Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1956 science fiction film that tells the story of ordinary small town people whose bodies are taken over by aliens. It stars Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan and Carolyn Jones. The film has been remade a number of times: in 1978, 1993 and another due for release in 2006. The original version has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Themes

The film is frequently cited as an indictment of the hysteria of McCarthyism during the early stages of the Cold War. The taking-over of ordinary citizens metaphorically reflected the paranoia in Cold War America of how communism might infiltrate the body politic in such a way that you would have no way of suspecting if your friends and neighbors had been corrupted. Others have viewed the film as not being an attack on Cold War "Paranoia", but an attack on the nature of Communism itself, wherein the needs of society outweigh the passion of the individual. Director Don Siegel has stated that he wanted only to tell a good story, and that neither of these messages was intended.

Related Topics:
Hysteria - McCarthyism - Cold War - Metaphor - Paranoia - Communism

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