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90-489: Produced as a tribute to the sci-fi films of the 1950s, notably The Invasion of the Body Snatchers , it was intended to be the second installment of the aborted Strange Trilogy with Strange Behavior (1981), another 1950s spoof by Laughlin, but the idea was abandoned after Invaders failed to attract a large audience. Scarwid's performance earned her a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Supporting Actress . In 1958,

180-504: A New Yorker. Condon was a big fan of Brian De Palma 's films and Nancy Allen who appeared in several of them. Louise Fletcher's government agent was originally written as a man, a " Bob Balaban bureaucrat", but during the screenwriting process, Condon and Laughlin decided to change the character to a woman and cast Fletcher who had been in Strange Behavior . Condon and Laughlin created a visual plan in advance and this helped them shoot

270-462: A computer-colorized version), German market (as Die Dämonischen ), and Spanish market (as La Invasión de los Ladrones de Cuerpos ). Several Blu-ray Disc versions have been released, including two bare-bones Blu-ray Disc editions by Olive Films in 2012 and German company Al!ve (under the title Die Dämonischen ) in 2018. Sinister Films released a Blu-ray in Italy on March 18, 2014. This version, under

360-485: A consulting psychiatrist ( Whit Bissell ) his story. In the closing scenes, pods are discovered at a highway accident, confirming Bennell's warning, and the authorities are alerted, likely stopping the pod distribution and resolving the extraterrestrial threat. Mainwaring scripted this framing story and Siegel shot it on September 16, 1955, at the Allied Artists studio. In a later interview, Siegel complained, "The film

450-626: A contract with MGM . He was cast in a major role in The Jazz Age (1929), and got his first leading role that year in The Silver Horde . He moved to RKO in 1930, where he established himself as a handsome and versatile leading man capable of starring in both dramas and comedies. In the 1930s, McCrea starred in the pre-code film, Bird of Paradise (1932), directed by King Vidor , co-starring with Dolores del Río . In RKO's The Sport Parade (1932), McCrea and William Gargan are friends on

540-628: A deliberately minor but unique stylist. It's up to the viewer to determine just how faux his naif style is, but either way you choose to take it, Strange Invaders offers a good deal of laid-back fun". Jay Scott in his review for The Globe and Mail wrote, " Strange Invaders is a pastiche, a film-school jumble of aphorisms and winks at the audience that are neither as knowing nor as amusing as they are meant to be". Colin Greenland reviewed Strange Invaders for Imagine magazine, and stated that " Strange Invaders never quite makes up its mind whether it's

630-474: A farm with hundreds of pods being loaded onto trucks. Bennell returns to tell Becky, but realizes that she fell asleep before he could return and is now one of them. Becky sounds the alarm as Bennell runs away. Desperate, he screams at the drivers in the highway for help. Bennell finishes his story. Dr. Hill and the doctor step outside into the hallway. A driver is wheeled into the hall on a gurney after having been injured in an accident. The attendant recounts that

720-457: A frame story on which the studio had insisted (see Original intended ending ). The final budget was $ 382,190. The project was originally named The Body Snatchers after the Finney serial, but Wanger wanted to avoid confusion with the 1945 Val Lewton film The Body Snatcher . The producer was unable to come up with a title and accepted the studio's choice, They Come from Another World and that

810-553: A friend of the doctor, Jack Belicec, who has found what appears to be a body in his home. It has no features or fingerprints, and starts to change, beginning to take on the features of Belicec. Another body is found in Becky's basement that is her duplicate. Before any further investigation can take place, the bodies disappear. Bennell and Jack's wife Teddy find duplicates of themselves emerging from pods in Bennell's greenhouse. They conclude that

900-604: A fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Wilson in Beverly Hills . He died less than three weeks later on October 20, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles , California, from pneumonia at the age of 84. After his death his family ultimately donated thirty-five acres (14 ha) of McCrea's former ranch to the newly formed Conejo Valley YMCA for

990-570: A local doctor uncovers this "quiet" invasion and attempts to stop it. The slang expression " pod people " that arose in late 20th-century U.S. culture refers to the emotionless duplicates seen in the film. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." A psychiatrist

