`Body Snatchers (1) Classic Novel and Films

(image credit)

Recently I watched the 2007 film `The Invasion, starring two of my favorite actors: Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.  It is frightening to think of an alien disease that is so pervasively contagious, as to make life a desperate battle to survive.  Not so much to survive per se, but to retain our humanity and our animation (i.e., emotion, joie de vivre).

I was intrigued, so, as it is easy to do, I Googled the film.

The Body Snatchers is a 1955 science fiction novel by Jack Finney, originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954, which describes the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, being invaded by seeds that have drifted to Earth from space. The seeds replace sleeping people with perfect physical duplicates grown from plantlike pods, while their human victims turn to dust. 

The duplicates live only five years, and they cannot sexually reproduce; consequently, if unstopped, they will quickly turn Earth into a dead planet and move on to the next world. One of the duplicate invaders suggests that this is what all humans do; use up resources, wipe out indigenous populations, and destroy ecosystems in the name of survival. 

The novel has been adapted for the screen four times [watch the trailers, below]; the first film in 1956, the second in 1978, the third in 1993, and the most recent in 2007. Unlike two of the film adaptations, the novel contains an optimistic ending, with the aliens voluntarily vacating after deciding that they cannot tolerate the type of resistance they see in the main characters.

Reference: The Body Snatchers.

Dr Miles Bennell returns his small town practice to find several of his patients suffering the paranoid delusion that their friends or relatives are impostors. He is initially skeptical, especially when the alleged dopplegängers are able to answer detailed questions about their victim's lives, but he is eventually persuaded that something odd has happened and determines to find out what is causing this phenomenon. This film can be seen as a paranoid 1950s warning against those Damn Commies or, conversely, as a metaphor for the tyranny of McCarthyism (or the totalitarian system of Your Choice) and has a pro- and epilogue that was forced upon Siegel by the studio to lighten the tone. Written by Mark Thompson [IMDB.COM].

The plot involves a San Francisco health inspector and his colleague who discover that human beings are being replaced by aliens. The duplicates, who appear to be perfect copies of the persons replaced, but are devoid of any human emotion, attempt to install a tightly organised, conformist society.

Reference: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 film). 

The plot revolves around the discovery that people working at a military base in Alabama are being replaced by perfect physical imitations grown from plant-like pods. The duplicates are indistinguishable from normal people except for their utter lack of emotion.

Reference: Body Snatchers (1993 film). 

Films that we find most compelling are those that speak to the essence of what we are and, in particular, our deepest longing, desire and fear.  They are compelling, because the storyline is a plausible one in life, too.  Art that is so far-fetched and so dispassionate is not likely to reach into our body and grab our heart and mind.  This classic novel by Finney is art of the first order, and as such it has psychological relevance nearly 60 years running now.