Invasion Of The Body Snatchers [DVD] [1978]

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (IOTBS) is a well-paced and highly creepy sci-fi thriller which has not really aged since it's initial release back in 1978.

This was perhaps not the best year to release a movie entitled 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. Star Wars was still filling the cinemas a year after its release, and the big-budget remake of Superman was released at around the same time, while IOTBS was initially perceived as another shaky 1950's remake.

However, IOTBS is a genunely edgy, frightening film that has been critically under-rated for many years. The lead performances from Sutherland, Adams, Goldblum, Cartwright and Nimoy are excellent, and we have genuine sympathy for each of the characters involved as the unseen, parasitical alien forces close-in on them one by one. You will not 'sleep' easily after seeing this, so to speak.

Director Kaufmann accurately portrays an unsettling undercurrent of 1970's urban paranoia in the setting of San Francisco, and almost parodies the needless psychotherapy undertaken by millions of American's during this period, in a country not completely at ease with itself in the first place.

There is little in way of gore, although what shocks do occur are effectively dealt with,with creepy camera angles which shows a weak society slowly and unconsciously surrendering to superior extraterrestrial forces, which manifest themselves in an unlikely yet frighteningly realistic manner. The depressing, final scene with Veronica Cartwright and Donald Sutherland is one of the most haunting endings of all time. Overall, this comes highly recommended.

Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of the few remakes that genuinely both compliments and adds to its predecessor - indeed, it's as much of a sequel to the 1956 classic as it is an updating (original star Kevin McCarthy actually crashes into the film to briefly reprise his role while director Don Siegel cameos as a suspicious cab driver). It's smart and entertaining with both a stylistic edge and the substance underneath to back it up. It's all the more impressive for its strong sense of time and place, imposing unnatural events onto an already alienated city environment that is completely credible. Updated to the 70s and the Me Generation and its attendant anxieties, it both plays on post-Watergate paranoia and the growing feeling of alienation paralysing people and their emotions long before any real aliens appeared, something the move from small town America to the big city only emphasises. It's a place where Leonard Nimoy's psychiatrist can rationalise people's fears that their friends and family aren't themselves until it's too late, where people's everyday distrust is so natural that even they think they're being paranoid. Only, of course, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you...

It's a surprisingly mature and complex film, the emotional pitch and relationships rising at the same time the characters need to hide them the most. Kaufman's direction, an excellent use of sound and silence and Michael Chapman's superb cinematography combining perfectly to create a world going subtly but increasingly askew, throwing in some curiously offbeat images like a cameoing Robert Duvall's priest joylessly going back and forth on a swing that tip you off from the start that there's something wrong with this picture. It's beautifully cast too, with Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright and Jeff Goldblum making convincingly flawed, sometimes antagonistic but very believable humans you can root for and Nimoy playing off his Spock image as the psychiatrist who proposes opening up to emotions when he's really shutting them off. The script, too, is such a model of economy in explaining the nature both of the pods and the mechanics of their `invasion' whilst providing witty and believably human characterisation within a strong narrative rich in subtext that it makes you wonder whether it's the same W.D. Richter who wrote Buckeroo Banzai...

There are a couple of missteps - one terrible shock makeup effect and a misjudged moment of panic from one of the pod people - but with so much else so perfectly, chillingly right about the film they're easy to forgive. One of the very best films of the 70s - and that ending is still a real shocker!

The Region 2 DVD boasts a good 1.85:1 widescreen transfer with a good f sometimes vague audio commentary by Kaufman and the original trailer, but it's worth looking out for the Region 1 NTSC special edition which adds some featurettes to the mix.

I recently saw the re-make of this film starring Nicole Kidman, which was not as bad as reviewers would have you believe, but in comparison to this masterpeice of horror, starring Donald Sutherland, really is trash.

The paranoia and suspension in the film are captured particularly well. The horror is created, not by gore and sharp shocks, but by the constant atmosphere of things going wrong and the sense of impending doom. Donald Sutherland acts particularly well and you feel his struggle to escape to the bitter end.

The final scene is probably one of the finest ever captured by film, but be warned, it will not make you feel good.

Absolutely wonderful. A cinematic masterpiece