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Your support makes all the difference.Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954). The film has been remade three times and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Set in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, the plot centers on Dr. Miles Bennell, a local doctor, who finds a rash of patients accusing their loved ones of being impostors. Another patient is a former sweetheart of his; recent divorcee Becky Driscoll, who tells him that her cousin has this same strange fear. Assured at first by the town psychiatrist Dr. Dan Kaufman that the cases are nothing but "epidemic mass hysteria," Bennell soon discovers, with the help of his friend Jack Belicec, that the townspeople are in fact being replaced by simulations grown from plantlike pods; perfect physical duplicates who kill and dispose of their human victims. The Pod People are indistinguishable from normal people, except for their utter lack of emotion. The pod people work together to secretly spread more pods—which grew from "seeds drifting through space for years"—in order to replace the entire human race. Bennell and Driscoll attempt to escape the pod people and warn the rest of humanity.
Director
Don Siegel
Writers
Novel: Jack Finney
Screenplay: Daniel Mainwaring
Unaccredited: Richard Collins
Cast
Kevin McCarthy … Dr. Miles J. Bennell
Dana Wynter … Becky Driscoll
King Donovan … Jack Belicec
Carolyn Jones … Theodora 'Teddy' Belicec
Larry Gates … Dr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman
Jean Willes … Nurse Sally Withers
Ralph Dumke … Police Chief Nick Grivett
Virginia Christine … Wilma Lentz
Tom Fadden … Uncle Ira Lentz
Kenneth Patterson … Stanley Driscoll
Guy Way … Officer Sam Janzek
Eileen Stevens … Anne Grimaldi
Beatrice Maude … Grandma Driscoll
Jean Andren … Eleda Lentz
Bobby Clark … Jimmy Grimaldi
Everett Glass … Dr. Ed Pursey
Dabbs Greer … Mac Lomax
Pat O'Malley … Baggage man
Guy Rennie … Restaurant owner
Marie Selland … Martha Lomax
Sam Peckinpah … Charlie (meter reader)
Harry J. Vejar … Pod carrier in Miles' office
Trivia
- The tunnel scene where the hero hides briefly from the townspeople was filmed at Bronson Cave in Griffith Park, famous with locals as the Bat Cave
- Only $15,000 of the budget was spent on special effects
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