Invasion of the Body Snatchers/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Revision as of 03:45, 10 January 2014 by Dai-Guard (talk | contribs) (Mass update links)


  • Adaptation Displacement: The number of people who've seen the movies dwarf the number who've read the book quite handily.
  • Downer Ending: Oh, boy.
    • But not in the book, where the pods leave for space because Earth people are willing to fight right up until the last minute.
    • Also not in the 2007 version, when a cure is discovered in time.
      • Also not in the 1956 version, although, like it states below, this was a result of Executive Meddling.
  • Fan Dumb: Do not bring up any version of this movie on SF boards unless you want to hear a diatribe from five different people about how one version was the best, or they all suck and Jack Finney's novel is superior.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: There's a moment early on in the 1978 film at a playground where a priest (likely having become a pod person) is on a swing while staring at small children who are playing. Suprised 4Chan hasn't hasn't picked that up yet.
    • The priest, incidentally, is played by Robert Duvall in a cameo.
  • Memetic Mutation: That "pointing" bit from the end of the 1978 film has become an Image Macro. No text needed.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Stephen King, of all people, wrote about the 1978 version that he found some of the effects so disgusting he was surprised it was released in theaters without an R-rating.
    • The 1978 version's ending. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
    • Whenever a duplicate is "born" from the same version.
    • The concept, the film-specific execution, and the fucking dog with its owner's head
      • In the original film, Miles kissing his wife, and she's one of THEM.
    • There's a particularly chilling event in the background towards the end of the 1978 remake - we see a group of (unconverted) children on a field trip being taken into a building. You can hear one of them complaining about how they don't want nap time already.
    • Late in the 1978 version, where the original version of Elizabeth disintegrates in Matthew's arms, and the duplicate version appears nearby. The 1993 version has similar effects for most of the main victims, and while they don't quite have the creep-out factor of the preceding version, they're still pretty discomforting to watch.
  • Paranoia Fuel: Have your friends and loved ones been acting strangely lately? How strangely? By the way, if you fall asleep you might be replaced by an alien doppelganger. FYI.
  • Retroactive Recognition: That suspicious meter-reader in the original film? He's played by Sam Peckinpah, who later directed such films as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs.
  • Uncanny Valley
    • In universe as well, at least in the original. The duplicates look like, sound like, act like and have all the memories of the original, but their close realiltives know something is wrong.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Political?: The original. The star and the director repeatedly insisted that they were all just making a sci-fi movie, not a social commentary.
    • Averted by the 1978 and 2007 versions, which were pretty heavily political, but surprisingly not the case with the '90s adaptation.