By Douglas Wood
June 2, 2025
Rated PG
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and YouTube
Arguably, the scariest moment in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining doesn’t involve ghosts or an ax-wielding Jack Nicholson. It’s the moment when Wendy (Shelley Duvall) discovers that the novel her husband has been slaving over at his typewriter is nothing more than reams of pages with “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typed over and over. Wendy realizes the man she’s married to is no longer someone she knows.
This kind of psychological horror informs the 1978 remake of the 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both based on the 1955 novel, The Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney. The remake, brilliantly directed by Philip Kaufman, explores what happens when viscous seeds from space rain down upon San Francisco, ultimately turning people into soulless zombies devoid of human emotion. The doppelgangers increase in number, taking over the city, making its citizens wonder if their family, friends and neighbors are who they claim to be.
The eerie title sequence shows us the origin of the malevolent takeover. Parasitic seeds (presumably an alien race) latch onto earth’s plants; the resulting pink blossoms grow flower pods that, as we later see, develop into replicas of people as they sleep. The host bodies dry up and are carted away by fully-formed “pod people” in garbage trucks.
Elizabeth Driscoll is the first human character we meet who suspects all is not well in Frisco. As played by Brooke Adams (Days of Heaven), Elizabeth is a quirky lab tech for the Health Department with a playful sense of humor. (She can wildly spin her pupils, something those pesky pod people will never be able to replicate.) Unaware of their danger, Elizabeth brings home one of the ominous pink flowers and the following morning her live-in boyfriend, Geoffrey, acts uncharacteristically vacant and remote. She shares her observation with her colleague and close friend, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a health inspector who delights in differentiating capers from rat turds at fine restaurants in the city.
Initially, Matthew suspects Elizabeth is simply having domestic problems–he disapproves of Geoffrey, whom he deems not worthy of Elizabeth, the woman he himself is in love with. Matthew recommends she see his friend, Dr. David Kibner, a pop-psychiatrist and New Age author of best-selling self-help books. In a startling scene that takes place on the way to Kibner’s book party, Matthew and Elizabeth encounter an hysterical man pursued by a mob who, in a bit of inspired stunt casting, is played by the star of the original 1956 film, Kevin McCarthy. “They’re coming! They’re coming! Listen to me! You’re next!” he shouts before getting hit by a car. The mob, impassive and expressionless, surrounds his dead body. At the bookstore, Kibner (played with smarmy condescension by none other than Leonard Nimoy, no stranger to aliens), determines Elizabeth is simply experiencing the emotional isolation modern couples often feel and assures her there’s nothing to worry about. But, of course, there is.
That night, Matthew receives a frantic call from his friends, Jack and Nancy (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright), a married couple who run a funky mud bath spa. They’ve just discovered a hideous humanoid body resembling Jack near where he has fallen asleep. Matthew races to Elizabeth’s house to warn her and finds a nascent duplicate of her body, covered in slime and tendrils, close to where she’s napping. He rescues her and when the police arrive, the replicant has disappeared. We’ve seen scenes like this countless times in B-movies (including the original Body Snatchers and two additional remakes), but what makes this particular version so scary and effective comes down to two things: mood and theme.
Kaufman creates an atmosphere so enveloping it makes us as paranoid as the characters themselves. The jerky hand-held camera disorients us; evocative angles (aided by the slanted, hilly streets of San Francisco) keep us off-kilter. The background action features furtive people running by, while others, sinister and blank, move like automatons. We hear the constant blare of sirens and alarms in the distance, yet no one ever comments on them. Snippets of radio announcements warn of downed powerlines. Then there’s the constant presence of those garbage trucks.
Their mechanical din is one of Body Snatchers’ many unnerving sound effects meticulously created by acclaimed sound designer, Ben Burtt (Star Wars). Burtt used the ultrasound of his pregnant wife’s unborn baby’s heartbeat to accompany scenes of the pod people growing. But the most memorable effect has to be the bone-chilling alien scream that reportedly included pig squeals as one of its shrill ingredients.
Regarding theme, Don Siegel’s 1956 original offered a Cold War metaphor. Americans were in fear of a Communist takeover; it’s hard not to see the relationship between that political climate and a horror flick about a foreign invasion. The remake’s screenwriter, W.D. Richter, on the other hand, tapped into the zeitgeist of the 1970’s. Body Snatchers was released in post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, just a month after the Jonestown Massacre. The universal theme of fear and suspicion was relevant then as it is today, especially regarding our government. Be afraid. Be very afraid.