REVIEW: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
I remember watching Kevin McCarthy try to run across a busy highway, dodging the grasp of the emotionless pod people back in the previous version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," which is probably the only version of the material that can laugh off the silly title as being a product of its time. On a related note, Philip Kaufman's updated version is the only treatment that can point to 1978 for justification of starring Donald Sutherland.
For all of those viewers that complain when strange movie phenomena aren't adequately explained (zombie plagues, birds attacking humans en masse, etc.) Kaufman's film throws a dollop of exposition in during the credits: space bubbles. Space bubbles, you ask? Yes, bubbles that form on an alien planet, then float upwards into space, and back down to Earth, leaving soap scum on much of San Francisco's natural landscape. The soapy residue causes Earth plants to mutate and grow strange flowery blossoms, which somehow begin to infect the populace. How do they infect the populace? I have no idea. The whole space bubble thing was kind of throwing bones to the explainists watching, and the movie doesn't really develop it further. Granted, the plot doesn't really necessitate or even allow it, but it's bound to aggravate some people.
After the (nicely done) flower mutation montage, the plot opens up with Brooke Adams and Donald Sutherland as employees of the Health Department. Adams' boyfriend, who's usually something of an ass, overnight becomes very quiet, cold, and awkward...like four years of playing D&D packed into eight hours. It seems, at least according to Leonard Nimoy's psychiatrist character, that the same feeling is striking couples all over the city: their husbands/wives/partners aren't their husbands/wives/partners anymore. I guess that would sound scarier if it didn't occur so regularly due to non-alien-plague causes such as football season, sexual dysfunction, crumbled dreams, and marijuana. Jeff Goldblum shows up, again, in a role where he explores new boundaries of neurotic paranoia in an atmosphere where they're justified for once.
As much as I enjoyed this movie, I have to come clean: it just wasn't very scary. The alien soap was kind of creepy in a biological terror kind of way, and the hopelessness of their situation was somewhat effective, but it was undercut by the fact that becoming a pod person shut up Jeff Goldblum, which only seemed to improve everything. I can give the film high marks in a lot of areas: the acting was good, the music was 1978-effective, the sound design was notably fantastic, and it had a proper ending for the plot; but the low marks go to fright and writing, which are somewhat (although not exclusively) linked. After Adams' boyfriend was 'turned,' she remarked on it with concern bordering on panic to Sutherland; except that we also saw how he was acting, and it wasn't all that bizarre, and certainly not grounds for the degree of concern with which she reacted. Sometimes I'm cranky and cold in the morning, but I don't think my girlfriend should call in the National Guard. She should make me drink coffee.
The last complaint I have is (as I was mentioning before) the weird ambiguity with which the titular invasion is accomplished. See, the pod people are always carrying around and delivering clunky, baby-sized pods -- but to where? Presumably, the pods are what the people are...uh...budding from, although pod-bodies frequently pop up from wherever's the most convenient for the script, pod or not. It starts off with a tiny red flower being the infection carrier, but that's abandoned in favor of the pods, and then that's abandoned for contrived scares. I can stretch my imagination enough to see why these things are in place; being able to get converted anywhere at anytime gives the characters reason to never fall asleep, which is a reliable tension-building device. The flowers and possible poison are good for icky biological paranoia, and the pod-delivery gives the villains something to do other than stand around like a Rick Springfield concert. And what was the whole pod-producing factory at the end for, since it's already been well-established that they don't need pods to convert people? I don't mind being forgiving of a movie when I have to be, but when there are cheap tricks and constant rule-bending, it gets me more aggravated than Jeff Goldblum in a Transport-O-Pod.
This movie's got a lot of good stuff going for it, and it's definitely worth a scare or two. Unfortunately, it's only one or two.
ARE YOU ASTONISHED?
