Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

It's my experience that CGI does not a good film make, but it can help. I like to watch old movies that have little or no effects and rest solely on performances, scripts and good direction, so I was intrigued to watch the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I didn't know much about it going in, but once absorbed in the plot I realised that 'pod people' is a pretty common phrase that must have originated from this classic of the sci-fi genre. 

The movie opens with an apparent madman relating how he got into such a state, and goes on to tell how Dr Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns to his hometown of Santa Mira, Calif. and slowly discovers that all is not well - it turns out that the residents of the town are being replaced by pod people - replicants grown from pods that appeared from outer space. He and his companion, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) must try to stay awake or else be turned into unemotional replicants themselves. I don't think it's ever explored why exactly everyone is being replaced - it confuses me as to why an alien species would want to colonise a planet... by becoming everyone on the planet - I just think, well why bother?

That plot niggle aside, Invasion is a taught little gem, full of great B-movie performances and lashings of tension and intrigue. The lack of special effects (aside from some pod props) is to the movie's credit since the pod people are identical to humans in every way, except they don't get over-excited, so there's no need for men in rubber suits or computer-generated trickery. This is also the scariest aspect of the movie - these pod people could be anyone, and their only goal seems to be to make more pod people, so it's not like they're running round sucking people's blood or bursting out of stomachs. 

I figure with the film being made in 1956, during the Cold War, that the fact that the pod people could be anyone, even your own husband or wife, is speaking to Communist paranoia of the period. The end of the movie, with Miles running into traffic screaming like a madman about the danger humanity faces while cars drive by him, is very effective - much more effective than the studio-sanctioned ending following this showing Miles' story being believed and the FBI being called in. That happy ending lessens the impact of the threat, but it cannot spoil a fantastic all-American classic.