“An allegory of totalitarianism (the only question being whether the totalitarians are the Commies or the McCarthy Committee) in which alien elements transform average small-town Americans into blindly obedient ‘pods' that look and act like the bodies they have replaced. Don Siegel's direction is tight and incisive: in preying on basic human fears, this story of one man's desperate resistance to creeping conformity, based on a novel by Jack Finney, is as frightening as a paranoid LSD trip. In the opinion of many critics, the best science fiction thriller ever made. ‘I wanted to end the picture at the point where McCarthy is standing in the highway.... He turns, points his finger at the audience and yells, “You're next.” The truth is that you are next. I don't care where you are, what country, sitting in a theater or reading a movie magazine. There are pods, and they are going to get you.' (Don Siegel, interviewed in Take One magazine, 1972)”