For all of those viewers that complain when strange movie phenomena aren't adequately explained (zombie plagues, birds attacking humans en masse, etc.) Kaufman's film throws a dollop of exposition in during the credits: space bubbles. Space bubbles, you ask? Yes, bubbles that form on an alien planet, then float upwards into space, and back down to Earth, leaving soap scum on much of San Francisco's natural landscape. The soapy residue causes Earth plants to mutate and grow strange flowery blossoms, which somehow begin to infect the populace. How do they infect the populace? I have no idea. The whole space bubble thing was kind of throwing bones to the explainists watching, and the movie doesn't really develop it further. Granted, the plot doesn't really necessitate or even allow it, but it's bound to aggravate some people.
After the (nicely done) flower mutation montage, the plot opens up with Brooke Adams and Donald Sutherland as employees of the Health Department. Adams' boyfriend, who's usually something of an ass, overnight becomes very quiet, cold, and awkward...like four years of playing D&D packed into eight hours. It seems, at least according to Leonard Nimoy's psychiatrist character, that the same feeling is striking couples all over the city: their husbands/wives/partners aren't their husbands/wives/partners anymore. I guess that would sound scarier if it didn't occur so regularly due to non-alien-plague causes such as football season, sexual dysfunction, crumbled dreams, and marijuana. Jeff Goldblum shows up, again, in a role where he explores new boundaries of neurotic paranoia in an atmosphere where they're justified for once.
As much as I enjoyed this movie, I have to come clean: it just wasn't very scary. The alien soap was kind of creepy in a biological terror kind of way, and the hopelessness of their situation was somewhat effective, but it was undercut by the fact that becoming a pod person shut up Jeff Goldblum, which only seemed to improve everything. I can give the film high marks in a lot of areas: the acting was good, the music was 1978-effective, the sound design was notably fantastic, and it had a proper ending for the plot; but the low marks go to fright and writing, which are somewhat (although not exclusively) linked. After Adams' boyfriend was 'turned,' she remarked on it with concern bordering on panic to Sutherland; except that we also saw how he was acting, and it wasn't all that bizarre, and certainly not grounds for the degree of concern with which she reacted. Sometimes I'm cranky and cold in the morning, but I don't think my girlfriend should call in the National Guard. She should make me drink coffee.
The last complaint I have is (as I was mentioning before) the weird ambiguity with which the titular invasion is accomplished. See, the pod people are always carrying around and delivering clunky, baby-sized pods -- but to where? Presumably, the pods are what the people are...uh...budding from, although pod-bodies frequently pop up from wherever's the most convenient for the script, pod or not. It starts off with a tiny red flower being the infection carrier, but that's abandoned in favor of the pods, and then that's abandoned for contrived scares. I can stretch my imagination enough to see why these things are in place; being able to get converted anywhere at anytime gives the characters reason to never fall asleep, which is a reliable tension-building device. The flowers and possible poison are good for icky biological paranoia, and the pod-delivery gives the villains something to do other than stand around like a Rick Springfield concert. And what was the whole pod-producing factory at the end for, since it's already been well-established that they don't need pods to convert people? I don't mind being forgiving of a movie when I have to be, but when there are cheap tricks and constant rule-bending, it gets me more aggravated than Jeff Goldblum in a Transport-O-Pod.
This movie's got a lot of good stuff going for it, and it's definitely worth a scare or two. Unfortunately, it's only one or two.
ARE YOU ASTONISHED?
- Keifer was not the first Sutherland to pull an all-nighter for the greater good.
- The homeless man and his dog: isn't this kind of cross-breeding just open to a lot of logical issues? I mean, it's neat and all, but wouldn't this open the doors to Brooke Adams being a woman/weed hybrid? And Donald Sutherland being a man/moustache creature? It's wrong, all wrong!
- Further proof that Leonard Nimoy was born to play an alien.
- All right, so we've got space bubbles. And they float up, slowly, from the alien planet -- okay. And then they float gently down into our atmosphere, suffering nary an ill effect? They must be pretty durable after all those milennia space-bubbling through a vacuum, I suppose, although that makes me wonder why they continue to search for new life forms to take over if they're already virtually indestructable and cognizant. Maybe ennui.
sent by The Retropolitan at 6:25 PM
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