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1080-534: A major. Orion Pictures liked the script and was looking for a good film at a modest price with mainstream appeal. Orion provided half of the film's $ 5.5 million budget with England's EMI Films coming up with the rest. Orion received distribution rights for North America while EMI handled the rest of the world. As part of the financing deal, Orion and EMI demanded several script changes, which Condon and Laughlin found difficult, because they had to try to explain their ideas verbally. The financial backers influence reduced

1170-709: A number of Westerns, including Wichita (1955) as Wyatt Earp and Sam Peckinpah 's Ride the High Country (1962), opposite Randolph Scott . He starred in a total of three Best Picture Oscar nominees: Dead End (1937), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and The More the Merrier (1943). With the exception of the British thriller Rough Shoot (1953) and film noir Hollywood Story (1951), McCrea appeared in Western films exclusively from 1946 until his retirement in 1976. McCrea

1260-400: A psychiatrist, was chosen to provide an authoritative voice that would appeal to the desire to "abdicate from human responsibility in an increasingly complex and confusing modern world." Though Invasion of the Body Snatchers was largely ignored by critics on its initial run, Filmsite.org ranked it as one of the best films of 1956. The film holds a 98% approval rating and 9.1/10 rating at

1350-646: A send-up or a faithful recreation of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers ; It Came From Outer Space ; The Bubble ; etc. It hovers somewhere in between: too naïve to be convincing, too self-conscious to be allegorical." The film was a box office disappointment. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers 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 . The black-and-white film

1440-514: A small part as Charlie, a meter reader. Peckinpah was a dialogue coach on five Siegel films in the mid-1950s, including this one. Originally, producer Wanger and Siegel wanted to film Invasion of the Body Snatchers on location in Mill Valley, California , the town just north of San Francisco , that Jack Finney described in his novel. In the first week of January 1955, Siegel, Wanger, and screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring visited Finney to talk about

1530-514: A special-edition Blu-ray in 2018, containing extensive bonus features including several featurettes, two audio commentaries, one with film historian Richard Harland Smith and a second with Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, and filmmaker Joe Dante , and a 1985 archival interview with McCarthy. Three subsequent adaptations of The Body Snatchers have been made: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1993), and The Invasion (2007). An untitled fourth adaptation from Warner Bros.

1620-465: A story originally published in 1954, McCrea said he was a man of faith, who relied on the guidance of God in his personal life and career, saying that through the years he followed the principle of "asking my way of Him." At the end of the article, McCrea added, "I don't claim I haven't made mistakes. I have. But most of my mistakes were due to trusting 'luck' or my own judgment instead of His." McCrea made his final public appearance on October 3, 1990, at

1710-565: A strictly political point of view: "[...] I felt that this was a very important story. I think that the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them. I think so many people have no feeling about cultural things, no feeling of pain, of sorrow. [...] The political reference to Senator McCarthy and totalitarianism was inescapable but I tried not to emphasize it because I feel that motion pictures are primarily to entertain and I did not want to preach." Film scholar J.P. Telotte wrote that Siegel intended for pods to be seductive; their spokesperson,

1800-408: A then unincorporated area of eastern Ventura County, California , which later became Thousand Oaks . This was the beginning of what evolved into a 3,000-acre (1,200 ha) spread where McCrea and his wife lived, raised their sons, and rode their horses. At one point, McCrea's ranch produced 200,000 pounds of beef every year. He was noted for being a hard worker on his ranch; he was very active in

1890-515: A third film in a proposed " Strange Trilogy", titled, The Adventures of Philip Strange , a World War II spy thriller with science fiction elements and hoped to cast many of the same actors and crew from his two previous films. In his review for The New York Times , Vincent Canby called it, "a tasteful monster movie with a terrible secret: it eats other movies". Newsweek magazine's David Ansen wrote, "Hovering unclassifiably between nostalgia and satire, this amiably hip genre movie confirms Laughlin as

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1980-591: A young Maureen O'Hara . After the success of the film The Virginian in 1946, McCrea made Westerns exclusively for the rest of his career, with two exceptions: an uncredited role in the 1951 film noir Hollywood Story and the British-made Rough Shoot (1953). By that time the multi-millionaire McCrea had long been working his own ranch in Ventura County outside of L.A.. Specializing in Westerns

