Jack Bellicec | |
Notability: | Supporting character |
Type: | Business owner |
Gender: | Male |
Race: | Body snatcher |
Location: | San Francisco, California |
Relatives: | Nancy Bellicec [1] |
Status: | Deceased |
Born: | 1952 [2] |
Died: | 1978 |
First: | Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) |
Actor: | Jeff Goldblum |
Jack Bellicec is a fictional business owner and a supporting character featured in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers by director Philip Kaufman. He was played by actor Jeff Goldblum.
Biography[]
Jack Bellicec was a struggling poet and the co-owner of the Bellicec Mud Baths spa along with his wife Nancy. He was an acquaintence of celebrity psychiatrist Doctor David Kibner, but the two rarely saw eye to eye. In fact, he regarded Kibner's latest self-help book as "pure garbage".
In 1978, Jack and Nancy were working late at the spa when they discovered a strange body lying inside one of the booths. It was covered with a transluscent, slimy substance with white tendrils and its features vaguely resembled those of Jack. Immediately upon seeing it, Jack's nose began to bleed. They contacted their close friend Matthew Bennell who came over to analyze the body. Jack noted that the thing lacked any fingerprints, as if it were an undeveloped fetus. A short time later, the body disappeared.
He quickly discovered that an alien spore had come to Earth and were producing plant-like pods from which were spawned clone doppelgängers of living people. Once the "pod people" were fully developed, the person from which they were copied would die. With each passing hour, every person in San Francisco was being subverted and replaced with an alien-spawned duplicate.
Jack's changeling disappeared shortly after its discovery, but another one began to grow the following evening as Jack and Nancy slept at Matthew's place. Sleeping served as a catalyst for the pod's growth cycle, but could be interrupted if the subject awakened prior to the duplicate reaching maturity. Jack and the others woke up before their pod clones were fully formed and fled from Matthew's house.
As they raced through the streets, they came to find that the pod people had taken control of the police and set up barricades throughout the city. Jack decided to create a diversion and draw the pod people's attention, enabling Nancy and the others time to escape. Jack paid for his heroism with his life however and he was soon supplanted and replaced by a pod person.
Jack's changeling joined up with Doctor Kibnder, who was also a changeling, and captured Matthew and his friend, Elizabeth Driscoll. They gave them a sedative so that they would fall asleep and thus prompt the growth of a duplicate. The two fought back and Matthew stabbed Jack in the back of the neck with darts, killing him, and sealed David inside of a freezer.
Notes & Trivia[]
- Jack spends the film wearing US Army fatigues which have his name printed on. As Jeff Goldblum was 26 when the film was made, it's likely that Jack had served in the Vietnam War.
See also[]
External Links[]
References[]
- ↑ Wife. Status unknown, though likely deceased.
- ↑ Date of birth approximated based on the age of actor Jeff Goldblum.