When an alien attaches to one of the main characters, the creature talks through its host in a demonic voice. (The humans win by their own efforts without any reference or help from God.) The production quality and the acting performances are mediocre, as the movie fails to create the suspense and drama that it needs to make it entertaining. The humans thwart the alien attempt to overtake the world. The only positive element in the movie is that good triumphs over bad in the end. The creatures pose a threat to national security and the team sets out to eliminate them without killing the innocent human beings they have overtaken. The team soon discovers that ominous and insidious intruders, creatures that have invaded not only the planet but the minds and bodies of humans as well, are rapidly multiplying and spreading beyond the borders of that small town and even the state. If he wakes up with a nameless blonde, it's the uncut version.Donald Sutherland plays the head of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, and along with his son and a NASA scientist he is dispatched to a small town in Iowa to investigate a UFO sighting in THE PUPPET MASTERS. On the first page of the first chapter, if the narrator wakes up in bed alone, it is the original cut version.On the copyright page, the longer version may say that it is the 'first revised edition, Jan 1990.'.Since the 'original uncut' blurb soon gave way to a 'now a major motion picture' blurb (and more recent printings may not say anything at all), here are two ways to tell which version you have. The edition I remember buying around 1992 because it proclaimed it was 'the original uncut novel' had this cover art: There was no indication of this change anywhere except for a tiny notice on the copyright page and an 'original uncut' blurb on the cover. Instead, around 1990, a new printing of the mass market paperback edition in print at the time (del rey I think?) switched from the shorter to the longer text from one printing to the next.

The uncut version of Puppet Masters did not get a new hardcover edition like Stranger did. This is covered in his correspondence with his agent at the time, in Grumbles from the grave. The original novel version and the original magazine version were definitely not the same - the magazine editor made unauthorized changes, and Heinlein did not like that at all.

All printings of all editions since 1990 have been of the longer version. As far as I know, it is no longer possible to obtain the original, shorter version of the novel except from used bookstores.

The puppet masters by robert a heinlein