Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) directed by Philip Kaufman

Ok, so Invasion of the Body Snatchers has a long history… This movie is a remake of the 1956 Don Siegel (who plays the taxi driver in this version), which is an adaptation of the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, which was originally published as a serial in Colliers Magazine in 1954. Is your head spinning yet? Cuz I’m not done yet. I mean, we’ve gone back to the start, but not the end – because after the 1978 version of the film, it was remade yet again in 1993 as Body Snatchers and then once more in 2007 as The Invasion.

Synopsis:
This time the story is set in San Francisco (in comparison to the serial/novel’s Mill Valley; 1956’s Santa Mira; 1993’s Military Base in Somewhere, Alabama; and 2007’s Washington, D.C.). When Elizbeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) complains to her friend Matthew Bennett (Donald Sutherland) that her husband is being weird at her, he assumes it’s just a normal relationship issue – we’re all weird at each other sometimes, right? But… dun, dun, DUN! … That ain’t it. It turns out that some alien business fell to earth.

But now it’s growing, and changing, and that’s no good. And it’s duplicating people! AAAAAAAAH! It’s legit sucking the life out of people and replacing them with duplicate “Pod People” (don’t worry, I’ll explain this in a minute) who have all of the person’s memories intact, but none of the emotions because they aren’t people. They’re alien plants, or whatever.

My Thoughts:
You know how you sometimes hear people referred to as “pod people” when they start acting all samey-samey? Well, this story is why. Because the aliens create their duplicates inside these gooey, disgusting giant pod-things. Gross, right? I know. It’s so beautiful it brings a single. shining tear to my eye.

Ok, so this is definitely one of my all-time favorite movies. The first time I moved across the U.S. on my own, this was the only movie I took with me, so…I’ve seen it a shitload of times. And it never gets boring. Of all of the many versions of the movie I went over at the beginning of this post, this one is my favorite by a long shot. Although that’s not to say the others don’t have their merits (although I can’t speak for The Invasion because I’ve never seen it – if you have, please let me know if it’s worth finding), because this is really just an amazing story. It’s like Day of the Triffids level of fantastic.

I watched the re-scan on streaming, and it holds up almost perfectly (although there is that one “nude” PP scene where you can clearly see the nude panties where there should be no panties… This guy looks pretty good though, right? I mean, when you see it in motion *muah* perfection. I don’t think that modern special effects technology could improve much upon this film, honestly. It’s just so fucking beautiful and disgusting. Even the re-scan barely mars the magic (that’s a very real risk you run when cleanup happens – not everything needs an HD or Ultra-HD up-scan, you know?

“I keep seeing these people, all recognizing each other. Something is passing between them all, some secret. It’s a conspiracy, I know it.”

But this one really does hold up shockingly well. Even this guy looks pretty alright:

I mean, he’s a little silly, but not because of the format – more so because he’s a shitty replica of a person with a dog – he’s basically a The Fly-style alien fail. But he still works, and honestly, when you see him rolling around in the film, he’s actually pretty damned freaky. They scream, you scream, we all scream.

The whole cast is fantastic, although Donald Sutherland, as usual is the shining star – I challenge you to find someone with a better track record than this motherfucker. He’s basically the best. I mean, he has 192 acting credits to his name, and all of them are worth watching – The Puppet Masters, anyone? And the rest of the cast? No Donald Sutherlands, but still pretty damned great. To hop back onto the earlier fly reference, a young Jeff Goldblum appears as Jack Bellicec, and Veronica Cartwright is his wife Nancy, and Leonard Nimoy as pop psychiatrist Dr. Kibner. And there’s even a brief, uncredited cameo by a predictably annoyed looking Robert Duvall in a scene with the world’s most upsettingly shrieky swing set.

Things worth noting about this film:

• Don’t let the PG rating fool you – this movie is pretty fucking scary.
• It had a $3.5 million budget, but grossed nearly $25 million worldwide.
• It’s amazing, and you should be watching it right now. Stop reading and go do it – I’ll wait.

Rating:

I watched this on Hulu, but Shout Factory makes a Collector’s Edition that I’m hoping to get myself soon (I know, my list of movies I want to figure out how to buy myself is troublingly long). I think that this is actually the version Hulu has, since they have the new 2k Scan, and Hulu’s is also beautifully clear – much more so than I had ever seen it before. Additionally, the SF version has new interviews with Brook Adams, Art Hindle, screenplay writer W.D. Richter, score composer Denny Zeitlin, and audio commentary by Author and Film Historian Stever Haberman, in addition to all of the previously existing special features, which were numerous anyway – so… definitely worth the price of admission in my opinion.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Directed by: Philip Kaufman
Released December 22, 1978
United Artists
Horror, Science Fiction
Rated PG
115 Minutes