Invasion of the body snatchers 1956 - A cautionary fable about the blacklisting hysteria of the McCarthy era

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IMDB Rating: 7,8

Director: Don Siegel
Main Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones

"Though it was an inexpensive production for B-movie studio Allied Artists, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is a class-A 1950s science fiction allegory about the fragility of inner passion. With Siegel's matter-of-fact approach and 'ordinary' small town setting and characters, the story about human possession by unexplained alien pods becomes all the more frightening; though the pods are from elsewhere, the 'monsters' assume human faces. While the pods have often been seen as a Cold War sci-fi metaphor for Communist infiltration of American society, they are an equally compelling symbol of soul-deadening 1950s suburban conformity. Invasion of the Body Snatchers builds tension slowly and steadily, dealing not in the shock of bug-eyed monsters common to other 1950s science-fiction movies but in the unnerving possibility that the enemy is among us - and impossible to tell from our allies. Siegel himself liked to assert that the Hollywood studios were filled with pods; and when Allied Artists saw Siegel's bleak ending, they demanded a prologue and epilogue that added an element of hope. The 'Siegel version' of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, however, was seen in Europe and 'underground' American screenings, before the 1979 reissue officially deleted the studio-mandated additions.
Keep an eye peeled for a bit part by soon-to-be-legendary Western director Sam Peckinpah, who plays a meter reader and also (uncredited) helped write the screenplay. Based on a novel by Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was remade in 1978 by Philip Kaufman and in 1993 by Abel Ferrara (as Body Snatchers); and its influence can be felt from The Stepford Wives (1975) to The X-Files." - www.allmovie.com

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Bureau of missing persons 1933 - Fast paced, excellent B-movie from Warners

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IMDB rating: 7,2

Director: Roy Del Ruth
Main Cast: Bette Davis, Lewis Stone, Pat O'Brien, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Hugh Herbert

"Although claiming to be based on actual cases, this mild crime drama appears to have been derived more from a screenwriter's manual than a police blotter. Newly transferred from robbery to missing persons, glib Butch Saunders (Pat O'Brien) is like the proverbial bull in a china shop at first, but quickly gets the hang of things. In walks pretty Norma Roberts (Bette Davis), claiming to be missing her new husband, whom she accuses of shipping out. Despite being married to nagging Belle (Glenda Farrell), Butch falls in love with the dame, until, that is, he learns the truth. Norma's last name isn't Roberts at all, but Williams, and she is wanted in Chicago for the murder of her boss, Therme Roberts. Begging Butch to cover for her - 'just for a little while. I'll explain everything later' - Norma does a disappearing act herself and makes it look like suicide. But Butch refuses to buy the act and with the help of his boss, Captain Webb (Lewis Stone), the fast-talking cop arranges for a corpse to be lying in state at a local funeral parlor under the name of Norma Williams, hoping to flush out the real Norma. Norma walks right into the trap with another cockamamie story at the ready. But this time, it may just be the truth and Butch becomes determined to clear the lady of murder.
'Bureau of Missing Persons' is a solid B-movie programmer of the type that Warner Brothers did so well, featuring excellent lead performances by Bette Davis (not yet at her full stardom) and MGM stalwart Lewis Stone (on loan-out to Warners) as Captain Webb, the head of the Missing Persons department of New York City's police force. Pat O'Brien, in his cynical tough-guy mode, plays a hardboiled cop who's been excessively violent in his previous assignments, and who is re-assigned to Webb's division. There's a fine scene early on, in which Stone informs O'Brien that the Bureau of Missing Persons is different from the other police divisions ... because they specialise in finding people rather than making arrests.
Bette Davis later claimed to have disliked making Bureau of Missing Persons, but she is fine in it and even gets to change her hair color from bleach blond to brunette within a reel or two. The Warner Bros. stock company is working at a fever pitch this time around and the lines come fast and furious. One of the highlights is Allen Jenkins' remark to sour-faced funeral director Charles Sellon: 'How's business these days? Has the depression bothered you much?'" - www.allmovie.com

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Framed 1930 - A rare gangster B-movie

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020900/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_25
IMDB rating: 6,5

Director: George Archainbaud
Main Cast: Evelyn Brent, Regis Toomey

"Framed represented the return of Evelyn Brent to her old home studio of FBO, which by 1930 had been rechristened RKO Radio. Brent plays Rose Manning, a sexy nightclub hostess who hopes to avenge the murder of her father. Holding the local police chief responsible (the chief is played by William Holden - but not that William Holden), Rose sets about to seduce and compromise the chief's patrolman son Jimmy McArthur (Regis Toomey), only to fall in love with the boy. To save Jimmy from being put 'on the spot', Rose double-crosses her crooked cohort, bootlegger Chuck Gaines (Ralf Harolde). Both contemporary critics and later film historians noted that Framed borrowed freely from such earlier 'slice of life' crime mellers as Broadway (which also starred Evelyn Brent) and The Racket." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/framed-v92276

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