In 1956, 1978 and 1997 Hollywood made and remade a movie called "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," based on a 1955 story by Jack Finney. For some reason, the entertainment industry likes to feed us films that become cult hits, with fantastic storylines and plots, of which people say (after the scary stuff is over), "That was just a movie!"
The question: Is it just a movie? As we burrow into various rabbit holes (termed "conspiracies" by those who don't believe us), we find parallels between Hollywood movies of yesterday and what is being unearthed today. Could it be that [they] like to give us a sneak peek at what's in store ...?
"Invastion of the Body Snatchers" and its creepy "seed pods" that formed replicas of people that took their minds and bodies over while they slept left a lot of people scared to go to bed at night. Sure, it was just a movie. But they made it THREE TIMES, for Pete's sake! A story about mind control, its premise was certainly sci-fi -- the pods that grew human bodies inside. But strange parallels can be found between the themes of the story and the hive-mind phenomenon we are increasingly seeing in our lives today ...
An industry synopsis of the first "Body Snatchers" film:
"Something evil has taken possession of the small town of Santa Mira, California. Hysterical people accuse their loved ones of being emotionless impostors; of not being themselves. At first, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) tries to convince them they’re wrong, but they’re not. Plant-like extraterrestrials have invaded Earth, replicating the villagers in giant seed “pods” and taking possession of their souls while they sleep. Soon the entire town is overwhelmed by the inhuman horror, but it won’t stop there. In a terrifying race for his life, Dr. Bennell escapes to warn the world of the deadly invasion of the pod people! Remade in both 1978 and 1997, this chilling combination of extraterrestrial terror and anti-conformity paranoia is considered one of the great cult classics of the genre. (1956, B&W)
Said director Don Siegel in 1975: "I think so many people have no feeling about cultural things, no feeling of pain, of sorrow. I wanted to get it over and I didn’t know of a better way to get it over than in this particular film. I thought I shot it very imaginatively. And I was encouraged all the time by [producer] Wanger. The film was nearly ruined by those in charge at Allied Artists who added a preface and ending that I don’t like."
For those who have seen the film, what do we most remember? The seed pods, and the way they cracked open ... to release a "pod person" who would then take the place of the real person he or she was identical to. Considered by many to be the best sci-fi horror film of the 1950s, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" has remained alive in our memory since its original release. The 1978 remake, directed by Philip Kaufman, was said by critic Pauline Kael to be "the best film of its kind ever made."
Of note: The eerie "normalcy" of the pod people or people-duplicates. From critic Stuart Samuels (1987): "The "invasion" seems to be a non-violent one and the people seem to welcome the change that has come over them, as a solution to long-felt problems. One reading of the film is that the pods are like the spread of socialist/communist ideas — affecting ordinary everyday Americans, with little or no outward change in their behavior, but which changes their whole way of thinking about the world." Also, a lot like the authorities' response in our present day: "The pschychiatrist Kaufmann's diagnosis that the town is suffering from an epidemic of mass hysteria brought on by worrying about what is going on in the world ..."
Samuels continues ... "The feeling of helplessness we share with MB when he runs onto the highway and is surrounded by speeding cars ... unwilling to stop to listen to his warnings. His sense of doom increases when he sees the trucks with cities of destination on their sides distributing the pods across the US."
... And: "One pod person promises they will be 'reborn into an untroubled world where everyone is the same.' They give up much of their individuality and behave like a mob, they reject the main institutions of capitalist America (the nuclear family, monogomy, small business — Mr. Grimaldi, private property), they stop going to the country club, they agree to sacrifice themselves to the common good, they engange in onerous 'party' activity organised by 'party officials' (i.e. the loading of trucks to distribute the pods across America), and they are generally submissive and compliant."
In the end, the psychiatrist ... "(or rather his duplicate) explains: Out of the sky came a solution, you will be born into a world where everyone is the same, no need for love or emotion or feelings, only the instinct to survive remains, we are better off without love, desire, ambition and faith, and ultimately you have no choice." (Stuart Samuels: The Age of Conspiracy and Continuity: The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), in: American History/American Film: Interpretating the Hollywood Image. New York 1987, pp. 204-217)
Watch a little bit of the 1956 film here. And think about the psychiatrist's words (mentioned above): "Out of the sky came a solution ... you will be born into a world where everyone is the same ... and ultimately you have no choice." Is that not what seems to be happening now? What does he mean -- "out of the sky came a solution"? We are being sprayed from the sky today ...
Now get this -- What was inside those pods as they began to creak open? FIBERS.
Excerpts from the 1955 novel:
Page 96 -- I couldn't get clear in my mind what I was seeing, lying there on the concrete. Staring, I had to describe to myself, a bit at a time, just what I was looking at, trying to puzzle out what it was. There lay, I finally decided, what looked like four giant seed pods. They had been round in shape, maybe three feet in diameter, and now they had burst open in places, and from the inside of the great pods, a grayish substance, a heavy fluff in appearance, had partly spilled out onto the floor.
