It’s Wednesday here at BCB After Dark, the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in out of the cold. We can check that coat for you. It’s always good to see you. There’s no cover charge. There are still a few tables available. Bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

Last night, I asked you if you thought the Cubs should pick up the team option on Colin Rea. Most of you thought it was a no-brainer as 90 percent of you were in favor and only ten percent opposed.

Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies and the BCB Winter Science Fiction Classic is well underway. But you’re free to skip these parts if you want.

Tonight we finish our week honoring the great Jack DeJohnette, who died last week at the age of 83. DeJohnette is best known as one of the top drummers of all-time, but he also played piano. And since that is the way we get to see him all along and not backing other artists, here is DeJohnette in 2017 playing Ode to Satie from his first solo album of piano music.

You voted in our first matchup of the BCB Winter Science Fiction Classic and you picked Forbidden Planet (1956) over The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). I don’t vote in these elections except to break ties, but I would have voted for Shrinking Man. Still, I don’t begrudge any of you who voted for Forbidden Planet because it is one terrific-looking movie. It’s also a good movie. If it were up against one of several other movies, I would have favored it. So I can take the loss knowing that both films were worthy of moving on. That’s going to be the case in a lot of these matchups.

Tonight we have the second matchup in our “Classic” (1960 and before) bracket with the number-three seed Godzilla (Gojira) (1954) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1957).

3. Godzilla (1954). Directed by Ishirō Honda. Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata and Takashi Shimura.

All good science fiction represents the anxieties of the age that created it and no people were more terrified of the dawning of the atomic age than the Japanese. The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union meant both sides were producing bigger and bigger weapons that were capable of unleashing Armageddon. Godzilla is just those weapons come to life.

A month before filming of Godzilla was to start, the US tested their first thermonuclear device on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The military told everyone to stay away from the Marshall Islands at the time, but they didn’t say why. One fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon no. 5) violated the quarantine and was caught in the blast. This launched a huge panic in Japan when the boat returned to Japan and it gave Godzilla its launching point for the unleashing of the beast, although the US isn’t mentioned here or anywhere else in the film. Rather than blame the United States for unleashing the prehistoric monster on Japan, Godzilla takes a more universal opinion that these weapons are bad no matter who uses them for whatever reason.

Once Godzilla is unleashed by the test of the H-Bomb, he immediately heads toward Japan to wreak havoc. (There are some stops along the way to build up the tension.) Dr. Yamane (Shimura) is a famous paleontologist who wants to study the dinosaur come to life, not only for pure scientific reasons but also because Godzilla’s immunity to radioactivity could be a clue for saving all of humanity in the future.

Yamane’s daughter Emiko (Kōchi) is betrothed to the brilliant Dr. Serazawa (Hirata), but is actually in love with Hideto Ogata (Takarada), a dashing ship captain. This love triangle proves to be a crucial part of the film, as Emiko is torn between her love for Ogata and her loyalty to and respect for Serazawa.

Serazawa is the Robert Oppenheimer of the movie as he’s invented something called the “Oxygen Destroyer,” a nonsensical macguffin that can used as a weapon to destroy Godzilla. But Serazawa isn’t convinced that giving the world the knowledge of the Oxygen Destroyer isn’t actually worse than Godzilla. He only changes his mind after Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo and an appeal from Ogata, as well as a well-timed children’s choir. Even so, he’s convinced knowledge of the Oxygen Destroyer will lead to an arms race that will eventually destroy the world. This is where the somewhat lazy “Godzilla is America” analysis breaks down, because if Serazawa is Oppenheimer, then Godzilla becomes Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan. The film certainly doesn’t let the United States off the hook, but its concerns for world peace cast a much wider net than just Harry Truman, Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller.

But enough of picking up on the World War II references, arms race allegory and the anxieties of the nuclear age. The star of this picture is the guy in the rubber suit, Godzilla. I don’t care that you can tell that he’s stomping on miniatures, the scenes of Godzilla on the rampage are sheer cinematic genius. They are easily better than anything Hollywood was making in 1954 in special effects in science fiction/horror films. And while Godzilla is not defanged here like he was in many of the later Toho Studios films that veered into camp, it’s almost as easy to identify with him rather than with the Japanese people. After all, he was minding his own business, sleeping at the bottom of the ocean for 200 million years when these naked apes decided to wake him up with a thermonuclear bomb. You’d be pretty cranky too! (Plus, a lot of Japanese audiences cheered when Godzilla destroyed the Japanese parliament building. People have the same opinion of politicians throughout the world!)

