Body Snatchers
Today's topic is Invasion of the Body Snatchers in its original 1956 incarnation, which starred Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. But first, let's set the mood by heading over to The New Criterion and reading "A science fiction writer of the Fifties," a poem by Brad Leithauser.
I really regret that my youth was misspent on a too-steady diet of Isaac Asimov when it could have been misspent on more varied science fiction fare. Yet I can testify that, in the old books, the women are indeed "keen / To fix the meals and be the secretaries."
Anyway, part of our weekend was spent staying with old friends over in Grand Rapids. Through a long process that involved some tense negotiations, finally resolved by means of a stochastic algorithm (we drew names from a hat), we chose to watch the Body Snatchers movie. Yes, it contains its share of plot holes and logical inconsistencies, and yes, we could argue all day whether its message is anti- or anti-anti- communist (or even anti-immigrant), but the real point is that the old flick still packs a nice horror punch. (This in spite of the change of ending ordered ironically by pod people from studio management.) The movie succeeds in part because it does not rely on elaborate futuristic visuals. Nevertheless, I was stunned by one special effect: Dana Wynter's wardrobe.
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| "I'm so glad to see you again,
Miles. In fact, I filled my dress with Reddi-wip just for the occasion." |
Kevin McCarthy is quite old now, but still hard at work, and not too vain to have some fun appearing in a retro-future film. His website has the story.
Umie the Umlaut says, "ask your doctor about the Fredösphere!"
2 Comments:
Fred, Fred, Fred... I can keep silent no longer. That's not an umlaut inhabiting the Fredösphere, it's a diæresis. Ahem.
Don't feel bad, though - I too have erred: I assumed that Reddi-wip was unavailable when Invasion of the Body Snatchers was filmed and would thereby be unavailable for gracing the delightful Ms. Wynter's décolletage... imagine my surprise when I found out that that brand has been around since 1948!
;-)
Whoops, sorry about that - it appears the Unicode characters I inserted show up fine in the comment editor but get messed up in the comment display proper. You have my apologies.
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