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| Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 117 |
| Public Rating: 7.20 (75 votes) |
Director: Philip Kaufman |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Horror/Science Fiction |
Year: 1978 |
| Writer(s): W.D. Richter, Jack Finney (Novel) |
| Distributor: MGM/United Artists |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Elizabeth Driscoll: I have seen these flowers all over. They are growing like parasites on other plants. All of a sudden. Where are they coming from?
Nancy Bellicec: Outer space?
Jack Bellicec: What are you talking about? A space flower?
Nancy Bellicec: Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?
Jack Bellicec: I've NEVER expected metal ships.
Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers portrays a bleak, conspiracy-ridden world, a world of misplaced identities and jarring disorientation (a perfect reflection of the end point of the “Me Decade” and the aftermath of Watergate). Through a science fiction/horror storyline, solid pacing, and the cinematography by Michael Chapman (Primal Fear, The Fugitive, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Hardcore, The Last Waltz), Kaufman builds a creeping sense of paranoia and claustrophobia, in effect turning the familiar and the known into the unfamiliar and unknown. What’s missing from the remake is the original’s narrative economy (it runs less than ninety minutes to almost two hours for the remake), but only hardcore fans of the original will find that a problem here.
Philip Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, Big Trouble in Little China) switch the setting from a fictitious California town of Santa Maria to San Francisco. In Jack Finney’s novel and the 1956 adaptation, disorientation, isolation, alienation and paranoia were linked to the conversion of family members, friends, and acquaintances into something less than human. The town doctor hero, initially suspects that a mass hallucination has overcome his small, sleepy town (that is, until his close friends and ex-girlfriend begin to make a similar claim about their loved ones).
As in the first adaptation, the pods can duplicate any life form, beginning with the local plant life. Elizabeth Driscoll (Brook Adams), a biologist for the Department of Public Health, inadvertently discovers the pods in flower form. Driscoll brings the flower home with her. She shares a home with Geoffrey Howell (Art Hindle), a self-absorbed dentist. She leaves the flower in water on a nightstand in her bedroom. The next morning, Elizabeth spots and oddly distracted Geoffrey sweeping up grey fluff from the floor next to their bed.
At work, Elizabeth runs into a co-worker, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland). From the first moment they meet, it’s obvious that Bennell is clearly besotted with the oblivious Elizabeth. Bennell begins in rationalist, non-disbeliever mode. Despite signs of an outbreak, Bennell refuses to accept something is amiss. Instead, he falls back on obtaining a psychological explanation, and the help of his friend, pop psychologist and celebrity author, David Kidner (Leonard Nimoy). Kidner complains about the moral disintegration of families and intimate relationships and connects Elizabeth’s doubts about her lover’s identity to the fluid, commitment-free relationships between men and women in the late 1970s.
Jack (Jeff Goldblum) Nancy (Veronica Cartwright) Bellicec, commercial mud bath owners, find a body in a mud bath. The body could be mistaken for Jack’s twin. They call Bennell for help. Convinced that something’s amiss, Bennell races to save a sleeping Elizabeth from the pods. Bennell’s attempts to find help or convince anyone else about the pods prove futile. Finding a way out of San Francisco also seems unlikely. But as much as the pod people look and act like us, they also lack the capacity to feel. one double promises that Bennell and the others will be “born again into an untroubled world, free of anxiety, fear, and hate.”
Although the remake hits most of the same story and character beats of the original, Kaufman uses the new setting, an entire city turned against the main characters, to create tension, suspense, and a creeping, enveloping sense of dread. As Bennell walks through the now unfamiliar city, scrambling from phone booth to phone booth, attempting to contact someone, anyone, who can help him. Kaufman and his cinematographer, Michael Chapman, use wide-angle lens, low camera angles, and a handheld camera to subtly convey Bennell’s growing panic and isolation. Later, Kaufman and Chapman rely on long shadows, silhouettes, and large, featureless crowds to suggest an entire city converted over to the pod people.
Kaufman also decided to keep special effects to a minimum, but when he dug into the special effects toolbox, the results are memorably disquieting. In one key scene, the characters fall asleep. Nearby, pods give birth to their doubles, complete with oozing, organic material. Sometimes even the simplest practical effect can work on you to create fear and dread. Kaufman adds one new element that’s both memorable and disquieting, the repeated presence red garbage trucks that arrive at odd hours ostensibly to remove the grey fluff brought outside by the pod people. As in the original, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, the unfamiliar becomes lethal. It’s an invasion that arrives one pod at a time.
© Mel Valentin, 19th January, 2005
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