Two decades following its debut, the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers saw its reputation elevated from a cheesy B-movie to a respected science-fiction classic. What Hollywood saw in that was an opportunity for a remake. Of course, the inherent irony of remaking a famous story about evil clone duplicates practically begs for dismissive comparisons between the two. Would the new Body Snatchers be a soulless Pod Person copy of the original?
In spite of that challenge, director Philip Kaufman’s 1978 adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is often regarded among the best movie remakes, and even in some eyes (mine included) superior to its source. The smartest decision Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter made was that their version would not be a direct, beat-for-beat copy of the original. Fortunately for them, the Body Snatchers premise provided enough fertile ground to update the story and themes for the needs of a new era and a new audience.
| Title: | Invasion of the Body Snatchers |
| Year of Release: | 1978 |
| Director: | Philip Kaufman |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Available On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray MGM+ Hoopla Kanopy PlutoTV Roku Channel Tubi Apple TV (VOD purchase or rental) |
As a sign of the remake’s larger scope and budget, the story has been moved from the fictional small town of Santa Mira, California to the very real metropolis of San Francisco. While many of the details have been changed around, at least the broad strokes of the plot follow a similar outline. Donald Sutherland stars as Dr. Matthew Bennell, a somewhat dickish Department of Health inspector who takes just a little too much glee power-tripping in his authority to shut down restaurants for sanitation violations. Brooke Adams is his co-worker and unrequited love interest, Elizabeth Driscoll, who’s among the first to notice a strange phenomenon overtaking the city when her boyfriend Geoffrey (Art Hindle) begins acting very out of character all of a sudden – almost as if Geoffrey weren’t himself at all, but a different person inhabiting Geoffrey’s body.
Matthew thinks Elizabeth is just having relationship problems and has either imagined or exaggerated Geoffrey’s weird behavior in her mind. He advises her to speak to a friend, Dr. David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), a successful psychiatrist who’s just published a popular self-help book. Unfortunately, Kibner is a smug ass and extremely full of himself, and doesn’t listen to Elizabeth at all, even though he’s heard similar stories from several other patients. He chalks the coincidence up to a “hallucinatory flu” and mass hysteria.
Before long, however, Matthew, Elizabeth, and an additional pair of friends (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright) discover the truth that San Francisco has been invaded by a plant-like species from outer space capable of replicating exact copies of human bodies. Grown from seed pods, these doppelgangers even absorb their hosts’ memories, but destroy the original while it sleeps and have a decidedly malicious intent to spread across the globe. As they desperately try to escape the city and warn the world about what’s happening, Bennell and company find that the authorities have already been compromised and no one will help them.
Less a direct retelling of either the 1956 film or the underlying source novel by author Jack Finney, Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers is more a variation on the theme. Whereas the original story was a reflection of its era’s anxieties about social conformity and the hysteria around imagined Communist infiltration, the remake fits nicely into the 1970s paranoid conspiracy thriller genre next to movies like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View – stories in which all the institutions and safeguards that are supposed to protect us have been hopelessly corrupted from within, and no one can be trusted, not even those we think are our friends.
In other regards, the 1978 Body Snatchers does everything a good remake is supposed to do. The film keeps all the parts that worked the first time around while updating the ones that didn’t. Its larger budget allows for better production values and special effects than the B-movie original. No disrespect to either star Kevin McCarthy or director Don Siegel (both of whom cameo briefly in this one), but the performances by Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, and the rest are also more grounded and less hammy or melodramatic. Philip Kaufman builds an incredibly unnerving sense of tension and suspense throughout. It’s truly a hell of a movie all around, and for my money, easily the best of the four official adaptations of this story to date.
The Blu-ray
The 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been released on Blu-ray a few times. In the United States, MGM put out the first Blu-ray edition in 2010, followed by Scream Factory in 2016. Most recently, Kino Lorber licensed the rights and issued the movie on both Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD in 2021. As it turns out, rather than any of those, I wound up with a copy from Arrow Video that first hit retail in the UK in 2013. I believe I acquired it during a sale on the Arrow web site.
The Arrow Blu-ray is locked to Region B, which is mildly frustrating but not a huge problem for me. The keepcase has reversible cover art. One side has a somewhat gaudy Pop Art spin on one of the most famous (if also spoiler-y) images from the movie, while the other is the movie’s traditional poster art. I favor the latter.
In February 2024, Arrow released its own 4K Ultra HD edition of the 1978 Body Snatchers. Thus far, I have resisted the urge to upgrade. While I won’t rule out the possibility that 4K resolution and HDR might offer some meaningful improvement to the movie’s imagery, the Arrow Blu-ray has a very good transfer that still holds up pretty well. The photography for this particular film is also quite grainy at times, and I fear this might likely be a case where 4K would only serve to exaggerate the grain even further, making it intrusive and distracting beyond anything that would have been seen on a theatrical print during the original release. For me, the Blu-ray strikes an acceptable compromise that stops short of going too far in that regard.
In other respects, the Blu-ray’s 1.85:1 image is decently sharp, accepting the fact that the photography also has a fair amount of soft focus and mist filters. Colors are very solid. Black levels sometimes appear elevated, but I’m inclined to believe that’s another inherent trait and not a transfer flaw.
The movie’s soundtrack comes in a choice of DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or PCM 2.0. As is typical for Arrow, the disc defaults to the 2.0 option. I nevertheless mostly focused on the 5.1. The 1978 Body Snatchers has a fascinating sound design filled with many bizarre and unsettling noises, and an intentionally discordant musical score. Even in 5.1, the mix is mostly front-focused, though it has some very effective use of the surround channels on occasion, including the aural montage at about 1hr. 6 min. into the film. The track is not especially aggressive with dynamic range, but has a little bit of throbbing bass from time to time, and fidelity is very good overall.
Bonus features new (at the time) to Arrow consist of a panel discussion with critic Kim Newman and filmmakers Ben Wheatley (Free Fire) and Norman J. Warren (Inseminoid), an interview with film historian Annette Insdorf, and a biography of original Body Snatchers author Jack Finney. Those recycled from earlier home video releases include an audio commentary by Philip Kaufman, four featurettes, and a trailer.
Related
- Body Snatchers
- W.D. Richter (screenwriter) + Jeff Goldblum (star)
- Jeff Goldblum
- Leonard Nimoy
- Alien Takeover Theme
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