The year Invasion opened up, Peter Pan is televised on national TV, Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan show for his 1st time, and the Yankees won the World Series. Horror movies were becoming more sophisticated with their stories and the acting was always improving, as was the special FX. But Don Seigel's Body Snatchers took a different approach. Based on a magazine's serial story, this movie took a group of normal people and had their brains and bodies taken over by aliens.
Mind control had become the focus of this story from the get go. People began to see things about their family members that didn't seem right away and the good doctor was determined to find out what was going on, no matter what the outcome. All of this was talked about in narration recounting the story to another group of medical and police folks we see in brief scenes in the front and tail end of the movie because a sort of test audience thought the movie was too much a downer for the mainstream film going community. Kevin McCarthy plays the convincing Doctor come back to his hometown to find the mystery already unfolding in front of him and there are very little townsfolk to speak of until they show up to try and cause trouble for the Dr.
Body Snatchers set itself apart from the rest of the film clips this week because most of the clips we watched were of genetic mutations or alterations made by accident (or on purpose) by a doctor or scientist. The Doctor in Invasion of the Body Snatchers was trying to find out what happened, with no clear definition as to the outcome. This movie spawned two official remakes in 1978 and in 2007, then a few spoofs or parodies.
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