Can someone explain the old horror movie Invasion of the Body-Snatchers

[Bohandas]

Ok, so I saw the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which I understand is a pretty much direct remake of the original version from the 1950's) and I can't figure out what, specifically, the aliens are actually doing to people. For much of the film a big deal is made about these pods that are growing doubles of people and it's implied that the doubles are going to come to life and replace the peoplenthey resemble, but that never happens, instead we start seeing the people who have doubles suddenly develop an alien mentality when they fall asleep.

So what's supposed to be happening? Are they being replaced (like the characters in, eg. The Thing or World's End or Charles Dexter Ward) or are they being transformed or controlled somehow (like in, eg. In The Mouth of Madness, The Shining, or just about any movie about vampires, werewolves, zombies, or demonic posession)? And if they're not being replaced than what the heck are the pods for?

The only explanations I can think of is that either the pods are supposed to have some sort of psychic con ection like the Tethered from Us but no mention of the aliens having psychic abilities or using sympathetic magic is ever made. Or else that the characters had all already been replaced (and the bodies in the pods were actually the bodies of the originals) but the alien personalities were initially dormant, except that some of the stuff we see with the pods earlier on seems to contradict this.

Does anyone have a better explanation?

[pendell]

Ok, so I saw the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which I understand is a pretty much direct remake of the original version from the 1950's) and I can't figure out what, specifically, the aliens are actually doing to people. For much of the film a big deal is made about these pods that are growing doubles of people and it's implied that the doubles are going to come to life and replace the peoplenthey resemble, but that never happens, instead we start seeing the people who have doubles suddenly develop an alien mentality when they fall asleep.

So what's supposed to be happening? Are they being replaced (like the characters in, eg. The Thing or World's End or Charles Dexter Ward) or are they being transformed or controlled somehow (like in, eg. In The Mouth of Madness, The Shining, or just about any movie about vampires, werewolves, zombies, or demonic posession)? And if they're not being replaced than what the heck are the pods for?

The only explanations I can think of is that either the pods are supposed to have some sort of psychic con ection like the Tethered from Us but no mention of the aliens having psychic abilities or using sympathetic magic is ever made. Or else that the characters had all already been replaced (and the bodies in the pods were actually the bodies of the originals) but the alien personalities were initially dormant, except that some of the stuff we see with the pods earlier on seems to contradict this.

Does anyone have a better explanation?

They've been replaced. The things growing in the pods are humanlike, look like humans, act like humans, talk like humans ... but they aren't human. They're pod people who have killed the original humans and taken their place, living undercover keeping up a masquerade, a pretense, as they go around subverting the human population invisibly... until they have made so much progress they no longer need to hide. Like a giant game of Werewolf. IT's very similar to the plot of Heinlein's Puppet Masters .

In fact, I should point out that the 1978 version of the movie is a remake of the earlier 1956 classic . It was an exceptionally terrifying movie at the time because it tapped directly into the immediate anxieties Americans of the 1950s were feeling. And you can't understand the horror movie unless you understand the context in which it was created.

Keeping this within forum rules, the 1950s was a time of serious fear of 'the enemy within' in America. The secrets of the atomic bomb were [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Greenglass] stolen [/ur] by American citizens, trusted ones , and given to a foreign power.

Likewise, in the UK , many highly placed officials , including at least one highly placed in the intelligence service, also proved to be enemy agents. One by one.

Nor was that all. Certain individuals , who will remain nameless, fanned these flames into hysteria, claiming they had a list of hundreds of US government employees who were all enemy spies.

He had no such evidence, of course, but for a time he was widely believed. Everyone looking over their shoulder, wondering who else would prove to be a member of an enemy fifth column. It seemed that no one and no one could be trusted.

And right into the middle of this fear, this paranoia about aliens amongst us, drops Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which takes that fear and ups it to 11 with literal aliens who exemplify everything an American of those times could be afraid of -- of seeing their neighbors converting one after another , leaving them alone in a sea of madness.

So yes, that movie was far more terrifying when it first came out today, because it fed directly into the zeitgeist, took people's deepest fears and rammed it in their faces.

Being a popular movie, of course it got a remake.

And it's not surprising that , almost a century later, the movie is not only far less frightening but almost incomprehensible to the contemporary viewer.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Bohandas]

I must apologise. I rewatched the movie and discovered that I missed a scene where they actually do show the original Elizabeth being killed and replaced. So that invalidates my whole complaint.

EDIT:
Although it also invalidates the people being subverted by hostile foreign powers metaphor as well, since nobody in the movie is actually being subverted or corrupted, they're just being replaced by lookalikes.

And it's not surprising that , almost a century later, the movie is not only far less frightening but almost incomprehensible to the contemporary viewer.

It's hardly incomprehensible. It's similar to any number of other films where there's a covert alien invasion and/or people are replaced by imposters, The Thing, They Live, The Whisperer In Darkness, etc. It's the specific implementation here that's questionable.

[Vahnavoi]

The killings are allegorical, they don't invalidate anything.