Techland Screening Room: ‘You’re Next!’ The Sneaky Two-Sided ‘Body Snatchers’

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30:14 – Binnell discovers the body hidden away in the chest. Just in terms of pure creativity, as a way of hooking the doctor into the story and giving the audience a good jolt, this is wonderfully effective. Binnell goes hunting through his lover’s house for clues, and he finds a replica of her growing in a box. Frea.Ky.

40:34 – The great greenhouse scene that I mentioned earlier – where the pod discovery is made. I think the very first shot of this sequence is brilliant. Not only is it filmed from such an odd angle – low, long and tilted – that it’s clear something wrong has taken up residence here, but cutting back and forth between Binnell and the pod, the audience is put into the position of where the pod sits. Our point of view is the alien’s point of view, and they slowly march in, looking right at us. Which plays right into the larger theme: They are us. We are them. This world’s about everyone being infected. (More at Techland: Percy Jackson and the all-time best sci-fi children heroes)

40:44 – The pod bubbles up and explodes, in what has to be one of the greatest low-tech effects ever committed to film. It froths, and starts to open, and we don’t even know what we see before we get scared by the thing.

43:22 – In a rushed attempt to explain away all these bizarre happenings, to create some sort of “realistic explanation” out of all this, Binnell rushes through some hackneyed theory about radiation, etc. And I kind of giggled: This whole notion of nuclear bombs, radioactivity and atomically-altered chemicals were a spectacular enigma to the public in 1956. It was the perfect cover for this story of giant pods replicating humans: It’s just radioactivity!

50:20 – This is a great reveal – something straight out of The Truman Show or Rosemary’s Baby. Binnell rushes to warn his friend, and he sees through the window that everyone in town is in on it. Even the parents with the newborn who are going to set the pod near the crib. Just about the most perverse betrayal imaginable: Parents screwing over their child. Binnell gazes in through the window, and I can hear ‘50s audiences gasping as we realize, no, this is not just a fantasy playing out in someone’s head. It’s actually happening. (More at Techland: Apple’s All-Time hits and misses)

55:35 – The great town square sequence, in which we see through Binnell’s office blinds that the city is hustling a little too normally a little too early in the day. Strangers are in town, and they are putting on a show. And then the strangers leave and we have that great moment when the dispersed crowd slowly marches into a circle, to receive their pods to spread the invasion. It’s so low-tech, so simple to execute, so simple to stage, and yet kind of terrifying. A whole city, of communists, move in synch to convert the world.

60:05 – Binnell pleads with his captors: Do you really want a world, “where everyone’s the same?” It’s a great payoff to the themes that Siegel has been establishing from the film’s first moments. And, thematically, it’s also a very complicated sentiment. The statement is vehemently anti-communist, decrying a world where everyone is considered equal. Yet Binnell’s position as the odd man out also goes to show just how absurd McCarthyism is…that to make these larger pronouncements about an ‘infected world’ just sounds silly…like an alien invasion film. Maybe I’m reading a little too much into it, but I think it works on both levels: Decrying the hysteria of the time, while also fearing a homogenous world of sheep, all moving in synchronicity. To make the claims that Binnell is making, you better have an alien invasion underway. Not some secretive list of commies in Hollywood.

63:00 – It’s all about the silence here, as Binnell prepares to fight back. Juicing up his syringes, figuring out how to orchestrate an ambush, most movies would quicken the pace here or heighten the drama via music. But Siegel goes with silence, and this is eerily effective, as these two lovers prepare for battle.

78:00 – “They’re here already, you’re next!” A deranged Binnell sprints down the highway – against traffic – screaming at the world. He then looks straight into the camera, unleashing the same sort of rhetoric that McCarthy had been screaming for years. I think it works as the paranoid apex of a movie, with one lone town crier, being screamed at by passersby to get out of the way. (More at Techland: Sci-Fi sexy time – the all-time hottest fantasy hookups)

Closing thoughts:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is great sci-fi because it’s all about the ideas, rushing through the supernatural confrontations to get to a far more interesting place of contemplation and revelation. This is a movie that defends passionately the importance of individuality, of diversity – particularly diversity of thought. To think and love individually, even if that means making mistakes and eliciting pain.

And I think after all these years, regardless of what it may or may not be saying about communism and communist fears, the one enduring theme of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is that what makes us different is essential to who we are as a people. Differences are not to be feared, but embraced. That’s what keeps us from becoming a robotic society – from looking like we’re just aliens in disguise, marching in synch. The more disagreements the better; that’s the kind of dissent McCarthy was trying to squash, and that Siegel was trying to defend.

Now – it’s your turn: Post your comments! What do you think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? What are your favorite scenes? How do you think communism factors in? What say you?

Read Techland’s review of The Crazies here. Have any suggestions for a Screening Room title? Shoot it to steve@techland.com. Return next Thursday for the next Techland Screening Room title!

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