Invasion’s significance partly lies in its role as a social barometer for America in the 1950s but also in the fact that it dared to compare the imaginary invading ‘other’ with the then largely unrecognised danger posed by America’s consumerist ideology. The last point is crucial, since the family and community were seen by many politicians, including those involved with the Communist witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC), as important weapons in the fight against Communism and the socialist threat to American capitalism. “The instrumentality of threat comes from outside (creatures from Mars or Venus, pods from outer space) but the real power of these films is carried by their transformation of humans rather than the crude ‘monstrous’ devices, their fracturing of the nuclear family or local community.” (Seed 1999: 132–3) In Invasion and these other contemporary films, “A cluster of films from the mid-fifties demonstrates a consistent paradigm of such invasionas-conspiracy where the battle for the nation’s mind is played out in Smalltown USA.” David Seed rightly places the film within its cultural contexts, stating that A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.Īs both a tale concerning invading alien pods and a stark critique of small-town America, Invasion of the Body Snatchers stands as a significant US film whether it is considered merely a low-budget science fiction B movie, a fantastic story that serves as an allegorical warning or an accurate portrayal of suburban life in the 1950s, the film continues to challenge modern audiences.1 This is a taut mixture of conspiracy narrative and contemporary fears a film noir tale (Booker 2006: 59), as told by its main protagonist, Dr Miles Bennell, of the ‘outsider’ as threat to a supposed tranquil American idyll.

Invasion of the body snatchers book