INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)

 

(Director: Don Siegel. Screenwriter: Daniel Mainwaring and an uncredited Richard Collins, based on Jack Finney’s Collier’s magazine serial.)

Review

INVASION opens with Dr. Hill (an uncredited Whit Bissell, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, 1954), called by a fellow City Emergency Hospital practitioner (an uncredited Dr. Harvey Bassett, played by Richard Deacon, PIRANHA, 1978) to deal with a shouting, panicked Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy, PIRANHA, 1978). Bennell is from the nearby town of Santa Mira. (The fictional Santa Mira would later, not coincidentally, be the site of horror in Tommy Lee Wallace’s 1982 film HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH.)

Once Dr. Hill gets Bennell to sit down and talk with him, the present-day “Framing Sequence” ends, INVASION’s images segue (with Bennell’s voiceover) into the frantic doctor’s tale. It begins “last Thursday” when Bennell’s receptionist/nurse (Sally Withers, played by Jean Willes) called him back from an out-of-town medical convention. The reason: a flood of panicked appointment-seekers at his office. Some of Bennell’s patients are claiming that their loved ones, although they appear and act normal, are not their loved ones─their family members have become something else, something unsettling. . . with an underlying coldness in their manners.

At first, Bennell thinks it’s a psychiatric matter. He’s also pleasantly distracted by the presence of his recently returned lost love (Becky Driscoll). They’re about to sit down for dinner at their oddly empty favorite restaurant (Sky Terrace Playroom), when Bennell gets a message that married friends, Jack and Thedora “Teddy” Belicec, need his help right away. He and Becky rush over to the Belicecs’, and what they see there makes it evident that something disturbing and cold has Santa Mira in its grip (mind those cuckoo clocks!). . .

Filmed in three or four weeks, this tightly written and shot gem with its frenetic, paranoid 1950s chiaroscuro and a few small twists is a fleet hour-and-twenty-minute work, one that builds steadily in its first quarter and goes full-tilt-racer after that. (McCarthy, whose Bennell runs a lot, later said he was exhausted during filming, especially in his iconic highway scene.)

Don Siegel (DIRTY HARRY, 1971) works his usual practical, shot-economical charm in INVASION, aided by screenwriters Daniel Mainwaring (OUT OF THE PAST, 1947) and Richard Collins (CULT OF THE COBRA, 1955). Giving INVASION its terrifying visual feel, cinematographer Elsworth Fredericks (WORLD WITHOUT END, 1956) and editor Robert S. Eisen provide stark contrasts between comforting, daylit Santa Mira and its nighttime terrors, before mixing the elements of both to terrific effect─their work is heightened by Carmen Dragon’s melodramatic score, and the efforts of the rest of the behind-the-scenes crew.

The onscreen talent is also impressive.

Kevin McCarthy is good as the easy-going-now-ranting Dr. Miles J. Bennell. Dana Wynter is equally worthwhile as his lost love, Becky. Carolyn Jones (THE ADDAMS FAMILY, 1964-6), blond with short, curly hair, is believable as Theodora “Teddy” Belicec, as is King Donovan (who plays her husband, Jack).

Other notable players include: Virginia Christine (THE MUMMY’S CURSE, 1944) as Wilma Lentz, who thinks her uncle is not her uncle; Tom Fadden (EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, 1977) as Uncle Ira Lentz; Sam Peckinpah (later an iconic director) as Charlie, the gas man in Bennell’s basement; and an uncredited Robert Osterloh (GUN CRAZY, 1950) as “Ambulance Driver in Framing Sequences.”

This version of INVASION is one of my all-time favorite alien irruption movies─it’s short, sharp (even with its early-on white picket fence pleasantness) and all-around well-made, with no wasted scenes or lines.