2070-409: Is called to the room of a Los Angeles hospital, where a man named Miles Bennell is being held in custody. The man claims to be a doctor, and recounts the events leading up to his arrest and arrival at the hospital. At work, Bennell meets a number of patients suffering from Capgras delusion . His girlfriend, Becky, has just come back to town after settling a divorce. The couple are called to the home of

2160-529: The Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 29th scariest film ever made. IGN ranked it as the 15th-best sci-fi picture. Time magazine included Invasion of the Body Snatchers on their list of 100 all-time best films, the top 10 1950s Sci-Fi Movies, and Top 25 Horror Films. In 1999, Entertainment Weekly listed it as the 53rd best movie of all time. Similarly, the book Four Star Movies: The 101 Greatest Films of All Time placed

2250-642: The Pasadena Playhouse . In 1928 he also met Wyatt Earp in Hollywood – later in 1955, McCrea would portray Earp in the film, Wichita . As a high school student McCrea worked as a stunt double and held horses for Hollywood cowboy stars William S. Hart and Tom Mix . McCrea had a love and understanding of horses from an early age, and later he was considered one of the best riders in Western films. The strapping 6'2½" McCrea variously worked as an extra, stunt man, and bit player from 1927 to 1928, when he signed

2340-403: The romance film Bird of Paradise (1932), the adventure classic The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Gregory La Cava 's bawdy comedy Bed of Roses (1933), George Stevens ' six-time Academy Award nominated romantic comedy The More the Merrier (1943), William Wyler 's These Three , Come and Get It (both 1936) and Dead End (1937), Howard Hawks ' Barbary Coast (1935), and

2430-496: The 1930s with fellow personality and sometime actor Will Rogers . McCrea recounted that "the Oklahoma Sage" gave him a profound piece of advice: "Save half of what you make, and live on just the other half." McCrea supported Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election , Barry Goldwater in the 1964 United States presidential election , and Ronald Reagan in the 1966 California gubernatorial election . In

2520-483: The Body Snatchers is an example of that. I remember reading a magazine article arguing that the picture was intended as an allegory about the communist infiltration of America. From personal knowledge, neither Walter Wanger nor Don Siegel, who directed it, nor Dan Mainwaring, who wrote the script nor original author Jack Finney, nor myself, saw it as anything other than a thriller, pure and simple." Don Siegel spoke more openly of an existing allegorical subtext, but denied

2610-415: The Body Snatchers with Robert Aldrich 's Kiss Me Deadly and Orson Welles ' Touch of Evil , Brian Neve found a sense of disillusionment rather than straightforward messages, with all three films being "less radical in any positive sense than reflective of the decline of [the screenwriters'] great liberal hopes." Despite a general agreement among film critics regarding these political connotations of

2700-541: The Dartmouth football team, who are shown snapping towels at each other in the locker room, while other players are taking a shower. In 1932 he starred with Fay Wray in The Most Dangerous Game – which used some of the same jungle sets built for King Kong (1933) as well as cast members Wray and Robert Armstrong , and was filmed at night while King Kong was filmed during the day. He was originally intended for

2790-474: The High Country (1962), directed by Sam Peckinpah , after which he did not make another feature film until The Young Rounders (1966). Four more years were to pass before his next film, but 1970 saw the release of two: Cry Blood, Apache , again with his son Jody, and Sioux Nation . He made his final film appearance in 1976, in Mustang Country . In 1968, McCrea received a career achievement award from

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2880-623: The L.A. Film Critics Association, and the following year he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma . For his contribution to the motion picture industry, McCrea has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Blvd. and another star at 6241 Hollywood Blvd. for his contribution to radio. He

2970-418: The Merrier (1943), directed by George Stevens , and two comedies by Preston Sturges : Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942). While shooting Sullivan's Travels , it was an on-set joke that tall McCrea's leading lady, Veronica Lake, had to stand on a box for some shots, as she was reportedly 16 inches shorter than McCrea, and it was otherwise impossible to get both of their heads in

3060-468: The Western. The minute I got a horse and a hat and a pair of boots on, I felt easier. I didn't feel like I was an actor anymore. I felt like I was the guy out there doing it. On November 19, 1950, McCrea appeared on Television Theatre in an adaptation of Foreign Correspondent . In the early 1950s, McCrea starred as Jace Pearson on the radio series Western, Tales of the Texas Rangers . In 1955 he

