The classic The body snatchers are coming Horror films from 1956 and 1978 reflect the most terrifying truth about our local governments, writes columnist Joe Mathews: “They are increasingly powerless to protect us from threats to the planet.” Still from The Body Snatchers (1978).
Maybe I've watched too many old movies.
Or maybe the body snatchers are back.
In my home state of California, we've already experienced it twice. Both invasions – by pod aliens secretly coming from space to take over our bodies – may have been interstellar, but they first manifested themselves as attacks on local communities, and local governments had to respond.
Neither our institutions nor our officials were up to the challenge then. Today, with the body snatchers back, and not just in the Golden State, local governments seem less prepared than ever to stand up and defend themselves against these insidious enemies and the existential threat they pose to the survival of humanity.
The first invasion occurred in 1956 in Santa Mira, California – although the town is not on any map – and no one was prepared for it. Yes, several residents noticed that their relatives and friends, who looked and sounded alike, no longer seemed quite themselves. Only one local health official, Dr. Miles J. Bennell, investigated. But when he found out what was going on, there were no people in town who believed him. The pod people had taken over their bodies. He fled.
Then, in 1978, the body snatchers came to San Francisco. Only Matt Bennell, a San Francisco County health inspector (no apparent relation to the Santa Mira doctor), recognized the problem. But he and the local health department couldn't keep up with the people in the pods. Within days, the aliens, using the Bay Area's notoriously disjointed transportation system with unearthly abandon, replaced virtually all of the people in the entire region.
At this point I must confess that not everyone believes that these body snatchers were real. Many people claim that they were just the villains in two different classic horror films, both titled The body snatchers are coming.
And maybe the body snatchers were just right for a movie.
Or maybe that's exactly what the pod people want us to believe.
Regardless, cultural experts have explored possible deeper meanings of the body-snatching invasions and how they reflected the political and cultural anxieties of their respective eras.
As far as we know, the body snatchers have come to the planet twice, raiding Californian cities in 1956 and 1978. Are they back? And what can we do about this planetary threat?
Critics suggested that The body snatchers are coming was about how McCarthyism has taken over our minds and turned many Americans into paranoid, communist-hating anti-communists. “I've been gone for five years. I feel like a stranger in my own country,” says one Santa Mira resident who suspects his neighbors are no longer the people he once knew.
The year 1978 The body snatchers are comingSet in rough San Francisco, it is said to be about the alienation caused by the violence, urban chaos, pollution and loss of social trust of the decade. The fear of the time was heightened by the fact that the film was released just three weeks after the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
“It's as if there's some kind of hallucinatory flu going around,” says a San Francisco psychiatrist who looks a lot like Leonard Nimoy. Health inspector Bennell, the spitting image of Donald Sutherland, says, “I know I feel like I've been poisoned today.”
When I saw these two films in the incredibly hot and fear-filled summer of 2024, I found them timely, relevant – and real.
Today, our neighbors and friends seem to be less than themselves. It is as if loneliness has overcome them. It is as if their once open minds have been invaded by conspiracies or political extremism.
Is this summer's unusual heat the reason so many people aren't moving as much as usual? Or have pod people taken over their bodies? Are the people we meet online real people or digital replicants created by artificial intelligence? And are they really the conservative Supreme Court justices who keep taking away our rights over our own lives and bodies, or simply pod people in black robes?
The pod people don't want us to ask these questions. “Don't get caught up in old concepts, Matthew,” a pod person tells the health inspector in the 1978 film. “You are evolving into a new form of life.”
But the power of body snatcher stories is more than just metaphorical. These films are also very direct stories of local officials simply trying to do their jobs despite being vastly outnumbered. And that's the truly frightening thing: Our local governments are nowhere near strong enough to protect us from threats to our planet – be it climate change, disease, or even people from outer space.
The trends in local government power are not good. When the body snatchers came around for the second time in 1978, voters also passed Proposition 13, which stripped California's local governments of the power to tax. Today, after struggling through the pandemic, those governments are even weaker. Local health departments have been gutted, and our communities are unable to solve or even significantly reduce the problem of persistent homelessness.
In the final scene of the 1978 film The body snatchers are comingHealth Inspector Bennell goes to San Francisco City Hall, that domed symbol of self-government. The audience thinks he is trying to help the few people hiding in the city. But it turns out that the health inspector's body has already been kidnapped and the remaining people of the Bay Area are on their own.
