still creepy after all these years

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) still holds up after all these years.  I was just a lad, too young to pick up on the underlying political connotations that people drew from the film.  McCarthyism and Communism was an issue for grown-ups.  I saw it only as a great scare-the-pants-off thriller.  Still, if you want to have an understanding of the concerns and paranoia that obsessed post WWII America ~ you might want to watch this flick. 

Even so, I still enjoy the movie on the surface, as a well executed thriller.  The movie was a low budget film that starts out in a very believable world then quickly propels the protagonist (and the audience) into a high speed roller-coaster ride.

The imagery is stunning.  The props/effects are not elaborate but adequate. Now over a half a century old, the movie still holds together and still thrills.

There have been three adaptations of this film, all of them with larger budgets and more elaborate special effects, but are mere soulless replicas of the original film.

"People began to read meanings into pictures that were never intended. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an example of that. I remember reading a magazine article arguing that the picture was intended as an allegory about the communist infiltration of America. From personal knowledge, neither Walter Wanger nor Don Siegel, who directed it, nor Dan Mainwaring, who wrote the script nor original author Jack Finney, nor myself saw it as anything other than a thriller, pure and simple."
~Walter Mirish