In the beginning of the movie Miles, the main character, starts to notice that something is wrong. First he notices the closing down of a very prosperous vegetable stand. Miles wonders, "that closed-up vegetable stand should have told me something . . . less than a month ago it was the cleanest and busiest stand on the road." Miles also notices something peculiar when he goes out to his favorite restaurant and it is empty. Both of these events represent the abandonment of capitalism, an absence of entrepreneurship and the want of luxury, respectfully.
Miles stays skeptical even though the evidence mounts. The town has been infiltrated and people, who in the past had been very rational in thought, start making accusations that their family members are not the people they've known. One distraught niece claims that her uncle isn't her uncle, but that "there is no difference you can actually see. He looks, acts, sounds, and remembers just like Uncle Ira." In America at the time of the Red Scare people were even starting to suspect family members of being spies. In the movie, unlike real life, this is justified.
More than an explanation for the Red Scare the movie is a defense of the extreme actions taken by the communist witch-hunters of the 1950's. Miles' suspicions are justified and before long the whole town is turned into pod people, or in other words, commies. The pod people are made out to be just like the American stereotype of communists. There was no variation among them. The town had become a place "where everyone's the same." A forced equality that sacrifices individualism.
Another American stereotype of the day was that all communists acted cold-heartedly. "There is no emotion, none, just the pretense of it," cries Miles. Communists were also seen to be back stabbers that would jump when you were the most vulnerable, as with what happens to Miles' girlfriend, "a moment of sleep had been death to her soul."
We can see the most prevalent fears of American society, at that time, in the story and goals of the pod people. The fear of nuclear weapons is shown by the fact that the pods supposedly emerged from seeds, the seeds of communism, that came from a comet [the sky]. Miles expresses his horror that the town could be devastated from above. "So that's how it began, out of the sky." The pod people were also seen to be very ambitious in achieving their goal, absolute domination. Relentlessly and patiently, one by one they were taking over the neighboring towns. When this happened in Asia we called it the domino theory.
Let us not lose sight of the fact that this is a good old American horror flick. The good guys have to win. In the original, and later censored version Miles was seen as a nut futilely telling everybody these ridiculous stories about invaders from outer space, just as the communist hunters of the day were sometimes viewed. But only when Miles finally makes everyone believe him, (in the second, altered and politically correct version,) does the country become aware of the threat to its freedom and is able to defend itself. ‘Soft on communism' liberals are metaphorically criticized for almost letting the pod people/communist win, and once and for all, McCarthyism is justified: "Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us."
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