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Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978 Is An Urban Pandemic Classic

This week we had a supersized episode combining the casts of two horror podcasts to discuss a classic of pandemic paranoia: Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). The Castle of Horror team (Drew Edwards of Halloween Man, Attorney Julia Guzman, Tony Salvaggio of Rooster Teeth, and writer Jason Henderson)  were joined by the cast of the Monster Movie Happy Hour (Historians Dave Geister, Mary Challman, Scott Chesebrough). The MMHH appeared in late 2019, and every episode, they feature at least one newly-designed cocktail to go with whatever classic horror film they discuss.

Top left: The official logo for the Castle of Horror podcast and used with permission. Bottom left: The official logo of Monster Movie Happy Hour and used with permission. Right:
Top left: The official logo for the Castle of Horror podcast and used with permission. Bottom left: The official logo of Monster Movie Happy Hour and used with permission. Right: The official poster for Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Credit: United Artists.

Because everybody on the call is in quarantine, the discussion could not avoid turning to how Kaufman's paranoid classic reflected the current environment. Unlike the 1956 original film, which was in turn based on Jack Finney's brisk 1955 novel Body Snatchers, Kaufman's film places the action in San Francisco. Setting the movie in a large city changes a lot of the action. In essence, San Francisco was known in the sixties and seventies as the locus of progressive thought, as well as whatever outré philosophies made good copy for the rest of the country. Consequently, when the characters—most of whom are health professionals—start hearing people talking about fears that their friends and family are being replaced, those complaints have to fall into the context of a city where people say crazy things all the time.

The pertinence to the current quarantine comes in the fact that once the invasion has begun, it remains invisible. Donald Sutherland has no way of knowing if a person he's talking to has been infected or not. It's an expertly-done film that often can cause a certain amount of queasy distress in the viewer.

We also discussed the curious relationships of the film. Creating new characters, Philip Kaufman gives us an ensemble cast Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, and Veronica Cartwright—who appear to know one another well enough that they could almost star in their own sitcom, except it just so happens that an alien invasion has landed in the middle of it. Along the way, we also got to hear a couple of original cocktails created just for the film by the monster movie happy hour cast.

Listen here:

Listen on YouTube:

 

Hosted by Jason Henderson, editor of the Castle of Horror Anthology and Young Captain Nemo and creator of the HarperTeen novel series Alex Van Helsing; featuring Drew Edwards, creator of Halloween Man; Tony Salvaggio, lead singer of the band Deserts of Mars, lead guitarist of the band Rise from Fire, and co-creator of Clockwerx from Humanoids; attorney Julia Guzman of Guzman Immigration of Denver; and Jamie Bahr, lead singer and upright bassist of the rock and roll band Danger*Cakes.


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Jason HendersonAbout Jason Henderson

Jason Henderson, author of the Young Captain Nemo (Macmillan Children's) and Alex Van Helsing (HarperTeen) series, earned his BA from University of Dallas in 1993 and his JD from Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., in 1996. His popular podcasts “Castle Talk” and “Castle of Horror” feature interviews and discussion panels made up of best-selling writers and artists from all genres. Henderson lives in Colorado with his wife and two daughters.
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