Dana Wynter
Larry Gates
King Donovan
Carolyn Jones
Jean Willes
Ralph Dumke
Virginia Christine
Photography:
Black and White
Cinematography:
Ellsworth Fredericks
Distributed By:
Allied Artists Pictures
Release Date:
February 5, 1956 (United States)
Runtime:
80 minutes
Country:
United States
Language:
English
Budget:
$416,911
Box Office:
$3 million
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1956 American science fiction horror film produced by Walter Wanger, directed by Don Siegel, and starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. It was adapted from Jack Finney's 1954 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers.
Why It Rocks
With an extremely potent storyline, this film remains one of the most influential horror films of the 1950s, despite its very low budget, to the point where it was remade several times.
A key reason the film works so well is that it's not really a horror movie at all. It's more like a murder mystery or a film noir from the previous decade. The grim, shadowy qualities shouldn't be very surprising considering what the screenwriter he previously worked on.
The film differs from other horror films as there are few special effects, no monsters and no violence. The story's structured like a mystery, but said mystery has no real solution. Where impactable fate was the source of Jeff Bailey's problems in Out of the Past, in this film, society Itself was to blame, along with the "mass hysteria", engendered by an unknown force operating somewhere in the cosmos.
Like Finney's story, there's an interesting premise where seed pods are replacing human personalities with alien ones, and even the lead's (Dr. Miles Bennell) former friends are being infected and trying to transform him, and him having to flee town with his girlfriend Becky. The film arrived as part of an explosion of science fantasy and science horror in mainstream popular culture, fueled by the atomic age, advent of space rocketry, and Cold War anxieties.
The film offered its many imitators a blueprint for how to create shocks.
Cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks employed the same slatted shadows and distorted angles that could be found in noirs like Double Indemnity.
Siegel’s background as a montage editor is shown in the film’s crisp, confident pacing, especially during the chase sequences.
A four-minute sequence in which Bennell breaks into a basement is an expertly assembled collection of tracking shots, red herrings, and trick jolts, within gloomy, menacing shadows.
Siegel’s low-key, realistic style is essential to the impact of the story, along with gradually eliminating everything that could help Bennell and Becky.
The film had a widespread influence over the horror genre. Half the episodes on The Twilight Zone seem to be based on its premise.
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