Invasion of the Body Snatchers

    Invasion of the Body Snatchers
    1956

    Synopsis

    A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

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    Cast

    • Kevin McCarthyDr. Miles J. Bennell
    • Dana WynterBecky Driscoll
    • King DonovanJack Belicec
    • Carolyn JonesTheodora 'Teddy' Belicec
    • Larry GatesDr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman
    • Kenneth PattersonStanley Driscoll
    • Virginia ChristineWilma Lentz
    • Jean WillesNurse Sally Withers
    • Ralph DumkePolice Chief Nick Grivett
    • Guy WayOfficer Sam Janzek

    Recommendations

    • 100

      The Guardian

      The film features an acting cameo from Siegel’s assistant and protege Sam Peckinpah, who also worked on the script, and is known for its high-octane pulp thrills. It should also be praised for elegant satire.
    • 100

      The Telegraph

      It’s the very open-endedness of the film’s subtext that gives it power. When a sleepy California town is overrun, first by the outbreak of a strange delusion that people have been replaced by doppelgangers, but then gradually by the doppelgangers themselves, the film is brilliantly placed, however unwittingly, to illustrate America’s political paranoia from both ends.
    • 100

      Time Out

      A film steeped in psychological realism, its rigorously compact plotting and stark, noir-influenced photography perfectly complementing the mounting sense of clammy, metaphysical dread.
    • 100

      Empire

      A 50s horror classic that remains a gem of allegorical paranoia.
    • 100

      TV Guide Magazine

      A superbly crafted film by innovative director Siegel, this low-budget science fiction tale became one of the great cult classics of the genre.
    • 100

      The A.V. Club

      The film plays just as easily as a stand-in for the mob mentality that let Joseph McCarthy run amok in his attempt to sniff out every last American with communist sympathies—past, present, and future—until all had conformed to a rigid definition of the right thinking.
    • 100

      Entertainment Weekly

      An extremely tight, beautifully made film.
    • 88

      Chicago Reader

      This genuine SF classic says a good deal more about the McCarthyist hysteria of the early 50s than about the danger of invasion from outer space by soul-stealing pods.

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    • TataSuzanne