That was part of what I saw, my mind still busy trying to sort out impressions. In a way -- at a glance -- these giant pods reminded me of tumbleweed, those puffballs of dry, tangled vegetable matter, light as air, designed by nature to roll with the wind across the desert. But these pods were enclosed. I saw that their surfaces were made up of tough-looking yellowish fibers, and stretching between these fibers, to completely enclose these pod-like balls, were great patches of brownish, dry-looking membrane, resembling a dead oak leaf in color and texture.
Page 97 -- Each pod had burst open in four or five places, a part of the gray substance that filled them spilling out onto the floor. And now, in the closer beam of Jack's light, we saw a curious thing. At the outer edges, farthest away from the pods, the gray fluff was turning white, almost as though contact with the air was robbing it of color. And -- there was no denying this; we could see it -- the tangled fluffy substance was compressing itself, and achieving a form.
Page 98 -- I once saw a doll made by a primitive South American people. It was made from flexible reeds, crudely plaited, and tied off in places, to form a head and body, arms and legs protruding stiffly from it. The tangled masses of what looked like grayish horsehair at our feet were slowly spilling out of the membranous pods, lightening in color at their outer edges, and -- crudely but definitely -- had begun forming themselves, the fibers straightening and aligning, into the rough approximation, each of them, of a head, a body, and miniature arms and legs. They were as crude as the doll I had seen, and just as unmistakable.
It's hard to say how long we squatted there, staring in stunned wonder at what we were seeing. But it was long enough to see the gray substance continue to exude, slowly as moving lava, from the great pods, out onto the concrete floor. It was long enough to see the gray substance lighten and whiten after it reached the air. ... The nearly motionless weaving and aligning of whitening fiber had continued ...
Page 99 -- The great shattered pods lay on the floor now in tiny, broken fragments, an almost unnoticeable dust. And where they had been, four figures now lay, large as adults, and the thick skeins of sticky fiber that composed them were united at all edges now, the surfaces unbroken, rough as corduroy still, but smoothing out steadily and entirely white.
Oddly enough, there appear to be fibers accumulating and assembling in us today. (See "Morgellons Syndrome" page.) Coincidence? Did someone dangle an object in front of Jack Finney, hypotize him, and say: You will write a book about people being overtaken by fibers, people whose bodies, minds and souls become the property of a replication technology ... Movies will be made from your book ... Go for it, write NOW!
From a November 2009 article about a woman in Vallejo, California whose "mysterious ailment" is producing fibers and seed-like specks on her skin ... Doctors have guessed at a variety of diagnoses but, quoting from the article, "[Valerie] Swanson has her own theory: An unknown plant has attached itself to her body, and is spreading around her house. She said the plants resemble tiny tumbleweeds." Read the full Times-Herald article here.
Quotes from the 1956 film:
"From the seeds come pods which have the power to reproduce themselves in the exact likeness of any form of life." The story attributes the source of the replicating life form to an alien "seed" technology that has traveled to Earth.
"So that's how it began -- out of the sky." Miles, the main character, repeats what he is beginning to understand (strong parallel to what's happening today!).
"Your new bodies are ... taking you over -- cell for cell, atom for atom ... and you'll be born into an untroubled world." The new life form that takes humans over leaves them emotionless -- they don't have to worry or question anything.
"Don't fight it, Miles. It's no use. Sooner or later you'll have to go to sleep." The pods take people over while they are sleeping. Staying awake delays being taken over. However, no one can last forever without sleep. Interestingly, "sleep" and "awake" are words that pertain to the hive mentality and mass mind-control of today.
"Love, desire, ambition, faith ... without them life's so simple!" Being taken over makes life much easier -- you don't have all those annoying emotions and desires.
"You're forgetting something, Miles. You have no choice." Miles is reminded that he cannot escape the fate of being assumed by the new life form.
"Their bodies were now hosts harboring an alien form of life -- a cosmic form."
The film contains scenes in which trucks are seen distributing the pods that hatch into people. In one scene, trucks are bringing the pods to town early in the morning, and those who have been converted take the pods to their various neighborhoods. In another scene, trucks carrying pods are heading through traffic for cities across the United States. Back then they used trucks to get the seed technology everywhere -- today they use planes ...?
Note: At time code 4:41 in the 1956 black-and-white film, there is a shot of an expanse of sky. (Most of the film is shot indoors and/or at night.) Guess what seems to be in the sky at 4:41? Yes indeedy ... a chemtrail. One classic-film buff reports that an editing technique is being applied to films of yesteryear to remove the deep blue of the sky ... "The Sound of Music" is an example -- buy it now and you see a blue-gray sky, buy an old copy and there's the deep blue and the real clouds!
