Sci-Fi Film - Red Scare

Joseph Flanagan

Professor Hanrahan

FSTD 377

3/6/2014

Red Scare

The universal fear of invasion is one that is embedded within the human psyche. From the moment we are born, we learn to fear the unknown and dread foreign entities entering our comfort zones. It is this fear and apprehension to invasion that so many Sci-Fi films have exploited throughout the history of film. Whether it is for horror and dramatic effect, or to promote motifs at a more subconscious level, writers and directors of Sci-Fi films have used the fear of invasion to captivate audiences. The films Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Them! and The War of the Worlds use this notion to great effect and exude the worries that existed at their time of production to further the underlying invasion theme.

Don Seigel’s 1956 Sci-Fi thriller, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, encapsulates the use of the political and social fears of the time to heighten the fear of invasion in his audience. In the mid 1950’s the Cold War was beginning to become the central focus of people’s lives and the fear of Soviet invasion was in the forefront of American’s minds. The plot of the movie surrounds the alien invasion in which the aliens make copies of human beings through the use of pods and ultimately end up controlling the minds of the human beings. The small town around which the film is set plunges into mass hysteria and it falls to Miles, the local doctor and protagonist of the film, to try and fix the situation. As he comes across more and more occurrences of the alien invasion, he becomes increasingly wary of what is going on and what he can do to rectify the situation and return things to normal. The spread of mayhem throughout the town can only be a reference to the fear of Soviet invasion and the spread of communism throughout the United States and the rest of the world. This fear of communism throughout the Cold War was such a deep and intense terror that Seigel’s use of it throughout the film could...