3150-499: The alien invasion. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was originally scheduled for a 24-day shoot and a budget of US$ 454,864. The studio later asked Wanger to cut the budget significantly. The producer proposed a shooting schedule of 20 days and a budget of $ 350,000. Initially, Wanger considered Gig Young , Dick Powell , Joseph Cotten , and several others for the role of Miles. For Becky, he considered casting Anne Bancroft , Donna Reed , Kim Hunter , Vera Miles , and others. With

3240-451: The aliens, who want to take her to their home-world. Bigelow and Elizabeth escape from the departing alien ship and Betty's and the townsfolk's blue orbs are transformed back to their original human forms. Director Michael Laughlin teamed with Bill Condon , his co-writer and associate producer from Strange Behavior . The first image Laughlin came up with was that of a midwest landscape with an "old-fashioned mothership sliding in". He wrote

3330-427: The best 10 films in 10 "classic" American film genres — after polling more than 1,500 people from the creative community. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was acknowledged as the 9th-best film in the science-fiction genre. The film was also placed on AFI's AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Thrills , a list of America's most heart-pounding films. The film was included on Bravo 's 100 Scariest Movie Moments . Similarly,

3420-609: The character Jack Driscoll in King Kong , but he turned down the role which subsequently went to Bruce Cabot . In 1934 he made his first appearances with two leading ladies he would be paired with often, Miriam Hopkins in The Richest Girl in the World , the first of their five films together, and Barbara Stanwyck in Gambling Lady , the first of their six pairings. Later in

3510-588: The clearest window into the American psyche that horror cinema has ever provided." In An Illustrated History of the Horror Film , Carlos Clarens saw a trend manifesting itself in science-fiction films, dealing with dehumanization and fear of the loss of individual identity, being historically connected to the end of "the Korean War and the well-publicized reports of brainwashing techniques." Comparing Invasion of

3600-470: The decade he was the first actor to play "Dr. Kildare", in the film Internes Can't Take Money (1937), and starred in two large-scale Westerns, Wells Fargo (1937) with his wife Frances Dee , and Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific (1939). McCrea reached the peak of his early career in the early 1940s, in Alfred Hitchcock 's thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), a romantic comedy, The More

3690-543: The defilers of tombs ), which remains unchanged today. Wanger wanted to add a variety of speeches and prefaces. He suggested a voice-over introduction for Miles. While the film was being shot, Wanger tried to get permission in England to use a Winston Churchill quotation as a preface to the film. The producer sought out Orson Welles to voice the preface and a trailer for the film. He wrote speeches for Welles' opening on June 15, 1955, and worked to persuade Welles to do it, but

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3780-448: The director's confusion "because there didn't seem to be a good reason for his rejection. I guess it was a matter of personal taste". Orion and EMI suggested Mel Gibson and Powers Boothe instead but Laughlin's choice was Paul Le Mat, because he had not played that kind of role before and had a " Joel McCrea quality" that he was seeking. For the role of Betty, Laughlin wanted an actress from New York and not someone from California playing

3870-585: The episode, as Pearl, Brain Guy, and Professor Bobo are out camping , they end up discovering flowers that they nickname "Zucchini Throw Pillows" which are actually Body Snatcher Aliens in disguise. They end up getting sent to the Satellite of Love along with the titular movie, causing Pearl, Brain Guy, and all the Bots (except Mike and Bobo) to become affected. Per Mike's encouragement, Bobo manages to save everyone by destroying

3960-419: The expense of Condon and Laughlin. The film was a take-off of science fiction films of the 1950s. "I think that's when all this science-fiction view of the future was invented - the current idea of the future," said Laughlin. "America thought it had conquered the world. The Germans were no longer anything to worry about. The Japanese had been defeated. The only thing that sent a possible tingle through your spine

4050-694: The explanation, "Since I was too old to be called, I was too old for that kind of a show". He was also notoriously modest about his acting abilities, and would say that he didn't feel good enough to play certain parts. He also preferred playing roles that he could see himself in. Despite his own opinion of his acting, Katharine Hepburn reportedly felt that he was one of the best actors with whom she had worked. She believed McCrea should have been ranked alongside Spencer Tracy or Humphrey Bogart . McCrea also starred in two William A. Wellman Westerns, The Great Man's Lady (1942), again with Stanwyck, and Buffalo Bill (1944), with character actor Edgar Buchanan and

