Tag: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

October 3, 1874: Pathetic Earthlings, You Know Who You Are

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Although the name Charles Middleton (born in Kentucky, October 3, 1874) doesn’t invite instant recognition, his face — or at least one of his faces — certainly does. He worked in vaudeville, on the legitimate stage, and in traveling circuses before striking out as a motion picture actor in 1920. His career took off when sound came to the movies, thanks to a deep, menacing voice that dripped villainy.

To many generations he will always be the villain he played for the first time in 1936, one of film’s most notable nasties — Ming the Merciless. The evil enemy of the entire universe first appeared in the serial Flash Gordon, battling wits with Buster Crabbe’s Flash. He reprised his role in Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).

Middleton appeared in 200 movies. He died in 1949.

Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror.

Cheap Halloween Thrills

If Ming doesn’t get us pathetic earthlings, these guys might. There’s something terribly strange going on in tiny Santa Mira, California. Friends and loved ones have suddenly become emotionless body doubles, all thanks to those strange pods that have been popping up everywhere. Kevin McCarthy has discovered the truth, an alien invasion of human duplicates. Trouble is, no one believes him. As much a horror film as sci-fi, the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is also a political allegory with most of the scariness in its theme.

 

February 15, 1914: Body Snatchers Everywhere

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Although he made more than 200 film and television appearances, actor Kevin McCarthy, born February 15, 1914, is forever linked to one film,  Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The 1956 sci-fi horror classic features McCarthy as a small town doctor who discovers an alien invasion in which plant spores from outer space have fallen to Earth where they grow into large pods.

Placed next to sleeping townspeople, the pods replicate their victims assuming their exact physical characteristics, memories and personalities but lacking any human emotion. One by one these pod people take over, leaving only Kevin McCarthy to warn the outside world: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!”

In a 1978 remake of the film, McCarthy makes a cameo appearance playing his original character as an old man still frantically warning passing motorists of the invasion.

McCarthy should not be confused with another Kevin McCarthy the former Republican Minority House Leader and most likely a pod person.

In yet another remake, The Creeping Menace from Mar-a-Lago, the pods attack the US Senate, sidling up to sleeping Republican Senators, sucking away not only their human emotions but their integrity as well. (They skip the House because there’s nothing to suck away.) And there’s no Kevin McCarthy (the actor) to warn them this time, his having died in 2010. But wait, there’s Mitt Romney who has traded in his Etch-a-Sketch for a conscience. For a moment, we think there’s a glimmer of hope for mankind, but then we spot Ted Cruz.

You Too, Fu

Novelist Sax Rohmer, born on February 15, 1883, is probably not as well-known as his famous villain, the evil genius Fu Manchu (not to be confused with the “stable genius”), “tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.” The 13 fast-paced adventures make lively reading if you can get past the frequent overt racial slurs.  And here we are back at Mar-a-Lago.