Day 28: Film with Great Scares
By now you’ve probably guessed from my mixed taste in films and TV that I don’t watch anything too melodramatic or frightening as I unsettle easily (the only other real thriller I’ve seen is probably Hitchcock’s “The Birds” haha), but despite this I’m unbelievably glad to have “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) as one of my favourites, my choice for this one. The insidious invisibility of the ‘alien’ enemy allows for the film to play on the most unnerving feeling of all, that ‘uncanniness’ of the seemingly harmless but secretly dangerous. Even before we reach the horror of the foaming, Brussels sprout pods, there is a mounting sense of unease, beginning with Jimmy Grimaldi’s terror, the suspicion that people aren’t themselves reaching an urgent height when Dr. Bennell and his friends keep anxious vigil over Jack Belicec’s dormant double. Don Siegel denied the film’s message of Cold War paranoia/anti-communist warning, and star Kevin McCarthy felt it protested the dangers of complacent conformity, and they're probably both right. The noirish, nerve-wracking suspense of watching an increasingly distressed (but ever handsome) Doctor Miles Bennell asks more of us as viewers, actively paying anxious attention on his behalf to discern the truth, figuring out who to trust. The aliens don’t seem to have any have any other plans for their domination of earth, just replacing Santa Mira folk who are now shells of themselves, a mirror for audiences on that midcentury, nuclear (and today, all too familiar) edge, longing for safety and fearful of change (thank goodness for the Whit Bissell bookends haha). Like the best science fiction, it reminds us that our hope is holding on to the pain and joy of makes us human. It sounds farfetched for an earnest (and frankly frightening) B-movie thriller, but I like to think that maybe, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is about love Xo
By now you’ve probably guessed from my mixed taste in films and TV that I don’t watch anything too melodramatic or frightening as I unsettle easily (the only other real thriller I’ve seen is probably Hitchcock’s “The Birds” haha), but despite this I’m unbelievably glad to have “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) as one of my favourites, my choice for this one. The insidious invisibility of the ‘alien’ enemy allows for the film to play on the most unnerving feeling of all, that ‘uncanniness’ of the seemingly harmless but secretly dangerous. Even before we reach the horror of the foaming, Brussels sprout pods, there is a mounting sense of unease, beginning with Jimmy Grimaldi’s terror, the suspicion that people aren’t themselves reaching an urgent height when Dr. Bennell and his friends keep anxious vigil over Jack Belicec’s dormant double. Don Siegel denied the film’s message of Cold War paranoia/anti-communist warning, and star Kevin McCarthy felt it protested the dangers of complacent conformity, and they're probably both right. The noirish, nerve-wracking suspense of watching an increasingly distressed (but ever handsome) Doctor Miles Bennell asks more of us as viewers, actively paying anxious attention on his behalf to discern the truth, figuring out who to trust. The aliens don’t seem to have any have any other plans for their domination of earth, just replacing Santa Mira folk who are now shells of themselves, a mirror for audiences on that midcentury, nuclear (and today, all too familiar) edge, longing for safety and fearful of change (thank goodness for the Whit Bissell bookends haha). Like the best science fiction, it reminds us that our hope is holding on to the pain and joy of makes us human. It sounds farfetched for an earnest (and frankly frightening) B-movie thriller, but I like to think that maybe, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is about love Xo
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