You can laugh at a man in a rubber suit walking around a miniature set smashing stuff, but you shouldn’t. For Japanese audiences, almost all of whom had survived a horrible air war that included two atomic bombings and the firebombing of Tokyo, those scenes were horrifying. Anything more realistic would have been triggering and honestly, for the technology of the time, the special effects were plenty realistic.

You will sometimes see Godzilla, the original Japanese version of the film, called Gojira. Those are just two different ways of transliterating the Japanese title. Neither is wrong, but neither is right either. Because “Godzilla” sounds better to Anglophone ears and is more well-known, I call it that while acknowledging the other transliteration. And let’s face it, “-zilla” has become a universal suffix for anything to denote something of massive size, both in the US, Japan and elsewhere.

Finally, these comments are about the Japanese original film and not the Americanization of the movie in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, starring Raymond Burr. The original is clearly the better picture, but the US version has its charms and can be a lot of fun. I listened to a commentary track on it by a Godzilla scholar (yes, there are Godzilla scholars) and he argues that Raymond Burr providing play-by-play of Godzilla’s rampage through Tokyo actually improves the terrifying nature of the destruction. That scholar, David Kalat, also pointed out how remarkable it was that in 1956, just 11 years after the end of the war, American producers released a movie where the Japanese, and the Japanese army in particular, were not only sympathetic but the good guys. He also revealed that the voice actor who dubbed both Serazawa and Ogata was the great James Hong, so we actually still have one living actor from the first Godzilla film, in a sense.

Anyway, while I’d love to discuss Godzilla: King of the Monsters with you in the comments, the film we’re voting on is the Japanese original.

Here’s the trailer for Godzilla. If you turn on the subtitles, you can get the English translation.

Godzilla (Gojira) can be watched on HBO Max, the Watch TCM app and the Criterion Collection.

6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Directed by Don Siegel. Starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.

The phrase “Pod People” has become part of the language, and it’s a direct reference to the 1956 original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its 1978 remake. We’ll get to that remake later in the tournament, but tonight we’re going to look at the original science fiction/horror classic.

McCarthy stars as Miles Bennell, a simple doctor from the fictional California town of Santa Mira. Early in the picture, he encounters several people who claim that their loved ones have been replaced with exact duplicates. They look and sound like their friends and relatives, but they are completely without emotion. Bennell tries to get them in touch with the town psychiatrist, but by the time they can set up an appointment, these people claim that everything is now fine and there’s no need.

You’re probably familiar with the general premise of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Alien spores have landed on earth. When they sprout, they replicate nearby human lifeforms, replacing the original version. Then the new human duplicates work to plant more pods and replace more people. These doppelgängers have no emotion and are driven pretty much only to make more pod people. Pretty soon, the entire town except for Bennell and the pretty young divorcée Becky Driscoll (Wynter), have been replaced. The two of them go on the run to preserve their individuality and warn the world with the pod people in hot pursuit.

Director Don Siegel always insisted that he never made “message” pictures and that if you read anything into his films that was on you. That’s pretty rich from someone’s whose masterpiece was the very good and very fascist original Dirty Harry (1971) movie, but that’s the way he saw himself and his movies.

Despite that, people have been reading themes into Body Snatchers since it was released. The most obvious one is the forced conformity of the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Siegel and star McCarthy both insisted that the film was meant to be non-political, even if Siegel sort-of admitted that political commentary was in the original novel, but that he had tried to remove it in favor of a more psychological approach for the movie.

Still, whatever the creators intentions were, the fear of a creeping totalitarianism is there. Others have seen Body Snatchers as a commentary on the monocultural conformity of Eisenhower’s America. The “pod people” insist that the way of conformity is the way of peace and happiness, but the real horror here comes from the loss of individuality. There were many beatniks and the like in 1956 who would have agreed.

