Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Production designer Ted Haworth came up with a fairly simple and inexpensive (about $30,000 total) idea for creating the pods. The most difficult part was when the pods burst open, revealing the likenesses of the actors. The actors had to have naked impressions of themselves made out of thin, skin-tight latex. Making the casts, which involved being submerged in the very hot casting material with only a straw in their mouths to breathe through, was grueling for the actors, especially Carolyn Jones, who was claustrophobic. Dana Wynter recalled, "I was in this thing while it hardened, and of course it got rather warm! I was breathing through straws or something quite bizarre, and the rest of me was encased, it was like a sarcophagus. The guys who were making it tapped on the back of the thing and said, 'Dana, listen, we won't be long, we're just off for lunch [laughs]!' In the end, we had to be covered except for just the nostrils and I think a little aperture for the mouth."

The film's action required leading man Kevin McCarthy to run for days on end. In numerous scenes, his character sprints for dear life over every possible terrain. "I got charleyhorses [cramps]," admitted McCarthy. Just before the film draws to a close, Dr. Bennell runs through traffic in a panicked frenzy, screaming, "They're here already! You're next! You're next!" Since the exhausted actor hadn't been sleeping well, Don Siegel told his stunt drivers to remain extra alert in case McCarthy tripped without warning. "I was terrified that his timing would be off and he might fall down under the wheel of the cars and trucks," Siegel admitted.

During its original release, papier-mâché pods were on display in theater lobbies, as well as black-and-white cutouts of Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter running frantically away from a crowd of pod people.

Kevin McCarthy and author Jack Finney have always denied the rumor that the story is a statement against McCarthyism and Communism; they just saw it as a thriller. Director Don Siegel, however, believes that the political references to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and totalitarianism are inescapable, even though he tried not to emphasize them.

In 1994 this film was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry by The Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."