Classic Movie: Invasion of the Body Snatchers by T.E. Hodden

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.

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.

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.

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.

While we are engrossed with the mystery in the foreground, and the wonderful chemistry between the main characters (Sutherland and Adams’ unspoken history, Jeff Goldblum’s jealous rivalry with the more successful and popular Leonard Nimoy, Veronica Cartwright’s long suffering marriage to Goldblum, and endless patience with the customers at her downmarket spa), the background is full of small hints and details of the plot that the characters don’t even know to look out for yet.

When they encounter Goldblum’s half formed double, and deduce the nature of the pod people leeching away the life of their subjects in their sleep, they know to look for the fibrous remnants of the ‘birth’, but eagle eyed viewers would have spotted more and more of the grey hairy masses, piling up in the litter, and being quickly removed by binmen, throughout the movie. Likewise, the alien flowers are forever in the background, colonising trees and plants.

As the characters struggle to avoid sleep, and grow ever more exhausted, we feel every ounce of not only their fears, but their doubts, their dismay, their gruelling frustration as they try to rally a response from the government, and spiral towards their confrontation with the true scale of the invasion.

Carefully crafted performances make the characters, both as themselves and their alien counterparts, utterly convincing. Nemoy’s promise that once they fall asleep, once the change happens they will be content, is heartfelt, endearing, and all the more terrifying for it.

The final stages of the film, when the city is full of doppelgangers sleepwalking through the city, playing at life without enthusiasm or any sign of emotion, are deeply disconcerting. In the novel it is clear that the pod people are sterile, and will not reproduce. The population will wither and die away in a few decades, and the alien seeds will simply take to the stars once more, drifting on to the next planet, to the next host society, leaving an extinction in their wake. Here this is expressed by a society that is itself sterile and lifeless. The pod people exist, but they don’t live. To survive post invasion, to pass unnoticed in their ranks, you will condemn yourself to a life without any of the qualities of being alive.

Throughout the movie there are nice nods to the original, that don’t distract from the plot, or atmosphere, and don’t diminish the story if they go unnoticed, but are nice little Easter eggs for those who spot them. The hit and run victim is Kevin McCarthy, apparently reprising his role as Miles Bennell from the fifties movie, still trying to warn people of the looming threat. The original’s director, Don Siegal is a briefly glimpsed taxi driver.

Of course, the one image everybody who has seen the film will remember is that terrifying final shock, the last reel revelation that is a world away from the hopeful victory of the book, or the ominous predictions of the fifties movie. The movie was made in an era when scifi movies tended towards bleak and devastating twists at the end. In one perfectly framed shot, one master stroke of performance from Sutherland and Cartwright, puts all those others to shame, and hits you like a wrecking ball.

The rest of the movie is already amazing, but that final shot?

That is perfect.

That is why this is a classic.

T.E. Hodden trained in engineering and works in a specialized role in the transport industry. He is a life long fan of comic books, science fiction, myths, legends, and history. In the past he has contributed to podcasts, blogs, and anthologies.

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