Review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
A funky, flaky, sensual little masterpiece. Its understandable that horror remakes have such a bad name but ironic that most of the really notable ones of the last 30 years have, in fact, been remakes. This transplants the 50s story and movie (a sturdy little number directed by Eastwood mentor Don Siegel) to San Francisco in the 1970s, and updates the original’s “the Reds are coming!” paranoia to the universal urge to be hip, to medicate one’s problems away, the it’s all cool baby generation. (The fact that one of the first pod people is played by Mr. Spock is a general indicator of the movie’s blitzed sense of humor).
Seldom has a filmmaker, upon intial inspection, been at greater odds with a picture’s sensibility than Philip Kauffman, who went on to be known for grand, sensual epics (The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “Henry and June”). The divide pays off though, and you can sense his eventual interests and themes in, yes, this remake of a twenty year old alien invasion movie. The film has a beauty, a texture, a build that’s practically unheard of in the genre, and it culminates in an unbearably long, pod people invasion in a back yard that may make you queasy with its dreamy rape overtones.
The film does meander a bit in the final third, and it’s a bit disappointing that something so good turn into a more routine (though still effective) chase movie, but these are little problems, nitpicks. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the definitve treatment of this material, and one of the great horror movies of the last thirty years.
-Bowen
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