Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

I expected this legendry 50's science fiction movie, often taken as a metaphor for communist subversion of American life, to be kind of corny and dated. What I found was a  film with surprising tension and unexpected intelligence, and while of it's time it is also subversive in sprit and as a result has aged very well. The two leads Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter are competent actors, they play respectively a recently divorced doctor and his childhood sweetheart, also recently divorced, who reunite just as increasing numbers in their mid-sized California town start acting strangely. It is alien life of course, born in pods, while you sleep they suck out your memories and personality from your brain and imbed it into an emotionless clone that they control (what happens to the original bodies is never directly dealt with).

There is the requite plot set up, which might strike some as kind of slow but I didn't think was bad and was certainly necessary, but when things click into high gear it maintains the tension admirably. It's an existentially scary concept and I thought some its scarier scenes were its quietest, it also doesn't wrap things up too nicely and there is some sequel bate at the end, which remarkably was never exploited. It is all refreshingly ambitious and ambiguous for what on the surface appears to be drive-in fodder. Admirably directed by Don Siegel, who would go on to direct a number of Clint Eastwood movies among other things, the film is a very watchable 80 minutes which live up to the hype. ***1/2