We can see pod people in ultraconservatives, liberal fanatics, extreme right-wingers, and religious zealots, as well as in the average, everyday, think-alike masses.
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Paranoia. Mass hysteria. Conformity. Cloning. Faddism. Brainwashing. Mind control. Communism. Witch hunts. These are just a few of the subjects touched upon in director Philip Kaufman's thought-provoking remake of the science-fiction classic, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Like its famous 1956 predecessor and its less well-known 1994 companion, "Body Snatchers," this 1978 film is topical and thematic. And it is damned scary.
It is scary in its subject matter, and it is scary in its perceptive vision. It is frightening to imagine strange beings taking over our minds and bodies, and it is equally alarming to think that in a figurative way it may already be happening.
The story, for those few uninformed, is about creatures from another planet taking over the Earth by stealing our bodies. Carried on the winds of space, intergalactic spores travel to distant worlds where they settle down and grow as innocent flowers. Before long, they produce seed pods that develop into exact replicas of their prey. Tentacles reach out and envelop their victim, sucking out the life force and shriveling the frame.
When successful, the human is replaced by an alien double--a mindless, soulless pod person, who goes about its daily life with no worries and no cares in a soon-to-be perfect and trouble-free world. Dutifully, each pod person is then responsible for carrying a flower to another human, and the cycle grows geometrically until the whole world community is replaced by these silent invaders. So, whom do you trust? And if you do find people to trust, will they not think you're crazy?
Donald Sutherland stars as a Public Health Inspector who stumbles onto the plan. Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, and Veronica Cartwright costar as friends who help out along the way. And Leonard Nimoy plays a skeptical, pop-culture psychiatrist treating his patients for a mysterious "mass hallucination." Of the three film versions, it is this "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" that I believe builds the most tension and creates the most suspense, even if its conflicts are carried out a little longer than necessary before its superbly memorable climax. It's one creepy picture.
Yet beyond the thrills are the ideas. When the earlier film in the series opened, it was easy to see its anti-McCarthyism sentiments, but by 1978 Senator Joseph McCarthy and his Communist witch hunts were long gone. Had the edge gone out of the newer film, too? Not at all, because there will always be people whose real lives match the ones we see in the movie, people conditioned by society, peer pressure, or Madison Avenue to think alike, to go with the crowd, to do what they're told, to be one of the flock, to think as little as possible for themselves.
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