Rating: 3.5/5
People are reporting that someone they love is not the person anymore. The person has all of the memories, the vocabulary, the appearance, but lacks the emotional qualities that those close to the loved one can recognize
It’s no surprise that the psychiatrist — Kevin McCarthy — thinks something is wrong with the person reporting the changes in their loved one and not the loved one themselves — mass hysteria. But when it happens to more and more people, the veneer of certainty slips
Things grow more dire as a friend shows the psychiatrist a dead body that looks like an incomplete person with no fingerprints — a body that has more than a passing resemblance to the friend. When the body disappears, and more friends change, the psychiatrist and his girlfriend — Dana Wynter — must go on the run
Don Siegel makes low-budget feel larger than life, telling a story of conformity and apathy by taking over people’s bodies. The remake is the more lover of the films, at least by sci-fi/horror fans, but this is a foundational entry in genre movie history
Stray Thoughts
- “Open your mouth, close your eyes, and I’ll give you something to make you wise” — I’ve never heard “something about o make you wise,” I grew up with “a big surprise.” I guess the former is appropriate when the gift is medicine
- The pod people hatching is so foamy and gross
- The classic “They’re coming for you!” yelled directly into the camera