I love the Kevin Mccarthy and the Donald Sutherland versions.That said,one thing bugs me about it.The hero and his girl escape the pods and hide in a cave.The girl is sooo tired.The hero hears music but its more pod people.He goes back to the cave and finds the girl has gone to sleep.Waking her,she stares at him with those dead eyes.Was the pod in the cave all along? What happened to the girl’s body?If someone took her body,why not jump the hero?
It seems to me she went to sleep and the pod took over her mind.It doesn’t ruin a great movie or a great reaction from the hero ,but it seems a little odd
Yeah, it’s a minor inconsistency. But Siegel (in the original) was going for shock – the concept of McCarthy’s girlfriend suddenly opens her eyes and is possessed. It works much better dramatically than explaining it.
I agree it really doesn’t make much sense – unless somehow the pod’s are growing extra fast and, well, I dunno…
But I really just wanted to post to second the idea that yes, this is indeed a great movie. That final scream at the end… ::shudder::
“The final scream at the end” makes me think you are confusing the Don Seigel with Kevin McCarthy version (1956) with the Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy version (1978). The later version ends with a creepy shot of Sutherland uttering an unearthly scream. Of course the older version ends with McCarthy screaming “You’re next!” into the camera.
Anybody remember a made-for-cable version, maybe ten years ago, which took place on an army base? I remember it as being very good. The idea of setting it in a location where most of the people are naturally acting very disciplined, thus making it harder to tell who is “changed” and who isn’t, is a good one. Plus there was a cute girl in a bathtub scene, a plus for any movie.
One of the rare instances of something filmed three different times and each version was good and brought something new to the material.
I was referring to the 1978 version – Donald Sutherland screming, and that other girl putting her hands at the side of her head and screaming back in horror.
I did not hear about the 90’s Army base version, but it’s a very clever twist indeed! How could the movie be best presented today to highlight modern anxieties?
Are you sure you’re not thinking of Robin Cook’s Invasion, which is more or less the same story as Bodysnatchers?
No, it’s this one. It had a cinema release in the UK, I believe.
Philip Kaufman’s version wasn’t free of inconsistencies, either – at the beginning, the seeds drifted to Earth as filamentary things, like milkweed seeds, and were unobtrusive. Later in the movie, they became big, unwieldy pods.
I’ve seen all three versions, and I prefer overall the first. There’s no doubt that it’s touched something deep – jokes about the film are all over the place (In Airplane 2, the hero jumps out of a truck filled with pods at the airport. On Saturday Night Live they explained all the young people voting for Reagan by older campaign workers giving yuppies pods labeled “Reagan”. In Looney Tunes…Back in Action Kevin McCarthy is wandering around Area 52 with a pod. And so on.)Neverthelesds, I’ve always been unsatisfied with the story. I read Jack Finney’s original story, and at the end the pods just …float away into space, defeated by the Human Will. The pods don;t make any sort of biological sense – for all the science-fiction trappings this is really a horror story. My rationalist soul prefers a more SF treatment, overall. I’ll take Heinlein’s “The Puppet Masters” over IotBS (his book preceded Finney’s, by the way, and Heinlein apologized even so for using such an overused idea even so.) But the movie versions of IotBS have been far superior to the one of PM.