4140-441: The fictional California town of Santa Mira. Alien plant spores have fallen from space and grown into large seed pods, each one capable of producing a visually identical copy of a human. As each pod reaches full development, it assimilates the physical traits, memories, and personalities of each sleeping person placed near it until only the replacement is left; these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion. Little by little,

4230-522: The film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes . The site's consensus reads: "One of the best political allegories of the 1950s, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an efficient, chilling blend of sci-fi and horror." In recent years, critics such as Dan Druker of the Chicago Reader have called the film a "genuine Sci-Fi classic." Leonard Maltin described Invasion of the Body Snatchers as "influential, and still very scary." Time Out called

4320-558: The film and laughed in the wrong places. In response, the studio removed much of the film's humor, "humanity," and "quality," according to Wanger. He scheduled another preview in mid-August that also did not go well. In later interviews, Siegel pointed out studio policy was to not mix humor with horror. Wanger saw the final cut in December 1955 and protested the use of the Superscope aspect ratio . Its use had been included in early plans for

4410-425: The film as shot. The original ending did not include the flashback framing, and ended with Miles screaming as truckloads of pods pass him on the road. The studio, wary of a pessimistic conclusion, insisted on adding a prologue and epilogue suggesting a more optimistic outcome to the story, leading to the flashback framing. In this version, the film begins with Bennell in custody in a hospital emergency ward, telling

4500-507: The film one of the "most resonant" and "one of the simplest" of the genre. Mark Steyn described it as “a big film,” despite its limited budget. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its " Ten top Ten " —

4590-517: The film quickly — in only five weeks. Laughlin was helped out by a second unit that worked on the film's visual and prosthetic effects. He hired Private Stock Effects to work on the visual effects. They had previously worked on Battle Beyond the Stars and Escape from New York . For the prosthetic alien effects, he hired James Cummins, a veteran of the John Carpenter film The Thing , and later,

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4680-471: The film version and to look at Mill Valley. The location proved too expensive, and Siegel with Allied Artist executives, found locations resembling Mill Valley in the Los Angeles area, including Sierra Madre , Chatsworth , Glendale , Los Feliz , Bronson , and Beachwood Canyons , all of which went on to make up the fictional town of "Santa Mira" for the film. In addition to these outdoor locations, much of

4770-536: The film was released in the UK (with cuts imposed by the British censors ) in late 1956, the film had more than a half-million dollars in ticket sales. Some reviewers saw in the story a commentary on the dangers facing the United States for turning a blind eye to McCarthyism . Leonard Maltin wrote of a McCarthy -era subtext, or of bland conformity in postwar Eisenhower -era America. Others viewed it as an allegory for

4860-544: The film was released, entitled Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers (1992). The adaptation was directed by Greg Ford and places Bugs Bunny , Daffy Duck , Elmer Fudd , Yosemite Sam , and Porky Pig in the various roles of the story. In 2018, theater company Team Starkid created the musical parody The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals , the story of a Midwestern town that is overtaken by a singing alien hivemind. The musical parodies numerous horror and musical tropes, while

4950-494: The film was shot in the Allied Artists studio on the east side of Hollywood . Invasion of the Body Snatchers was shot by cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks in 23 days between March 23 and April 27, 1955. The cast and crew worked a six-day week with Sundays off. The production went over schedule by three days because of the night-for-night shooting that Siegel wanted. Additional photography took place in September 1955, filming

5040-592: The film was still being shown with the complete footage, including a 2005 screening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honoring director Don Siegel. Although most reviewers disliked it, George Turner (in American Cinematographer ) and Danny Peary (in Cult Movies ) endorsed the subsequently added frame story. Nonetheless, Peary emphasized that the added scenes changed significantly what he saw as

5130-461: The film's original intention. When the film was released domestically in February 1956, many theaters displayed several pods made of papier-mâché in theater lobbies and entrances, along with large lifelike black-and-white cutouts of McCarthy and Wynter running away from a crowd. The film earned more than $ 1 million in the first month, and in 1956 alone earned more than $ 2.5 million in the U.S. When

