Theme: Body Snatchers

Body Snatchers (at least in the usage on this site) refers to non-human entities that steal human appearance. They can create identical duplicates of the human body, take over control of human minds or else this can be a form of Alien Possession. The key aspect of this is body snatchers replicate every aspect of humanity except for emotions.

Body snatchers appeared in a number of other classic works of the 1950s Alien Invasion film beginning with It Came from Outer Space (1953) and others of era, culminating in the key paranoia classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

The theme has regularly reappeared ever since then. Most commonly, body snatchers are alien invaders. In other variations, they can be Android duplicates, Parasites, plants or some form of Doppelganger or the idea of the changeling. Another variant on the theme is of the creature that hops between bodies, discarding one as its use runs out.

Historically, body snatchers is also a term given to those who rob graves, another recurrent theme in genre material. To avoid confusion, these are listed here as Grave Robbers.