Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 13. June 11 1979
Majestic
Majestic
Just a few weeks ago, the Wellington Film Society screened the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, made in 1956 by Don Siegel. It's brilliant. Certainly one of the best science-fiction films ever made, for all its simplicity and almost total absence of special effects, and a most memorable film in anybody's language.
But there are in it certain things that today's audience finds comic, especially the voice-over narration of the hero (which runs along the lines of "I should have known then and there that something was wrong, that somehow much much more was going on that met the eye, but I put it down to my anxiety at seeing Susan once more.....etc, etc.), and the handling of the relationship between hero and heroine. Both facets seem pretty dated — they certainly weren't 'sophisticated' enough for the Film Society audience, which reacted with superior amusement — and so it seems there's some justification for remaking the film, up-dating it so as to remove these barriers that tend to alienate a modern audience from what Siegel was saying way back in 1956.
And in 1956, what Siegel was saying was pretty hot stuff. So potentially controversial, in fact, that he was forced by the studio, once they were alerted to the film's political implications, to film a soft (happy) ending - the one the film was released with.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers emerged directly from one of the blackest hours of Western democracy, the hysterical anti-Communist trials led by senator Joe McCarthy, which fed off and further inflamed all of America's paranoia, prejudice, and distrust. It was in many ways like the Nazi Party's campaign to make scapegoats of the Jews — but more insidious and dangerous, because after all anyone, even your best friend or a member of your own family, could be a secret Communist, hence pledged to your destruction. It was a time when even the mere accusation of having present or past affiliation with the Communist Party could mean the ruin of your career. Once thus accused, the only way to secure mercy from the Un-American Activities Committee was to sell out your friends. Hollywood in particular, a notorious breeding ground for Reds, suffered a severe backlash. Some movie land figures, like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, campaigned against the McCarthyist madness. Others, like John Wayne (soon to recieve a Congressional Medal of Honour, for God's sake), actively supported it. The two most famous 'literary' reactions to these events were Arthur Miller's play. The Crucible (which deals with witch trials in Salem in the 1690's), and Siegel's Body Snatchers.