5220-523: The film's scope. For example, in the original script, the American government was a much bigger threat, with a big sequence taking place at an Air Force base. These changes bothered Laughlin, because they resulted in a lack of a well-defined middle section in the script. Orion and EMI also influenced the casting process and approved every choice Laughlin made. The original script was written with Michael Murphy in mind — he had been in Strange Behavior  — but EMI refused to allow him to be cast much to

5310-462: The film, actor Kevin McCarthy said in an interview included on the 1998 DVD release that he felt no political allegory was intended. The interviewer stated that he had spoken with the author of the novel, Jack Finney, who professed no specific political allegory in the work. In his autobiography, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History , Walter Mirisch writes: "People began to read meanings into pictures that were never intended. The Invasion of

5400-428: The film, but the first print was not made until December. Wanger felt that the film lost sharpness and detail. Siegel originally shot Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Superscope was a post-production laboratory process designed to create an anamorphic print from nonanamorphic source material that would be projected at an aspect ratio of 2.00:1. Both Siegel and Mainwaring were satisfied with

5490-404: The first few pages himself and then he and Condon completed the screenplay in two parts, each writing different sections. They wrote the script without any deal in place but were confident that it was going to be made into a film. They even figured out the budget, scouted locations, cast the actors, and worked on the production design while arranging the financing. This pre-production was all done at

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5580-454: The framing story had changed the film's stance from anti-McCarthyite to anti-communist . Michael Dodd of The Missing Slate has called the movie "one of the most multifaceted horror films ever made," arguing that by "simultaneously exploiting the contemporary fear of infiltration by undesirable elements, as well as a burgeoning concern over homeland totalitarianism in the wake of Senator Joseph McCarthy's notorious communist witch hunt, it may be

5670-524: The loss of personal autonomy and individualism in the Soviet Union or communist systems in general. For the BBC , David Wood summarized the circulating popular interpretations of the film as: "The sense of postwar, anticommunist paranoia is acute, as is the temptation to view the film as a metaphor for the tyranny of the McCarthy era." Danny Peary in Cult Movies pointed out that the studio-mandated addition of

5760-479: The lower budget, however, he abandoned these choices and cast Richard Kiley , who had just starred in The Phenix City Story for Allied Artists. Kiley turned the role down and Wanger cast Kevin McCarthy , an Academy Award nominee five years earlier for Death of a Salesman , and relative newcomer Dana Wynter , who had done several major dramatic roles on television. Future director Sam Peckinpah had

5850-553: The main character also wears within the show a suit reminiscent of Bennell's wardrobe. The May 1981 issue of National Lampoon featured a parody titled "Invasion of the Money Snatchers"; the gentile population of Whiteville is taken over by pastrami sandwiches from outer space and turned into Jews . The Host segments of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode The Giant Spider Invasion parody this film. In

5940-514: The man had to be dug out from under a load of mysterious pods coming from Santa Mira. Dr. Hill alerts the police to block the roads in and out of Santa Mira. The film ends with Bennell relieved as Hill calls the Bureau of Investigation. Jack Finney's novel ends with the extraterrestrials, who have a lifespan of no more than five years, leaving Earth after they realize that humans are offering strong resistance, despite having little reasonable chance against

6030-475: The management, including riding, roping and branding. By the end of the 1940s, McCrea was a multi-millionaire, as much from his real-estate dealings as from his movie stardom. It is said that McCrea once joked that he "only acted so he could afford to ranch." In the early 1960s, he sold 1,200 acres (490 ha) of land to an oil company on the condition that they would not drill within sight of his home. McCrea's perspicacity may have stemmed from his friendship in

6120-549: The mother body snatcher alien, killing all the aliens and turning everyone affected back to normal. But because Pearl missed out on the SOL Crew's reactions to the movie, she forces them to watch it again. Halloween III: Season of the Witch , a 1982 film with similar themes involving androids, is also largely set in a California town named Santa Mira. Joel McCrea Joel Albert McCrea (November 5, 1905 – October 20, 1990)

