Upon its release in 1956, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers was commonly perceived as another B-thriller in the cycle of science fiction and horror films that proliferated at the time.&nbspBut in the 50 years since, its reputation has grown from cult status to become an acknowledged classic of American cinema.&nbspIn the first comprehensive critical study of the film, Barry Keith Grant traces the film's historical context, it appeared in an America gripped by Cold War paranoia and atomic anxieties, and its production history, and goes on to explore the importance of genre, Communism, conformity, modernity, post-War society, and gender for an understanding of the film's cultural contexts and metaphorical weight.

Barry Keith Grant is a professor of film studies and popular culture at Brock University. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including 100 Documentary Films (with Jim Hillier, 2009), Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (2007), Film Genre: Film Iconography to Ideology (2007), Film Genre Reader (2003) and The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (1996), and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He edits the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television series for Wayne State University Press and the New Approaches to Film Genre series for Wiley Blackwell.

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