Siegel was a director loved by studios and producers because of his economical approach to both the plot and the budget. This style works well in Body Snatchers because it moves the plot along quickly and efficiently. There are no extra scenes in there to set the mood or theme. Siegel also had a film noir background and certainly brought in the kinds of lighting and camera angels common to that genre. Music director Carmen Dragon had some experience with film scores, but he was mostly a radio guy and and the musical score pushes the plot along like it would in a radio play. There’s not much subtle about Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Siegel would take me calling it “simple but effective” as a compliment.

Siegel and producer Walter Wanger were forced into one superfluous sequence because the studio’s insistence that the film was too depressing. There’s an added framing device where Bennell is in police custody at the start of the movie, insisting that all this is real and turning the entire main body of the film into a flashback. Then Bennell is proven sane in the final scene, causing the police to spring into action. Both Wanger and Siegel were against this change, but since Siegel always thought “Hey, this isn’t art” (even though it often was), they agreed to the change to get the film released.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers was indicted in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 1994. Even today, its general plot of people being replaced by unfeeling clones continues to find its way into other works. The same can be said for its portrait of the horror of forced conformity.

Here is the trailer for Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers can be seen on MGM+ or on The Roku Channel free with ads. There’s also a copy on DailyMotion.

Now it’s time to vote.

You have until Monday to vote. Next up is our silent movie matchup with Metropolis (1927) and A Trip to the Moon (1902). Both films are in the public domain so you should have no problem finding them. Also, A Trip to the Moon is only 14 minutes long, so you have no excuse not to watch it.

Welcome back to those who skipped the above.

However, just because Imanaga is a free agent doesn’t mean that he won’t play for the Cubs in 2026. For one, the Cubs have the option of offering Imanaga a qualifying offer of just over $22 million. Most players decline such offers and Kyle Tucker most certainly will when the Cubs offer one to him.

But the same reasons the Cubs declined Imanaga’s three-year option might argue that Imanaga should accept a qualifying offer. For one, Imanaga is 32 years old and was very poor down the stretch. His fastball was down almost a full mile per hour in 2024, going from 91.7 in 2024 to 90.8 last year. The Cubs didn’t even dare start him in the decisive Game 5 against Milwaukee, even though he would have been on a full four-days rest. Instead, they went with a bullpen game that didn’t really matter because the Cubs only scored one run anyways. Imanaga could accept the one-year, $22 million deal and go back on the market next season without having teams worry about losing a draft pick for signing him. He might also not end next year as poorly as he ended this one.

But some of the factors that would cause Imanaga to accept a QO make it seem questionable if the Cubs will even offer him one. While some writers think it’s a foregone conclusion that the Cubs will offer him one, Jon Heyman thinks it’s unlikely. It would seem like a no-brainer that the Cubs offer one, getting a solid pitcher and fan favorite back with no long-term commitment, but Brett Taylor brings up some good points over at Bleacher Nation:

So yeah, even a one-year, $22 million deal for Imanaga seems like a bit of an overpay in this market. Maybe it’s worth it to the Cubs. Maybe it isn’t.

But even if the Cubs decline to offer Imanaga a qualifying offer or if Imanaga rejects it, that doesn’t mean that his time with the Cubs is over. The two could work out a new deal, using the Bieber and Flaherty deals as a guide. Imanaga will certainly want more than the $15 million that he turned down. The Cubs would certainly want to pay less than what comes in a $22 million qualifying offer. So could the two sides agree on an $18 million, one-year deal? Would any other team offer him more?

That’s the real issue here, if any other team would offer more than the Cubs. One the one hand, you would think they would because starting pitching is in short supply and high demand. On the other hand, other teams saw how much Imanaga struggled at the end of the year. They also know that the Cubs need starting pitching. If the Cubs, who know more about Imanaga’s condition than my team does, don’t think he’s worth more than that, why should we stick our neck out and offer more?

So yeah, these questions are difficult. Certainly Ken Rosenthal thinks all of the signs point to the Cubs and Imanaga coming back together on a qualifying offer.

What do you think? Are the days of Shō-time at Wrigley over? Or will we have an encore in 2026?

Thank you for stopping by tonight and all week. We hope we made your week a little brighter. A big thank you to everyone who voted and especially those who commented. Please get home safely. Call a ride if you need to. Don’t forget anything you may have checked. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next time for more BCB After Dark.