Talk:Invasion of the Body Snatchers

References to use

Please add to the list references that can be used for the film article.

• Booker, M. Keith (2006). "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture. Praeger. pp. 59–74. ISBN 0275983951.
• Sanders, Steven M. (2007). "Picturing Paranoia: Interpreting Invasion of the Body Snatchers". In Sanders, Steven M (ed.). The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. The Philosophy of Popular Culture. pp. 55–72. ISBN 0813124727.

Writing credits

"The screenplay was adapted by Richard Collins (uncredited), Daniel Mainwaring and Sam Peckinpah from the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. It was directed by Don Siegel."

According to IMDB.com, Sam Peckinpah had little, if anything, to do with the script, despite his own claims to the contrary. unsigned comment by User:Pathogen1014 on 2005-08-10 03:47:07

Yep, I've removed him and moved Daniel Mainwaring to the front while I was at it. - Motor (talk) 09:04:12, 2005-08-10 (UTC)

My apologies for the unsigned comment, sometimes I forget. --Pathogen 14:56, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I've removed Richard Collins from the credits. IMDB is the only website which lists him. (And the ones which took their infos from IMDB.) I haven't found one interview or article which proves his contribution. This could as well be an error of IMDB (like the misinformation that The Creation of the Humanoids is based on Jack Williamson's novel The Humanoids which is not true). I suggest that a trustful source like a statement of the filmmakers involved should be cited before Collins is readded to the credits. Robert Kerber (talk) 10:36, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I've removed Peckinpah from the writing credits as well. It was Peckinpah alone who claimed these credits (or people who simply repeated these). Director Siegel denied his participation in an interview when asked about this; writer Daniel Mainwaring even threatened to involve the Writers Guild, after which these claims stopped. Robert Kerber (talk) 12:22, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Second Remake

The discussion of the second remake seems awfully dismissive. Doesn't it seem a little improbable that Abel Ferrara would remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers with no greater ambition than to make a scary movie?

Does this make sense?

There is a strong undercurrent in the film that serves as a relevant warning against a culture of fear. Within a culture where anyone may be suddenly changed into a communist or may secretly be a terrorist, society must guard against branding individuality as not being patriotic or being a danger to society's way of life.

It seems odd to say that the maker of a horror film intended it to be a "warning against a culture of fear." Whatever the horror is intended to stand for, isn't the filmmaker suggesting that you ought to be afraid of it? If the pod people are supposed to stand for Communism or terrorists, is the film really saying you should not overreact to the threat of such people? Nareek 13:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Before Caller ID

"In one scene, Sutherland's character--named Matthew Bennell--calls Washington for help, only to find his calls are being intercepted and his name is known to the person on the other line before he gives it."

You should note that in 1978, caller ID phones were not widely available.

I think that this is widely known enough not to require mention...69.91.75.23 07:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)Will

Which month

What month and day was this movie released —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spongesquid (talk • contribs)

According to IMDb, February 5, 1956. --Jtalledo (talk) 16:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Latest remake/reimagining/whatever

It's just semantics to say that the newest version isn't a remake. Jack Finney is being credited with the story, end of discussion. Doesn't matter how much they change it, at the end of the day it is still a REMAKE. The Thing (film) is completely different from The Thing from Another World - in fact, far more faithful to the original story - but it is still called a "remake." RoyBatty42 01:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Theme item removed

This statement is idiotic and it has been removed:

The film has been read as both an allegory for the loss of personal autonomy under Communism and as a satire of McCarthyist paranoia about Communism during the early stages of the Cold War.

The reason for the removal is because of this:

Despite the reported political connotations of the film, lead actor Kevin McCarthy said in an interview included on the 1998 DVD release that no political allegory was intended.

