Things that would have made INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS better

Cafe Society
1

I just saw IOTBS for the first time tonight. I quite liked it, although I have a couple of suggestions (some facetious and some serious) that I think would have made the movie better. Feel free to add your own or to add them for other films.

  1. If there was a priest character and he was referred to as padre.

  2. If the last line in the movie was grandpa crashing through the wall, setting the head pod on fire and exclaiming (after a cold root beer), “one thing I never could stomach about living in Santa Mira - all the damn pod people.”

  3. OK, the serious one: if that ridiculous framing story ended with the other doctor asking to call LA and the response, “the lines are busy doctor. Do you want me to try again?”

For anyone who needs a refresher, here’s a good one: http://www.filmsite.org/inva.html

2

Better, just get rid of the pointless framing story altogether. The last shot is just of all those trucks full of pods. Apparently, that’s the way it was originally intended to be and the framing story was tacked on by the studio. Don’t have a cite for that though.

3

They did that a lot in those days . . . I bet the staged version of The Bad Seed (it was a play first, right?) had a slightly different ending than the film version.

I remember I saw on PBS once that 12-hour stage adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, including the part where Nicholas joins a theater troupe and they put on this optimistic Victorian version of Romeo and Juliet where (almost) everybody lives at the end . . .

4

If I’m not mistaken, in the original play The girl got away with it. But after the curtains fell and after all the actors took their bows, one of them would take the little girl and spank her in front of the audience who would then applaud. They just couldn’t believe the little psycho got away with it!! :smiley: .