Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
Sena and I watched the movie “Invasion of the Booty Snatchers” (sorry, I mean “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) last night and I want to get one thing off my chest:
What’s up with the comedy bit with Gwengoolie saying “I threw up a little bit in my mouth” as a skit for the second part of the double feature that the Sven Squad was hosting? We were incredulous because we thought former Steelers coach and (for now) member of the NBC Sports Analyst Mike Tomlin just made that up last week when he griped about the messy ending of the New York Giants vs Washington Commanders football game. It wasn’t that messy.
OK, I found out that this was a meme way back in the early 2000s, connected to the movie “Dodgeball” which we never saw and I never heard of (although Sena looked up a clip of the scene, which is funny). Fair warning: next TV personality who repeats this disgusting phrase will become one of the pod persons in the next remake of the body snatcher films. I’m just sayin’, don’t “bring this up” again.
The main players in the film: Kevin McCarthy (as Dr. Miles J. Bennell); Dana Wynter (as Becky Driscoll); Larry Gates (as psychiatrist Dr. Dan ‘Danny’ Kaufman) and another guy playing a psychiatrist named Dr. Hill (who was not credited but played by Whit Bissell) who actually believed Dr. Bennell’s wild story about pod people that mimic humans taking over the planet Earth. There’s a doppelgänger thing going on in this film which evokes a psychiatric disorder called Capgras Syndrome, also known as delusion of doubles. Patients believe that an identical person has replaced somebody close to him or her. It’s rare delusional disorder which can occur in people with organic and non-organic brain diseases.
Anyway, Dr. Bennell starts finding clues that people in his hometown are transforming into beings that friends and relatives don’t recognize despite no change in physical appearance. He asks Dr. Danny Kaufman, a colleague who’s a psychiatrist) who scoffs at it and spouts psychobabble in an unsuccessful attempt to debunk the notion that exact doubles hatching from soap bubble infested pods have anything to do with what’s going on.
Why does one of the doubles turn up lying on top of a billiard table? I’m not the only person who wondered that. There’s a discussion web site where a person asked the question 13 years ago. There’s no way to answer that and the guy who tried to simply said that it was originally found in a closet. Fine, but that does not answer the question of why it was placed on a billiard table.
No spoilers here. I should say that the movie sends a message that the emotional baggage the average human carries around is worse than hatching from a pod and existing as a plant-based person. On some days, after looking at the news headlines, that could be a fruitful debate.
Sena would rate this movie a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 5/5 and I agree.
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