The first statement is directly contradicted by the citation of Kevin McCarthy. This is simple paranoia by lunatics. Anyone that wants to restore it should provide evidence from someone connected to the film that contradicts what Kevin McCarthy stated. Jtpaladin 20:09, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Did Kevin McCarthy write the film? Did Kevin McCarthy direct the film? So his thoughts aren't exactly the bottom line to what the filmmakers intended. The tone of the above person's rant clearly indicates a certain political bias, ironically enough. Yet the fact remains, in most discussions about Invasion of the Body Snatchers the supposed paranoia theme is mentioned again and again. To not mention this would be "idiotic." And the wording was very precise: "The film has been read..." Hence, I'm reinstating it until some debate and a consensus has been reached. RoyBatty42 22:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

irony

i think you would find this irony our teacher told us about a bit strange kevin macarthy came in a movie made during the red scare period and the name of senator Macarthy who hunted the communist during the same period and you know what's the funny thing no relations absolutley what's the possiblilty of that actually happening?--Missionimpossible 03:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

76 minutes important why?

both the '76' and the 'minutes' are linked independently to other pages one them in discussing movie lenght. This seems unnecessary...

Which makes even less sense when you consider that the link on the 76 went to the page for the year 76 not the number... I removed both the links-- 76.185.205.34 20:33, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

"Canned music"

While the speculation here about the "moral" of the movie may be superfluous, I'll say that the allegory I infer from the film is something very specific - it seems to echo the dispute in the early twentieth century about the replacement of live musicians by "canned music", i.e. recordings. (See Sound_recording_and_reproduction#Notes) There is one scene in the movie which otherwise seems inexplicable, in which the fugitives are lured out of their hiding place by a pod truck's radio, which mimics the emotion of a human singer. My gut feeling is that the reason why no remake or ripoff of this story has been able to approach the quality of the original film, is that they lack this deep historical inspiration and the lingering doubt it casts upon our own society. I have no source to support placing this impression in the article, but perhaps there is some way to link someone involved in its production to the early American Federation of Musicians protests? Mike Serfas 17:07, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Continuity problem?

I don't know if this should be mentioned in the article, but there is a large continuity problem with the film's climax. When the character Becky falls asleep for a moment, she opens her eyes and is instantly a "pod person". This event seems to contradict the entire premise of the film: That the doubles are grown from pods and the originals are assumed to be disposed of in some way. Becky, however, isn't replaced by a double, she "becomes" a pod person by falling asleep. - Serious Cat 06:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Arthurvasey (talk) 23:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, earlier in the film, Miles (shouldn't we call him Kilometres, now we are in Europe?) manages to rescue Becky from her parents' house - the Belicecs are also staying the night at Miles's house, after the body on the pool table comes to life and they flee - if, as the film seems to imply, as with Becky, when Miles (Kilometres), Becky, and the Belicecs wake up the next morning, shouldn't they have become pod people, too?

Yes, I've been waiting since the mid-1980s for someone to explain why everyone except Becky has to be replaced by a pod person, but Becky herself simply transforms into one. And I suspect the answer is "expediency". Especially since the title of the film is Invasion of the Body SNATCHERS, not the body "transformers". Arcanicus (talk) 09:17, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Trivia

I removed the "Parodies" and "Trivia" sections under WP:TRIV because they were just lists of references in Simpsons, DuckTales, etc. It is not necessary to prove the historical significance of the film; the Library of Congress has made that determination. If you honestly believe that some of the material removed has a place in an encyclopedia article, work it in as prose. WillOakland (talk) 03:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

As an addition to the cultural references section, assuming somebody can verify this, I'm fairly certain that, in the movie "Airplane!", when Robert Hays' character arrives at the airport, he's riding in the back of one of the pod-transporting trucks, and pods can be seen in the shadows behind him, either in the direct shot or in the newspaper photo of him leaving the truck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.191.28.140 (talk) 18:06, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Saturday Night Live did a spoof during the Reagan Presidency in which GOP Pods taken over human beings —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.31 (talk) 14:36, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The Stepford Wives (1975 film)

Shouldn't there be some metion of the 1975 film "The Stepford Wives" and it's sequals and remakes? In that film; women who are independent and "liberated" or "femminist", are replaced with duplicate robots who always look pretty and do what they are programmed to do. The Stepford Wives seems like a remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", execpt that robots are used instead of alien pod people lacking emotion. I saw it on TCM a few weeks ago and I thought, this movie is a lot like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". It just needed a woman screaming "You're next", (similar to Kevin McCarthy), to make it a total remake.204.80.61.110 (talk) 18:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)Bennett Turk

