Invasion of the Body Snatchers

 Dir: Philip Kaufman/USA/1978/115 mins/Dolby stereo

Lps: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum

It has always been a basic fact of the film business that remakes of classic films always tend to be a disappointment. Nevertheless every year the hope for an exception keeps them coming out. Don Siegel's 1955 B-movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers almost immediately became a classic science fiction movie of the 50s, picking up on the mood of the Cold War and Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist witch-trials; however its economy and insidious sense of paranoia are almost totally lost in Philip Kaufman's 70's remake.

Whereas the original film made a virtue out of the claustrophobia of close-knit small-town community, accentuating the fear of conspiracy, the update moves the action to the bustle of San Francisco. Nevertheless the basic idea is still there, as two people notice how all their friends and relatives begin to change, somehow losing emotions and expressive feeling. Gradually they realise that some unknown power is replacing humanity with cold, logical clones, born out of large pod-like plants, a force against which they seem unable to resist.

Despite its faults, the film has some major virtues. The possibilities for special effects are developed without being extravagant, whilst the script has somewhat more depth and wit than the 1955 movie. Indeed there is a nice gesture towards the earlier version in the opening sequence, as Kevin McCarthy, the original lead, screams his unheard warning through the windscreen of a taxi driven by Don Siegel, the original director. There may not be the horror of the undermining of small-town human values, but, a movie of the late 70s and 80s, Invasion of the Body Snatchers picks up on the more contemporary paranoia of the isolation within the big city, the loss of trust from being hemmed in by thousands of complete strangers. 

ML

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