Classic Movie: Invasion of the Body Snatchers by T.E. Hodden In 1978, Director Philip Kaufman, and writer WD Richter took on the daunting task of adapting Jack Finney’s novel the Body Snatchers. The 1956 adaption, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers was generally considered as a classic piece of science fiction and horror, a cold war allegory for the “Reds under the bed” scare, that eschewed hokey monster effects (give or take the odd fiberglass pod plant) in favour of paranoia and distrust. Kaufman hadn’t read the novel before embarking on the project, but was an avid fan of the older movie. Recognising that a key factor in both the novel and movie was the way the small -city setting (Mill Valley California in the novel, renamed for the movie, but essentially the same place) was portrayed with a intimate familiarity, he chose to transplant the action not only to the present, but to San Francisco, a city he loved, and could portray in the same manner. Richter’s script was a masterpiece, efficiently dropping in the daily lives of Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) and Matthew Bennell,(a top form Donald Sutherland) two Health Department investigators, and the tangle of friends surrounding them, in a way that got us quickly used to the status quo, and Driscoll’s straining relationship with her dentist boyfriend, while odd events slowly bubble away in the background, before the boyfriend rolls out of bed one morning a cold and distant, apparently the same man on the surface, but oddly threatening beneath the veneer.
As they begin to investigate, they find themselves targets of the conspiracy, and uncover a connection to the strange plants parasitic flowers that have attached themselves to plants throughout the city.
When Driscoll and Bennell try to file witness reports on a shocking hit and run, they realise the death (watched by a group of oddly silent passers by) was covered up, and become aware of a growing pandemic of citizens claiming their closest family, friends, and love ones have changed, or been replaced.
Visually, the film is a very bleak, grimy, kind of beautiful. The San Francisco of the movie is a world away from the vibrant and picturesque bay that Hollywood usually portrays. It ignores the iconic hills and tramways with their wonderful boutique stylings, that have been a thumbnail sketch of the city in countless movies, in favour of rain-washed government buildings, and a litter strewn city centre, with the characters living in corners of the city that feel far more typical of daily life. - 47 -
