{"id":31062,"date":"2024-10-31T05:00:58","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T09:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=31062"},"modified":"2024-10-31T05:55:59","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T09:55:59","slug":"october-viewing-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/31\/october-viewing-9\/","title":{"rendered":"October Viewing \u2013 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

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October Viewing \u2013 9<\/p>\n

So, this being October 30th<\/sup> and tomorrow a really long work day, it\u2019s a pretty good bet this will be the last \u201cOctober Viewing\u201d of the year.\u00a0 A good friend who has been following this series of posts proposed the \u201cInvasion of the Body Snatchers\u201d movies as a good subject.\u00a0 And we both liked how it sort of dovetails with the whole woke Democrat pod-people meme.\u00a0 You know, how they speak like lifeless automatons and point and shriek if you reveal yourself not to be one of them.<\/p>\n

Now my friend felt that even the two reboots were good subjects for the post.\u00a0 But as in all things I am conservative.\u00a0 So, let\u2019s harken back to the 1956 original in all its black and white splendor.\u00a0 Dut, dut, dut daaaah!<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert!\u00a0 If you want to avoid knowing the plot, skip to the boldened text below to just get my opinion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Sturdy character actor Kevin McCarthy (no, not the politician!) stars as Dr. Miles J. Bennell.\u00a0 He\u2019s a small-town doctor in the fictitious California town of Santa-something-or-other.\u00a0 Miles is puzzled to find that several patients are claiming that their friends and relatives have been replaced by visually identical individuals that lack any emotion.\u00a0 One case is a young child claiming his mother has been replaced.<\/p>\n

So, Miles and his girlfriend Becky and their friend Jack and his wife \u201cTeddy\u201d begin investigating a very strange series of occurrences.\u00a0 Jack finds what looks like a human body but with very indistinct features, almost as if acid had burned away the facial features.\u00a0 Shockingly, over time the \u201cbody\u201d begins to take on Jack\u2019s features.\u00a0 And more of these bodies begin appearing.\u00a0 Eventually they learn that enormous seed pods are the source of these transforming \u201cbodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

And soon the two couples discover that the great majority of the townspeople are pod people.\u00a0 The distinguishing characteristic of pod people is a complete lack of emotion in their voice and actions.\u00a0 While pursuing an unsuccessful attempt to broadcast this alarming news to the rest of the outside world, Jack and Teddy become \u201cpodified\u201d and so Jack provides the exposition to Miles and Becky to explain exactly what the hell is going on.<\/p>\n

In his sedate pod-man voice Jack explains that spores floating through outer space landed on Earth where they grew into the pods.\u00a0 If a pod is placed near someone (how near?) and that person falls asleep the pod will absorb the person\u2019s memories and appearance and somehow disintegrate the real person and replace him.\u00a0 Jack tries to convince Miles and Becky that the procedure is painless and all for the good.\u00a0 Miles and Becky decide not to cooperate and run away.\u00a0 They try to escape from town.\u00a0 But they have to pass through a crowd of pod-people who are loading up trucks with seed pods for delivery to the surrounding towns.\u00a0 They try to act like pod-people by being emotionless but are given away by Becky\u2019s scream when she witnesses a traffic accident.\u00a0 Women!<\/p>\n

The pod people chase after them but the couple successfully take refuge in a cave that was conveniently around when they needed it.\u00a0 But when Miles goes out to scout an escape route Becky falls asleep and by the time Miles returns, she\u2019s fully podified and sounds the alarm to the rest of the wooden-faced pursuers to catch Miles.<\/p>\n

Sleep-deprived Miles runs in a nightmarish state and ends up in another town trying to warn people on the highway about the pod people.\u00a0 Of course, they assume he\u2019s nuts and drag him to a hospital where he tells his story to the skeptical doctors.\u00a0 But just at the end of his story an emergency room worker reports that a traffic accident with a truck full of giant seed pods has produced casualties in the ER.\u00a0 And so, the doctors get to work calling in the FBI!<\/p>\n

Dunt, dunt daaah!<\/p>\n

End of the spoiler alert!<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, as you can see this is a hum-dinger of a paranoid\u2019s dream come true.\u00a0 They\u2019re all out to get you and they\u2019re all monsters.\u00a0 And the emotionless pod-people are a pretty good stand in for the swarms of antidepressant-doped leftists that walk the Earth all around us and can only summon energy when they point and shriek to their cohort about the presence of some normal human in the immediate vicinity.<\/p>\n

And this is the modern horror story.\u00a0 If you add a violent angle with the imposters capable of becoming murderous creatures like in John Carpenter\u2019s \u201cThe Thing,\u201d then it\u2019s doubly frightening, especially with the modern special effects available.<\/p>\n

But even this old-fashioned cinematic portrayal hits home by showing the confusion when familiar surroundings aren\u2019t what they seem.\u00a0 And when the truth is doubted by everyone except the growing crowd of pod-people who are coming after you then panic results.\u00a0 Yep, a perfect nightmare scenario.\u00a0 It does resemble the current state of our world too.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll save that for a current events post.<\/p>\n