoid atmosphere to its climax where Miles stands in the street shouting to unhearing ears, “they’re here already” before turning directly to the screen and the screaming to the audience, “you’re next!” If left intact, this would have been one of the greatest endings in film history.
The original cut ended there, but preview audience were put off by the bleakness and hopelessness of the film. Don Siegel at first refused to make any changes but was told that changes were going to be made with or without him. So, he and Daniel Mainwaring wrote the prologue, epilogue, and voice-over for the film. Though these elements do detract from the overall power of the film, they are not completely disastrous. Miles is ultimately believed in the final ending, but with the sheer number of pods and pod people we see in the film’s climax, it seems unlikely that a few doctors and police officers will be able to do anything about it.
Discussions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers almost invariably immediately turn to the political implications of the film. The prevailing political interpretations of the time came from both the right and the left. Conservatives saw the film as a warning against Communism, while progressives saw it as condemning McCarthyism or dictatorial fascism. The beauty of the film is that it is essentially a blank slate and both interpretations can be thoroughly argued for or against. Many of the film’s primary players insist that they had no specific subtext in mind while making it. Both Jack Finney and Don Siegel refused to participate in any political conversation about the novel or film, feeling it was better left to the interpretation of each reader and viewer. Dana Wynter is on record as feeling it was about some kind of “ism” but never gave much thought as to which one. Kevin McCarthy felt that the pod people represented the soulless advertising agents of Madison Avenue who were attempting to control the American mind, an interpretation that John Carpenter in many ways ran with for his film They Live thirty-two years later.
But Body Snatchers is much more about the loss of what makes us human than any specific political idea. It is less about “isms” and ideas than it is about the lack of them. The pod people are incapable of individuality or any form of independent thought. They have become not only soulless but mindless. The pod people are not particularly malevolent and intend to bring about what they view as a utopia, but at what cost? Theirs is a world without conflict, hatred, or strife, but also without beauty, creativity, or love.
One scene in particular makes this case strongly. Miles and Becky are cornered by pod people appearing as Jack Belicec and the town’s psychiatrist Dan Kauffman, who make their case, saying the two just need to go to sleep to be, “reborn into an untroubled world.” Miles counters, “where everyone is the same?” and “you can’t love or be loved, am I right?” Dan’s response is cold but reasonable. “You say that as if it were terrible, believe me it isn’t. You’ve been in love before. It didn’t last. It never does. Love, desire, ambition, faith. Without them life’s so simple, believe me.” Miles tells him he wants no part of their brave new world to which Dan gives the most chilling line of the film, “you have no choice.”
Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been officially remade three times, and quite effectively in most cases. The first two remakes can even be seen as continuations that build upon the mythology and situations of the Siegel film. Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version, widely hailed as the best version of the story, transplants the invasion from a small town to the big city of San Francisco and taps into prevalent 70’s fears of new age and religious cults. Abel Ferrara’s 1993 version, Body Snatchers, takes place on a military base and focuses on themes of blind trust in the government and militarism. 2007’s The Invasion is generally the least appreciated of the official remakes, but is surprisingly prescient in its commentary on fears of pandemic thirteen years before one actually hit. Considering current political uncertainty and unrest along with plenty of other concerns, the time is ripe for another telling of the story. Based on the recently announced The Changed starring Tony Todd, it appears that new version is arriving right on cue.
Even beyond these official remakes, the influence of Body Snatchers is deeply felt. The pod people have invaded all kinds of movies and popular culture over the decades in a number of forms. They can be seen in George Romero’s zombies, most poignantly in their consumerist iteration in Dawn of the Dead (1978). The interdimensional beings of John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) who placate and pacify humanity through subliminal messages and advertising certainly share some DNA with them. The Cybermen of Doctor Who and the Borg of Star Trek are essentially technological pod people who also share a collective consciousness. Even the clones of the Star Wars prequels, that can be instantly reprogramed at the whim of a maniacal leader, have much in common with the invaders.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) is set in the fictional town of Santa Mira and shares several structural elements with Body Snatchers. In Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Christopher Lee as Doctor Catheter is seen carrying one of the seed pods from the film. Body Snatchers has been referenced directly in television shows as varied as Muppet Babies, Saved by the Bell, Eerie Indiana, Cheers, Night Court, Seinfeld, and The Big Bang Theory. Films like Shivers and The Stepford Wives (both 1975), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), The Faculty (1998), and many others all owe at least some credit to the film.
The story and themes of Body Snatchers remain as enduring as ever. If made today, the film may well have to do with unease surrounding the rising power of big tech and social media to influence their massive audiences. It may have to do with rabid conspiracy theorizing and the ways that people we have deemed reasonable in the past now buy into “flat earth theory” or the QAnon movement.
It could even scrutinize the current need for total agreement, be it political, social, or even related to movies, music, and other facets of popular culture. Dissenting opinions are so often seen as not simply disagreement, but personal attack. Any sense of subtlety or nuance is disregarded in favor of a headline, soundbite, or thought that can be reduced to 280 characters or less. Of course, some ideas are simply wrong or evil, and worth rejecting out of hand. But in many, perhaps even most cases, discussion is a positive thing. Disagreement and debate are more often than not refining processes that draw us nearer to the real truth, though that process can be uncomfortable. In the words of ancient wisdom, “iron sharpens iron” though the process causes sparks.
The biggest reason why Invasion of the Body Snatchers endures both as a film and an idea is that it gets to the heart of what makes us human. Part of what makes life worth living is the messiness of it all. As much as we all hate and try to avoid pain and grief, would we truly feel joy or happiness without them? Can there be any kind of faith without doubt? Would we know real peace without turmoil or love without loss? At its core, that is what Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about. More than fears about Communism or McCarthyism, it is about the things that make us beings who live rather than merely survive. It is about the things that make us truly human and the fears of losing them. These are the reasons the film is consistently frightening, constantly reimagined, and more than anything else as the years pass, terrifyingly relevant.
Editorials
Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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