PopHorror Let's Get Scared
There was a time when there were only three major TV channels – ABC, CBS, and NBC – and some really great, barely regulated minor UHF channels. That was the only option to see movies, other than catching them on their first run in the theatre. I used to try to refrain from time stamping my experiences for fear of dating myself, but you know what? Not anymore! It was a cool time in the early to mid 1980s when I was a kid. Every week, ABC would air The ABC Sunday Night Movie. It wasn’t always a horror film, but I did see stuff like Jaws, Alien and The Fog for the very first time prior to the dawn of VHS. I also saw what, at the time, I didn’t know was a remake.
Philip Kaufman’s The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was my first foray into the Don’t Trust Your Neighbor Because They Are An Alien/Vampire/Monster/Zombie subgenre of horror. It’s still the most frightening type of plot arc for me. Remakes are so much of a hot button. Only a few are so good they are immune to almost any hate. Only three of them come to mind: The Thing (1982), The Blob (1988), and 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Although the 1956 original is a horror classic, this is one of the few remakes that surpassed the original. As a matter of fact, this is a training film of how to do a remake up proper. Let’s take a look back at this classic on its 40th anniversary.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers was theatrically released on December 22, 1978. It was definitely an unorthodox move to release an alien invasion film at Christmas. It shared the marquee with the original Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve and the Clint Eastwood comedy, Every Which Way But Loose.The film made $25 million while sandwiched between two major box office juggernauts, which, adjusted for inflation, would be about $96 million today. Not too shabby. More importantly, it was and is lauded as one of the greatest remakes of all time. Variety even went so far as to say “validates the entire concept of remakes.” That’s pretty heavy, but then again, this is a truly great film.
We throw around the concept of elevated horror now, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers had the formula down cold even then. While the original was lumped into the drive-in fodder of the ’50s, this one had a pretty high profile lead in Donald Sutherland, who had done another well-received horror film a few years earlier called Don’t Look Now. One of the most brilliant masterstrokes in casting, however, is Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy as the duplicitous Dr. Kibner. He’s a sketchy psychiatrist with a weird, fingerless glove. It implemented the seldom used but effective tool of casting someone so iconic in a hero role that it makes them a complete wild card in the film as a supporting player. It also is a punch to the gut, if said person ends up being a total traitor. The atmosphere was soaked in paranoia anyway, but Mr. Spock as a blurry friend/foe means that nothing is going to be as it seems. The most terrifying films are always the ones when everyone else is becoming the monsters and you are the only one who’s human.
John Carpenter always says that the fears of the masses spawn the climate of horror for that time. I couldn’t agree more when looking at how these two films were handled. The common thread of conspiracy that was seasoned with the heavy weight of McCarthyism in the original film was funneled through to reflect suspicion on a much more sensual level for the 1970s. The original was made in the idyllic ’50s and has the feel of the alien invasion films of the decade that had root in communist tensions. The 1970s remake had a much more sensual tone. The setting for both was California, although it was changed from Santa Mira (yep, just like Halloween III) to San Francisco. At a time when sexual liberation was gaining stride but still on the fringe, San Francisco wasn’t exactly Leave It To Beaver land. A nude Brooke Adams and a transformation scene in a bath house give the film a sexual body horror feel, and I’ve always felt that this could have easily been a Cronenberg film. A young Jeff Goldblum plays Jack eight years before he would actually do a remake of a 1950s classic, The Fly, with David Cronenberg.
I can’t recommend this film enough. It holds up magnificently, and isn’t afraid to go dark and nihilistic. It is a guidebook on how to create a remake with the perfect blend of original idea and originality. There’s even a cameo from the star of the original, Kevin McCarthy (Piranha, Innerspace). Look for Robert Duvall in a completely random cameo as a priest on a swing. He just happened to be around while they were filming and was given an Eddie Bauer jacket as payment. I’ll always have hope for remakes because the really good ones become classics on their own.
