One of the most iconic sci-fi horror films ever made, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is rather better than it had any right to be. It immortalised Kevin McCarthy in his only important role as the panic-stricken man trying to convince the shrinks that he isn’t mad, that there really are aliens out there stealing and occupying the bodies of their friends and neighbours. His story is told convincingly, and it ends with McCarthy still panicking, running to the camera shrieking. “They’re here already! You’re next. You're next!” Magnificent.

Church was all about dead people. Death, death, death—the whole bloody lot of it. It wasn’t just the funerals nor the murders of saints and martyrs, nor even the obsession with crucifixion. It wasn’t just the priest who was so old and decrepit that he must have often been close to experiencing the afterlife first hand as he struggled to the end of his enthusiastic but necessarily enfeebled sermons—which were all about death and dying anyway! It wasn’t just the coldness of the tomblike atmosphere inside the church, nor the still silent zombie manner in which normally rowdy people conducted themselves when comprising a congregation. It wasn’t even my long mistaken belief that the decomposing body of Christ was actually under the drapes of the altar. It didn’t just seem to be deathlike in every way—it was all actually about death. And eventually my mind constructed it that way. What was life like after death? It was like having to spend the rest of your life in church.