Invasion of the Body Snatchers: The Book and the Films

I read this book in just one day on February 6th, 2022 with the intention of doing a classic deep dive of a story - to explore multiple iterations and compare. While it had the exciting, pulpy, page-turning quality that won't let you put it down, it's not a great novel. Chilling, gripping yes. But also quite hokey in that way that only happened in the 1950s.

The 1958 Film:

This movie is guilty of some overly-hokey acting, like many others from this era and particularly the pulp horror genre. Frankly, the novel called for it though. While mostly faithful to the novel, I was disappointed in how flat and uninteresting it managed to make some of the most chilling scenes. And it might seem unfair to criticize the practical effects from a time when the art was still in its infancy, but I think that they could have done better with the tools they had.

I wasn't thrilled with the changes that this film made compared to the book, particularly the ending. While the book ending was just a smidge too optimistic for my taste, it was original and interesting and had something to say about humanity. This movie's ending took out what gave the book depth and shoehorned in (what it thought were) understated allusions to the fears of communism that this story has always famously, supposedly, been about. But I don't think a shallow political reading of the book does the metaphor justice. And to take the ultimate triumph of the main character over the pod people away and give vaguely to "authorities" really cheapened a pulp tale that didn't need to be cheapened any further. Hopefully the 1978 version will be better.

The 1978 Film:

20 years later, Philip Kaufman took an interesting but somewhat hollow story and gave it the most 1970s treatment that any tale has ever received. Where Don Siegel told a morality tale of order and authority triumphing over an existential threat, Kaufman told a dark, cynical, sinister story of a doomed planet, and finished it off with absolutely no hope for the future. Not the authorities, not the brilliance of a rugged individual (even by the unusually sexy Donald Sutherland), not the inherent and indefatigable superiority of the American Dream could withstand the onslaught of the pod people. This film wasn't about communism at all, but instead something more existential and supernatural. In that way, it was more faithful to the original book. But in all other ways, it was a more mature, grim film that looked at the "rot" of society as an impervious adversary that will eventually win. How very appropriate for the decade to take that 50s optimism and turn it inside out. I gave this 5 stars because it's truly one of the best horror films of all time and now one of my all-time favorites.