6210-505: The movie at #60. The film was released on DVD in 1998 by U.S.-label Republic (an identical re-release by Artisan followed in 2002); it includes the Superscope version plus a 1.375:1 Academy ratio version. The latter is not the original full frame edition but a pan and scan reworking of the Superscope edition that loses visual detail. DVD editions exist on the British market (including

6300-478: The night. Truckloads of the pods arrive downtown. Becky and Bennell listen as chief Nick Grivett directs the others to take them to towns to be planted and used to replace their populations. Kauffman and Belicec arrive at Bennell's office with pods for Becky and Bennell. It is revealed that a race of alien impostors is responsible for the invasion, and that if they aren't stopped, humanity will lose all emotions and sense of individuality. Bennell and Becky escape from

6390-465: The office. To avoid capture, they mimic the impostors' mannerisms and pretend to be part of the huge crowd of replaced townspeople. However, a panicked Becky screams at a near-traffic accident and her reaction exposes their humanity to the aliens. An alarm is sounded and the couple flees on foot. The couple manage to escape and hide in a mine outside town, however, after a while hiding they hear music, and Bennell leaves Becky briefly to investigate. He sees

6480-590: The same shot. McCrea turned down playing in a number of films; he was offered the lead role in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) but he refused, saying "This character is too much of a gigolo. I don't like his moral standards." Among other movies he declined were Spitfire (1934), The Impatient Years (1944), Intruder in the Dust (1949), and The Story of Will Rogers ( 1952). During World War II , McCrea refused to portray military heroes, with

6570-449: The title L'Invasione degli Ultracorpi , contained many special features, including an interview with lead actor Kevin McCarthy and the 1957 Studio One episode entitled " The Night America Trembled ", an unreleased filmed reconstruction of the famous Orson Welles radio transmission "War of the Worlds", starring Ed Asner , James Coburn , and Warren Beatty . Olive Films subsequently released

6660-577: The town of (fictionalized) Centreville, Illinois is invaded by extraterrestrial aliens . The invaders fire lasers from their eyes and hands and reduce humans to "crystallized" glowing blue orbs. They take over the form of the humans who were either captured or killed. Twenty-five years later, Columbia University lecturer Charles Bigelow learns that his ex-wife, Margaret, has disappeared while attending her mother's funeral in Centerville, and travels there to find her. The disguised aliens all appear human and

6750-411: The town of Centerville appears to have not changed since 1958. The aliens try to capture Bigelow as he escapes, but only capture his dog, Louie. Bigelow sees a photo of an alien in a tabloid magazine and, with the help of journalist Betty Walker, finds Margaret, who is now revealed to be one of the aliens. She warns Bigelow to escape with Elizabeth, their human/alien hybrid daughter, to protect her from

6840-403: The townspeople are being replaced while asleep with copies. Bennell tries to make a call to authorities, but the operator claims that all lines are busy and he cannot be put through, so Jack and Teddy drive off to seek help in the next town over. Bennell and Becky realize that all of Santa Mira's inhabitants have been replaced and are devoid of any sort of humanity. They hide at Bennell's office for

6930-400: The writer and director of the cult horror classic The Boneyard , who had his name removed from the credits after heated debates with Laughlin about the way the effects were being used and shot. Laughlin relented and allowed Cummins to reshoot a lengthy scene near the end of the film where the aliens shed their human guises as they prepare to embark on a 1950s style spacecraft. Laughlin planned

7020-588: Was Wyatt Earp in Wichita directed by Jacques Tourneur . The Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded the film with "Best Picture – Outdoor Drama" that year. In 1959 , McCrea and his son Jody starred in the brief NBC-TV series Wichita Town . Earlier he had turned down the lead in Rawhide , feeling it would make too heavy a workload. A few years later, McCrea united with fellow veteran of Westerns Randolph Scott in Ride

7110-751: Was also a winner of the Golden Boot Award in 1987, the Golden Laurel Award in 1951, a Photoplay Award in 1939 for his performance in Union Pacific , the Silver Medallion Award in 1982, and the Trustees Award in 1976 for the film, Mustang Country . McCrea married actress Frances Dee in Rye, New York , on October 20, 1933, after they met while filming The Silver Cord . Coincidentally, Dee

