Likely the quintessential 1950s sci-fi B-movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers could easily have disappeared into obscurity if not for the efforts of producer Walter Wanger and director Don Siegel. Hired by the studio to churn out quick and cheap filler for a forgettable double feature, the creators instead delivered a film with such a potent concept and effective execution that it has lingered in the popular consciousness going on seventy years later.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers was not a blockbuster hit upon release. Nor was it immediately recognized as a classic. However, the film’s depiction of a hostile takeover by “Pod People” captured the zeitgeist of the era, a time when the younger generations were starting to feel boxed in by the pressures of social conformity imposed by their elders. Conveniently, the theme could also be read as a metaphor for the Red Scare (either the dangers of Communist infiltration or the hysteria surrounding the fear of it, depending on one’s political leanings), and has very cleverly been adapted over the years to suit the needs of subsequent decades.
| Title: | Invasion of the Body Snatchers |
| Year of Release: | 1956 |
| Director: | Don Siegel |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Available On: | Blu-ray Kanopy PlutoTV Roku Channel Various VOD purchase and rental platforms |
Based on a story by author Jack Finney originally published in Collier’s magazine, Body Snatchers takes place in the fictional community of Santa Mira, California. Local doctor Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) finds the town overrun with what he defines as a “strange neurosis,” in which multiple people are overcome with an apparent delusion that their loved ones aren’t whom they claim to be, but have been replaced with doppelganger duplicates that look, sound, and act almost like the originals. A rational man of medical science, Bennell is convinced that this is somehow a case of mass hysteria. However, the discoveries of a half-formed clone of a friend, as well as mysterious overgrown seed pods spread throughout the town, both point to a far more disturbing revelation.
In little time, Dr. Bennell and his girlfriend Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) learn that Santa Mira is ground zero for an invasion of alien life forms from outer space capable of growing exact replicas of human beings, nearly indistinguishable from the originals, even down to copying their hosts’ memories. Yet these Pod People have a distinct lack of human emotion, and when the copy takes over, the original is destroyed. As Santa Mira is overrun with emotionless facsimiles of their friends and neighbors, and all communication with the outside world is cut off, Miles and Becky struggle to escape the town and spread the word about what’s happening, in the desperate hope of finding anyone in a position of authority who might believe their crazy story before it’s too late to stop the end of the world.
In many ways, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a typical 1950s B-movie. Made for a low budget, the film is small in scale (confined mostly to the one town), and the details of the alien invasion are more suggested than shown in detail. Action and special effects are minimal. The script has a rather serious unresolvable plot hole in that the nature of how the Pod People take over their hosts completely changes at the climax without explanation.
The performances are also pitched toward melodrama. Kevin McCarthy was, at the time, a respected stage actor who’d received an Oscar nomination for the 1952 film adaptation of Death of a Salesman, but the material here has him come across a bit hammy, in an endearing way. Little did he realize at the time he filmed it that this quick paycheck gig would wind up becoming the signature role that would define the rest of his career, such that in later years he’d mostly be known for goofy comedies like Innerspace and UHF.
Even as so many of its contemporaries – including The Atomic Man, the other half of the double-bill it premiered on – have faded from memory, Body Snatchers has endured. Any flaws or hokiness in the production are more than overcome by the very compelling sense of paranoid dread the film taps into with its portrayal of a world where no one can be trusted, not even your closest friends or family members, and everything that should be familiar and safe and comforting is twisted into something dangerous and horrible. Director Siegel (who’d go on later to make big hits like Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz) stages the mounting suspense with a skillful efficiency that belies his limited resources.
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers story has proven durable enough that the movie has been remade three times (the best of them by Philip Kaufman in 1978) and ripped off countless more. Something in the premise speaks to the anxieties of any age.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been released on home video countless times over the years, yet the new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber is the first to properly address the film’s aspect ratio. When director Don Siegel and cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks shot the movie in late 1955, they composed the photography for 1.85:1 widescreen. However, before its completion, studio Allied Artists Pictures mandated that the movie would be released in a different format called Superscope, with a wider 2.00:1 ratio. This was mostly achieved by cropping additional image off the top and bottom, leaving the vertical framing for most of the picture feeling overly tight.
Unfortunately, the Original Camera Negative for Invasion of the Body Snatchers was either lost or destroyed at some point during the ensuing decades. As a result, various home video releases over the years, including the Blu-ray editions from Olive Films in 2012 and 2018, either maintained that theatrical 2.00:1 ratio or (even worse) further cropped the sides for pan & scan, losing picture in every direction. For a long time, it was assumed that nothing better could be done about this.
Recently, a new film element was uncovered containing what appears to be the original 1.85:1 photographic composition. Both the 4K Ultra HD and the standard Blu-ray in Kino’s 2-disc set provide two separate video transfers for the movie, one in 1.85:1 and another in the familiar Superscope 2.00:1. Comparing the two, the 1.85:1 version gains a small amount of picture on the top and bottom, while the 2.00:1 has slivers of extra image on the sides.
The difference is not necessarily dramatic, and I don’t think the 2.00:1 version is unwatchable, but the 1.85:1 feels better balanced and less cramped. On the other hand, it also has occasional hair and bits of dirt at the bottom of the frame, suggesting that perhaps a tiny amount of additional matting wouldn’t have hurt.
Even accounting for that aspect ratio issue, I can’t think of any good reason why Invasion of the Body Snatchers needed to be released on a 4K home video format – aside from marketing purposes, of course. With the Original Camera Negative long since lost, the surviving film elements have nowhere near 4K worth of detail, nor does the video master benefit at all from the completely superfluous HDR encoding. The 4K disc and the regular Blu-ray in this set are indistinguishable from one another by eye. To be frank, the movie hardly looks much better than a good DVD. Unless some miracle happens and an even better film element is discovered in the future, that’s simply the state this movie currently exists in.
The two video transfers are derived from different film sources, not just the same scan with different amounts of matting applied. The Superscope 2.00:1 version has marginally better contrast than the 1.85:1 print and is perhaps very slightly crisper as well, but I’m not sure either is enough to override the benefits of the opened-up aspect ratio. Both versions have good grayscale and adequate resolution of film grain.
The film’s original monaural soundtrack is provided in DTS-HD Master Audio format. Unsurprisingly, as a movie from 1956, the sound is a little dated and thin. But it’s also clear enough and has little evident hiss, without overt signs of having been too noise-reduced.
Both discs in the set offer four audio commentary tracks:
- Stars Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, moderated by filmmaker Joe Dante
- Film historian Richard Harlan Smith
- Film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
- Professor and film scholar Jason A. Ney
The Blu-ray disc also contains three featurettes and a pair of trailers: one for this film and one for the 1978 remake.
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film. However, as mentioned in the review, I can see no appreciable difference between that disc and the 4K Ultra HD for this movie.
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The Video File Blog 
I only realized after this review was published that I’d forgotten to add a sentence about the plot hole at the end involving how a certain character just turns into a Pod Person as if their body was taken over, no pod or clone copy needed at all. That has been rectified now.
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This is such a great movie. It’s one of my Mom’s faves so we watched it a lot when I was growing up. One thing that struck me on my most recent viewing (albeit a few years back), was the fact the score seemed to be pulsing underneath and always adding tension. Even in simple dialogue sequences the scores was always there in the background adding mood to the proceedings. For this reason I feel like it’s one of the more accessible films of the 1950’s for modern audience. The omnipresent score sort of reminds me of Nolan in away, but obviously far less bombastic.
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