If you could find some sources to back this up then I would include but if not then it is merely speculation and original research.--J.D. (talk) 19:09, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Why would you mention that movie and not many, many others? Just off the top of my head, I can think of a few that are more similar to "Invasion" than "Stepford Wives": It Came from Outer Space, I Married a Monster from Outer Space and The Puppet Masters (film). These at least have the similarity of involving aliens, in addition to the theme of replacing humans with look-alikes. It would be a good trivia contest for SF movie buffs to name other, similarly-themed movies. A complete list would probably include dozens, and "Stepford Wives" would barely qualify for inclusion. RedSpruce (talk) 19:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Sexually Risque?

What's the story with the two leads being divorced and Miles telling Becky that he'd have to stay the night for her to see his bedside manner? Seems risque for 1956, no? I wonder whether there was some controversy about that at the time - or at least an explanation for writing the characters as divorced. Anyone Know? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.117.103.57 (talk) 23:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

movie themes?

The commies are coming! The commies are coming! And ... they're in seed pod form! Oh noes!

For the actors and writers to deny there was a political subtext, I call bullspit. Watch the movie. 72.177.89.188 (talk) 06:29, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Telly Savalas??

Sorry for any violation of protocol, this is my first post to Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that Telly Savalas had nothing to do with this movie. This is a joke, right? He is credited with narrating the film both in the first line of description, and in the credits box on the right side of the page. 98.210.120.173 (talk) 00:56, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. Robert Kerber (talk) 01:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Film Noir?

There hardly seems to be any mention of the use of Film Noir techniques in this film. Should any memtion be made? -R.G. (talk) 04:13, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Reception

I removed two sources from the reception. The first one was pretty obviously unreliable; the IMDb is user-generated content, and MOS:FILM does not allow for user ratings in reception sections. The second one, Films101.com, is a bit more debatable. I don't see any obvious evidence that it's a reliable source. The "about us" page basically consists of an FAQ, and it does not list an editor. I'm not sure exactly why we care what this random website says. Finally, I changed the wording a bit to remove peacock wording and simply report the facts: that it has a very high ranking on Rotten Tomatoes and was ranked as one of the best films of the year by Filmsite.org. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 07:27, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Requested move 13 October 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. (non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:50, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers → Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film) – No clear primary topic between this and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 film). Both articles get an almost equal number of page views, and the critically acclaimed remake—now over 40 years old—has long-term notability in its own right. PC78 (talk) 23:24, 13 October 2019 (UTC) --Relisting. Sceptre (talk) 19:50, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Everything in the nom is true, but this is a WP:TWODABS situation. I don't see any benefit to forcing all the people who search for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to hunt for the films buried in Body Snatcher (disambiguation), as opposed to simply letting half those searchers land on the correct article while the other half click on the hatnote at the top of this article. Especially considering that many readers interested in one article may also be interested in the other. Station1 (talk) 07:28, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
  • I think you're misquoting WP:TWODABS; it literally says "if an ambiguous term has no primary topic, then that term needs to lead to a disambiguation page" (and see also WP:NOPRIMARY). That's the direct opposite of what you're arguing. PC78 (talk) 08:31, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
    • True (I probably shouldn't have linked TWODABS), but, like all guidelines, it also says "it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." This is not a NOPRIMARY situation like John Quested, where totally unrelated people share nothing in common but happen to have the same name; in those cases someone looking for one topic will likely have no interest in the other, and may be astonished to land on the wrong article. As an original film and its remake, these two topics are so integrally related, though, that the concept of "primary topic" is less important, and people may be more astonished, and certainly more inconvenienced, to land on a dab page than on the original film. Many may be interested in both articles (it's even possible that's why pageviews are similar). The only benefit to a move would be to make it easier for editors to find bad incoming wikilinks, but there's no evidence that that's a problem in this case, and even if it were, readers' convenience should be favored over editors', even if it won't make a huge difference either way. Station1 (talk) 06:16, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
    • A more appropriate link may be the essay WP:2DABPRIMARY, which reflects the general shape of Station1's argument Colin M (talk) 20:31, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support to disambiguate both as WP:NOPRIMARY between the two. A disambiguation page at primary will go further to ensure that there are no wikilinks to the wrong movie. -- Netoholic @ 13:06, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support - the move also helps editors spot incorrect links. --Gonnym (talk) 13:26, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Station1 and per long-term significance. The hatnote covers both films, and the 1956 film is a classic film of the era (per its 1994 selection by the National Film Registry). Randy Kryn (talk) 18:36, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Randy Kryn._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 00:18, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support Per WP:ASTONISH, it could surprise people that are looking about the remake. Instead make Invasion of the Body Snatchers a disambiguation that will cover the two films, just like with Need for Speed: Most Wanted for the two games. Station 1 argument is invalid as the Body Snatcher (disambiguation) isn't going to be a primary disambiguation, but a concise and precise Invasion of the Body Snatchers instead. Jovanmilic97 (talk) 17:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support. This reverses an undiscused bold move (admittedly ten years ago) with no rationale given, see below. The ambiguous name benefits nobody. Andrewa (talk) 12:28, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

