EDITOR’S NOTE: The Body Stealers was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, August 26, 1972 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, August 25, 1973 at 1:00 a.m.
Late-60s British science fiction is a weird, magical pocket of cinematic history where cheap production companies tried to mix James Bond intrigue, stiff upper lips and mind-bending space-age weirdness, usually on a budget that wouldn’t cover the catering on a Hammer film. And that’s saying something!
Also known as Invasion of the Body Stealers and Thin Air, this flick was directed by Gerry Levy and offers a talky, delightfully bonkers premise: British paratroopers jump out of planes and literally vanish mid-air.
Enter Bob Megan (Patrick Allen), a former Air Force investigator brought in to figure out why troopers are evaporating before they hit the landing zone. His investigation leads him straight to a military lab run by Dr. Matthews (Maurice Evans, Dr. Zaius himself from Planet of the Apes!). Along the way, Megan keeps running into a mysterious, sultry woman named Lorna (Lorna Wilde), who has a bad habit of vanishing into thin air after every conversation. When one trooper is finally recovered, he dies on the slab. An autopsy by Dr. Julie Slade (Hilary Dwyer, Witchfinder General) reveals his entire biochemistry was rewritten. Turns out all the missing guys had spaceflight training, leading Matthews to guess someone is altering them to survive off-world.
Naturally, Megan travels to Matthews’ country cottage, only to discover the real Dr. Matthews is dead! The guy running the lab is actually Marthus, an alien wearing his skin! Marthus explains that his home planet, Mygon, was wiped out by a plague, and he’s snatching fit human guys out of the sky to repopulate his world. Marthus tries to kill Megan and Slade, but Lorna turns out to be his alien partner, and she’s got a softer heart. She shows Megan the missing troopers sleeping in suspended animation inside their saucer. If you look closely, it’s the Dalek flying saucer set straight out of 1966’s Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.!
Megan talks Lorna into a wild bargain: if she gives back the stolen military guys, he promises to find her a fresh crew of willing human volunteers to go repopulate Mygon. Lorna says “cheerio,” grabs her alien husband and blasts back into the cosmos. Problem solved by diplomacy. If this were America, we would have shot them 400 times.
You can watch this on Tubi.
