Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Aug 27, 2024
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Don Siegel

Release Date(s)

1956 (July 16, 2024)

Studio(s)

Walter Wanger Productions/Allied Artists Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)

Film/Program Grade: A
Video Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Extras Grade: A-

Review

When interpreting a work of art, meaning can be elusive or it can be crystal clear, but sometimes it’s a little of both. That’s because symbols and metaphors may have originally had a clearly intended referent, but with the passage of time, other readings become equally possible. Some metaphors remain timeless because their referent is something so universal that they retain their potency in any era or in any given context. Others are universal because they’re ambiguous enough that they invite fresh readings that help to keep them alive. The genius of the central metaphor in Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers is that it’s a little of both. Fears about loss of identity are universal enough that his basic concept of alien invaders assimilating human beings works beautifully in any era or context. Yet the idea is open-ended enough that it still can be read to represent different things to different people.

Finney was hardly the first author to explore the idea of aliens taking us over from within; Robert Heinlen had already mined similar material in his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters, and John W. Campbell had written about an alien that could absorb and replicate human hosts back in his 1932 novella Who Goes There? Yet while Heinlen made his Cold War metaphors as explicit as possible, and Campbell had removed the universal fears of loss of identity to an isolated Antarctic setting, Finney located his story in the comfortably familiar setting of small-town America while refusing to spell out his metaphorical intentions quite as clearly as Heinlen did. As a result, the anxieties that The Body Snatchers exploits are universal enough that they transcend Finney’s time and place, and they can be easily reimagined into different contexts. The paranoid fear that our loved ones may not be quite what they seem to be, and that we may not even be able to trust in our own identity, is infinitely reinterpretable.

Naturally, that made The Body Snatchers ripe material for a variety of different cinematic adaptions. There have been four so far, at least in nominal terms, with plenty of other films bearing Finney’s influence. They’re all quite different from each other, yet they still exploit that same universal fear while simultaneously reading different meanings into it. The first one out of the gate was producer Walter Wanger’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956, just one year after the novel was first serialized in Collier’s magazine. Unsurprisingly, it’s the most straightforward adaptation of all, at least on a superficial level—although some behind-the scenes disagreements ended up complicating things a bit, but more on that in a moment. It retains the same basic characters and suburban setting (with the real-world Mill Valley, CA transformed into the fictional Santa Mira, but a rose by any other name). It also plays on the same Cold War era anxieties about a potential invasion from within—although once again, even that wasn’t quite so simple in the finished product.

For Phillip Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the setting was updated to urban San Francisco, with the fears about loss of identity translated into a then-current pop psychology context. Abel Ferrara’s 1993 Body Snatchers changed the setting to a military base, which naturally blended the questions about identity with the intentional process of dehumanization that’s used in military training. Finally, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion broadened the scope while moving more overtly into body horror; the loss of identity became intertwined with the loss of bodily autonomy due to an alien virus. All very different films, taking the same basic concept and applying it to exploit different cultural anxieties. Yet despite the fact that the Cold War setting of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the most dated of them all, in some ways the film maintains its universal appeal even more than the rest. That’s because it retains the open-ended nature of Finney’s metaphor in ways that the other films didn’t.

As main characters, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), Jack Belicec (King Donovan), and “Teddy” Belicec (Carolyn Jones) fit cleanly into the archetype of the Everyman, making them easier to identify with. Santa Mira, CA could be any suburban town anywhere else in the United States. All of that allows audiences to read their own anxieties into those of the characters, making the metaphor of the film simultaneously as universal and as ambiguous as it was in Finney’s novel. At the time, some critics felt that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a warning about the threat of assimilation that communism posed to American society, while others felt that it was a commentary on the threat posed by McCarthyism itself. Both readings are equally valid, and neither one of them is definitive. That’s the central genius of Invasion of the Body Snatchers: its ultimate meaning depends upon the viewer, not the filmmakers.

Of course, due to post-production conflicts between those filmmakers and the studio, Invasion of the Body Snatchers ended up being a bit less ambiguous than what Wanger, director Don Siegel, and screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring originally had in mind. They wanted to leave the story unresolved, with Miles running through California traffic frantically trying to warn everyone “They’re here! You’re next!” Allied Artists wasn’t particularly happy about that, so they forced Siegel and Mainwaring to add a new prologue and a coda where Miles finally gets someone to take him seriously. Yet it’s worth noting that Finney’s novel had an even less ambiguous ending, with the alien invaders giving up completely and leaving in search of new worlds to conquer. The tacked-on coda of Invasion of the Body Snatchers still leaves the fate of mankind hanging in the balance, offering a glimmer of hope while not necessarily providing a definitive resolution. Opinions may vary, but it’s an appropriate compromise between the two extremes. It’s cathartic, but not cathartic enough to erase the universal fears that lie at the heart of every adaptation of The Body Snatchers, and thus retaining the essential timelessness of the metaphor.

Cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks shot Invasion of the Body Snatchers on 35mm film using spherical lenses, framed at... aye, there’s the rub. Ellsworth shot open-matte while framing for a planned 1.85:1 aspect ratio, but distributor Allied Artists made a last-minute decision to release it in Superscope instead. Superscope was an early forerunner of formats like Techniscope and Super-35 that utilized spherical lenses during principal photography but relied on anamorphic blow-ups for theatrical release. Depending on the printing processes used, that had the potential to magnify film grain. Yet the biggest problem for Invasion of the Body Snatchers was that it wasn’t composed for Superscope’s 2:1 aspect ratio in the first place, so the image had to be cropped beyond what Ellsworth protected for, cramping the headroom in some shots and cutting off the bottoms of faces in others. Yet right or wrong, 2:1 is indeed the “correct” theatrical aspect ratio from 1956. That’s how it was exhibited.

Worse, early home video versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers utilized either prints or the printing elements as a source, so since those were already cropped top and bottom to 2:1, the sides had to be cut off the remaining image in order to fit the 1.33:1 television aspect ratio. That means that they were essentially reverse-windowboxed, with all four sides of the original image cut off and the center extracted out of it. Later widescreen home video versions did preserve the full 2:1 Superscope aspect ratio, but any way that you slice it, few people have ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers as Ellsworth, Siegel, and Wanger intended.

If the original camera negative was still available, that would be an easy problem to solve. Unfortunately, it’s either been lost, destroyed, or is simply inaccessible. (There doesn’t appear to be any definitive answer to that question.) The only available elements are dupes, and most of them are cropped anamorphic blowups. Even an interpositive would likely do the trick, since the cropping and the anamorphic squeeze were likely applied at the following internegative stage. 16mm prints of the film were produced at the full open-matte 1.37:1 aspect ratio, but obviously those wouldn’t be a desirable source element.

That brings us to Kino Lorber’s 4K version, which offers both the 2:1 Superscope framing and the intended 1.85:1 framing, from what they refer to as being “a new 4K scan of the best available 35mm elements,” but there’s no indication of what those source elements may have been. Further muddying the waters, there was a post from Kino Lorber Insider over at Home Theater Forum that stated:

“The film elements we scanned were 1.85:1.

The previous releases cropped a bit of the top and bottom to create the 2.00:1.

The 1.85:1 Master is complete scanned film elements, restoring the previously cropped areas.”

Yet Superscope was normally extracted from the full 1.37:1 frame, not from 1.85:1, and standard theatrical prints from that era weren’t hard-matted to 1.85:1 anyway—release prints were usually open-matte and had to be matted in projection. So, if there really is a hard-matted 1.85:1 dupe element, its existence is a bit of a mystery.

In any event, Kino’s 1.85:1 version does indeed reveal more information on the top and the bottom of the frame, including some debris at the edges that aren’t visible in the 2:1 version. Yet it’s still not quite that simple, because the 2:1 version reveals slightly more information on the sides. So, it’s not just a matter of them cropping the top and bottom of a 1.85:1 source element to recreate the Superscope version. There also appears to be some slight variations in how the image is stretched vertically and horizontally, some of which may be baked into the Superscope process, but others of them probably aren’t. (McCarthy’s face looks a little too thin sometimes even in the Superscope version). Both ratios have compromises, and neither of them is clearly better than the other. You’ll have to sample both of them and decide for yourself.

If this is a fresh scan of the best available elements, it still suffers from flaws like swarming grain that can get a bit clumpy and smeared. There’s not much of any damage visible, but there’s not a ton of fine detail, either. Yet to be fair, that’s unavoidable given the fact that later-generation dupe elements were used as a source. There definitely isn’t anything even close to 4K levels of detail left in those elements, and there’s an unavoidable lack of shadow detail, too. Unless the negative shows up at some point, there’s nothing to be done about it. In all other respects, the grayscale, contrast, and black levels are fine. It’s been graded for High Dynamic Range in both Dolby Vision and HDR10, but neither of them makes a significant difference in this case.

Audio is offered in English 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles. It sounds clean, with little noise or audible distortion, and the dialogue is clear. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was originally released in mono but with 3-channel Perspecta Sound steering encoded into it, but that effect hasn’t been replicated on any home video versions of the film, this one included.

