ABSTRACT
I was, however, somewhat prepared for such a response. Nancy Steffen-Fluhr describes, in a fine essay written many years ago, a similar reaction by a group of her students.3 And,
if really pressed on this point, I would probably admit that many of the science fiction films of the 1950s never fail to bring a smile to my face. In the case of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, however, the students’ laughter carried with it a certain irony, for, much to the annoyance of Don Siegel, Allied Artists had set out to remove all traces of humour from the film. Science fiction, the studio executives believed, was no laughing matter.4 In the mid-1950s, that is to say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was not meant to be funny; almost half a century later, it provokes howls of laughter.