  But that was simply a reversal of the earlier undiscussed move of 27 June 2006. Station1 (talk) 19:16, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

  Not simply a reversal at all, that earlier move was part of a split. See below. Andrewa (talk) 21:19, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per Station1's argument. The main reason I would consider supporting this move would be to avoid mistargeted links (as mentioned by Netoholic and others). But after reviewing some of the mainspace wikilinks to the base name, I didn't see any obvious false positives (I'm sure there are at least 1 or 2 in there somewhere, but a truly bad ptopic will have false positive rates of around 20% or more). Which, on consideration, makes a certain amount of sense. Editors who are going to be linking to the 1978 film are likely aware that it's a remake, and therefore would know better than to expect to find it at the base name. Colin M (talk) 20:38, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

  I can think of four reasons to have unambiguous names and that's only one of them, see User:Andrewa/advantages and disadvantages of ambiguous article titles. Andrewa (talk) 02:49, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Support this move, ambiguous 2601:541:4500:1760:91D2:8010:7815:F6A6 (talk) 21:24, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Previous moves

• 16:39, 7 May 2007‎ Parable1991 talk contribs block‎  44 bytes +44‎  moved Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film) to Invasion of the Body Snatchers over redirect

This history will be lost if the move goes ahead so I preserve it here. Andrewa (talk) 12:28, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

• 20:01, 27 June 2006 Pegship talk contribs block moved page Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film) (preparing to split article)

Note the edit summary... it's not a simple move but a split to two articles, one on each movie. This was the article immediately before the split. Andrewa (talk) 21:19, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

The bold 2006 move was perfectly reasonable. However, a split does not automatically require a rename, and it was undiscussed, so the 2007 reversion is equally reasonable. As 12 years have now passed with the stable, original title, those moves are largely irrelevant to the current discussion. Station1 (talk) 07:34, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Year?

I see in the opening credit LV not LV1 -- so was the year 1955 or 1956? 50.230.251.244 (talk) 22:05, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

One-name references: "Warren" and "LaValley"

There are several important statements attributed to "Warren" and "LaValley," with no information about whether those are people or publications. Perhaps they were formerly attributed in the content but were edited out. Does anybody know what these sources were? One of the statements attributed to "Warren" that I'd like to see for myself is that the film "was shot in 2.00:1." The story that has circulated among fans is that it was composed for 1.85:1 but then cropped and stretched to 2:1 by the studio for its release. To be clear: it was shown in theaters in 2:1 SuperScope. The question is, how did the director want it to be seen? From the statement in the article, it sounds like the director knew it would be 2.00:1. This movie is going to be released on UHD at 1.85:1 in 2024. Previous releases on Blu-ray were 2.00:1. ClassicCF (talk) 14:59, 28 April 2024 (UTC)