Kino Lorber’s 4K Ultra HD release of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 2-Disc set than includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film in both aspect ratios. The insert is reversible, featuring the familiar theatrical poster artwork on one side and alternate poster artwork on the other. There’s also a slipcover that duplicates the primary artwork. The following extras are included:

DISC ONE: UHD

Audio Commentary by Kevin McCarthy and Dana Winter, and Joe Dante
Audio Commentary by Richard Harlan Smith
Audio Commentary by Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
Audio Commentary by Jason A. Ney

DISC TWO: BD

Audio Commentary by Kevin McCarthy and Dana Winter, and Joe Dante
Audio Commentary by Richard Harlan Smith
Audio Commentary by Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
Audio Commentary by Jason A. Ney
The Fear Is Real (HD – 12:27)
The Stranger in Your Lover’s Eyes (HD – 11:55)
I No Longer Belong: The Rise and Fall of Walter Wanger (HD – 21:09)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Trailer (HD – 2:19)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Trailer (HD – 2:16)

There are a grand total of four different commentary tracks, two of them archival, and two of them new. While there’s some unavoidable repetition between them, they all offer something different. The oldest archival track features Kevin McCarthy, Dana Winter, and Joe Dante (he’s listed as a moderator, but in typical fashion, he really takes the lead). It was originally recorded for an unreleased DVD version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it didn’t see the light of day until it was included on the 2018 Olive Signature Edition Blu-ray. Dante always gives good commentary, and he was already old friends with McCarthy by that point, so the two of them have great chemistry together. (Dante admits that he prefers the new prologue and coda because he feels that more McCarthy is always welcome.) Yet Winter was no slouch, and she handled the quippy nature of the proceedings with aplomb. It’s facts and entertainment value, in roughly equal measures.

The second archival commentary with writer/film historian Richard Harlan Smith was recorded specifically for Olive’s Blu-ray. Harlan sticks to the facts, starting by delving into the carousel of potential titles for the film before they settled on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He also breaks down details about the production, comparing the final film to the various drafts of the screenplay, and provides detailed biographical information about all of the cast and crew. (Like Dante, he falls the side of preferring the revised ending.)

The first of the new commentaries pairs old compatriots Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson, who admit up front that they’re just one of many commenters to have handled Invasion of the Body Snatchers at this point. They offer a more personal touch than Smith does, describing their own experiences with the film (Mitchell initially wasn’t a fan, but he came around eventually). They also offer plenty of practical information about the making of the film, interspersed with analysis of its style and themes. (They point out that even Siegel eventually changed his mind about the new ending.)

The second new commentary features professor of literature and film Jason A. Ney, who describes Invasion of the Body Snatchers as one of the greatest science fiction films of all time. Appropriately enough, he spends more time on Jack Finney and the publication of The Body Snatchers (apparently, the editors at Collier’s are the ones who came up with the familiar title). He provides a detailed comparison of Finney’s story to the screenplay and the finished film, noting all of the similarities and differences. He also details the production of the film, including its behind-the-scenes battles, although he lands on the side of thinking that the film works better with the original ending.

There are also three featurettes that were produced by Elijah Drenner for the Olive Blu-ray. The Fear Is Real is an examination of the film and Finney’s novel, featuring Joe Dante and Larry Cohen (Cohen admits that The Stuff was at least partly inspired by Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The Stranger in Your Lover’s Eyes is a video essay that has Don Siegel’s son Kristoffer Tabori reading excerpts from his father’s autobiography A Siegel Film. He also offers his own thoughts about his parents and the legacy of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I No Longer Belong: The Rise and Fall of Walter Wanger is a look at the tumultuous life of the producer, hosted by Matthew Bernstein, author of Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent. He covers Wanger’s up-and-down career, and goes into detail about the notorious 1951 incident where Wanger took a shot agent Jennings Lang, who was having an affair with Wanger’s wife Joan Bennett. (Lang survived relatively unscathed, but Wanger was sentenced to four months in prison.) The same incident is referenced in some of the commentary tracks, but not in as much detail.

That’s not everything from the Olive Blu-ray however. Missing here are the featurettes The Fear and the Fiction, Return to Santa Mira, and What’s in a Name?, plus an interview with Kevin McCarthy, a text-based essay by Kier-La Janisse, and an Image Gallery. The 2021 Region B Blu-ray from the BFI in the U.K. offered a commentary with Jim Hemphill, plus the featurettes John Player Lecture: Don Siegel, Sleep No More: Invasion of the Body Snatchers Revisited, The Fear and the Fiction, Return to Santa Mira, and What’s in a Name?, as well as some archival short subjects and Joe Dante’s Trailers from Hell analysis of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There are also a few alternative extras on the 2014 Blu-ray from Sinister Cinema in Italy and the 2023 Blu-ray from Potemkine Films in France.

Needless to say, if you own any of those, you’re probably going to want to hang onto them. Yet Kino scores in its own way with four equally interesting commentary tracks (two of them exclusive), and Kino is the only one that’s offering the film in both 2:1 and 1.85:1. Neither one of these presentations is perfect, but none of the previous home video versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been perfect, either. That’s the lot of a film where the provenance of the negative is unknown. Yet between the extras and the alternate aspect ratios, Kino’s version is still worth a look. It’s still recommended, albeit with some reservations.

- Stephen Bjork

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