7200-457: Was an American actor whose career spanned a wide variety of genres over almost five decades, including comedy, drama, romance, thrillers, adventures, and Westerns , for which he became best known. He appeared in over one hundred films, starring in over eighty, among them Alfred Hitchcock 's espionage thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), Preston Sturges ' comedy classics Sullivan's Travels (1941), and The Palm Beach Story (1942),

7290-469: Was an invasion from outer space." To help produce the film, Laughlin brought in his friend Walter Coblenz, who had been the assistant director on the Laughlin-produced film Two-Lane Blacktop . They shopped the script for Strange Invaders around Hollywood. Laughlin's previous film, Strange Behavior , had been released by a small distributor and this time around he wanted his film to be handled by

7380-582: Was assigned in summer 1955. Siegel objected to this title and suggested two alternatives, Better Off Dead and Sleep No More , while Wanger offered Evil in the Night and World in Danger . None of these was chosen, and the studio settled on Invasion of the Body Snatchers in late 1955. The film was released at the time in France under the mistranslated title L'invasion des profanateurs de sépultures (literally: Invasion of

7470-729: Was born in South Pasadena, California , the son of Thomas McCrea, an executive with the L.A. Gas & Electric Company, and Louise "Lou" Whipple. As a boy, he had a paper route delivering the Los Angeles Times to Cecil B. DeMille and other people in the film industry. He also had the opportunity to watch D. W. Griffith filming Intolerance , and was an extra in a serial starring Ruth Roland . McCrea graduated from Hollywood High School and then Pomona College (class of 1928. ) There he had acted on stage and took courses in drama and public speaking, while also appearing regularly at

7560-440: Was born only a few blocks away from McCrea's home, but she moved to Chicago during her childhood. They had three sons, Jody, Peter and David. They were married until McCrea's death on their 57th wedding anniversary. McCrea – who was an outdoorsman who had once listed his occupation as "rancher" and his hobby as "acting" – had begun buying property as early as 1933, when he purchased his first 1,000 acres (400 ha) in

7650-534: Was later plagiarized as the 1958 film The Brain Eaters , and adapted under contract in the 1994 film The Puppet Masters . Several thematically related works followed Finney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers , including Val Guest 's Quatermass 2 and Gene Fowler's I Married a Monster from Outer Space . The 1986 film Troll has a snippet of a movie seen on TV in which Spot (a dog) and Tweetie (a canary) are declared to be pod persons. A Looney Tunes parody of

7740-534: Was nearly ruined by those in charge at Allied Artists who added a preface and ending that I don't like." In his autobiography Siegel added that "Wanger was very much against this, as was I. However, he begged me to shoot it to protect the film, and I reluctantly consented [...]." While the Internet Movie Database states that the film had been revised to its original ending for a re-release in 1979, Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique magazine notes that

7830-427: Was not merely a return to what he had done earlier in his career, but a genre he immensely enjoyed. As he described it (in a 1978 interview): I liked doing comedies, but as I got older I was better suited to do Westerns. Because I think it becomes unattractive for an older fellow trying to look young, falling in love with attractive girls in those kinds of situations.... Anyway, I always felt so much more comfortable in

7920-585: Was reported to be in development in 2017. David Leslie Johnson was signed to be the screenwriter. It briefly inspired Assimilate (2019), which is also inspired by The Body Snatchers of the same name. The film inspired the ABC TV series Invasion (2005 TV series), and a subplot in Netflix 's Another Life (2019 TV series). Robert A. Heinlein had previously developed this subject in his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters , written in 1950. The Puppet Masters

8010-443: Was shot in 2.00:1 Superscope and in the film noir style. Daniel Mainwaring adapted the screenplay from Jack Finney 's 1954 science-fiction novel The Body Snatchers . The film was released by Allied Artists Pictures as a double feature with the British science-fiction film The Atomic Man (and in some markets with Indestructible Man ). The film's storyline concerns an extraterrestrial invasion that begins in

8100-463: Was unsuccessful. Wanger considered science-fiction author Ray Bradbury , instead, but this did not happen, either. Mainwaring eventually wrote the voice-over narration himself. The studio scheduled three film previews on the last days of June and the first day of July 1955. According to Wanger's memoranda at the time, the previews were successful. Later reports by Mainwaring and Siegel, however, contradict this, claiming that audiences could not follow

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