The Schlocktoberfest – Day 30: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Another one where I have to review the original.

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: Bodies being snatched, Nimoy acting emotionless, chaos in the streets of San Francisco, and dogs with human faces. Mass hysteria!

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

Is this a planet of exhaled cigarette smoke?
No starships? The blobs just float all the way to Earth then?
They land on all of the plants, that can’t be good.
Well this was written by the director of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension – a definite + in the column for sure.
Is this a horror movie or a botany lesson?
Ok, it is a horror movie just by seeing Robert Duvall dressed as a priest on a fucking swing-set.
Sutherland’s “caper or rat-turd” scene in the restaurant is either one for the ages or disturbing on a level humanity cannot comprehend just yet.
Somehow the production managed to have an evil flower look like it’s staring angrily at the sleeping Geoffrey. Well done.
After being turned into a pod person, Geoffrey isn’t so much of a douchebag anymore. Can assimilation have its benefits? The world may soon find out.
Either these are the worst background extras ever, or the whole building of health has been duplicated already.
Sutherland is wearing the same sweater he wore in Animal House – in that scene where the country asked, “What does the original Hawkeye Pierce’s bare ass look like?”
Were the scenes ever rehearsed or did the director insist on using the first takes of everything?
I think the garbage trucks full of old seed pods and Soylent Grey dust will turn out to mean something important later on.
Back-alley pod smuggling, you hate to see it in the inner-city.
Righteous Kevin McCarthy cameo. Pretty much picking right up where he left off in the original.
Thank goodness Jeff Goldblum has arrived!
And thank Kirk that Leonard Nimoy is right behind him.
Nimoy commenting on people acting less human must have been a deliberate shout out to the Trekkies in the audience.
You can drive a fucking semi through the pauses in the dialogue here.
More of the Soylent Grey dust as Spock watches Hawkeye drive away.
Hey! Veronica Cartwright! Right on. All my Alien fans on the blog say:
Cartwright massaging this fat motherfucker in the mud baths is making me dry heave.
The scene is held on to too long in this hallway, all done to some alien breathing. This could have been better or shorter.
I’m guessing the audience is supposed to gasp whenever a character mentions flowers or plants at this point.
Who wouldn’t want to make their own Jeff Goldblum duplicate I ask you.
Sutherland makes a damn fine rescue of Elizabeth here I must say.
Of course the duplicates of Elizabeth and Jack have vanished.
This is some pretty good hand-held camera work for the late 70’s, and before it was absoutely done to death in horror.
Why is Nimoy wearing a bowling wrist brace?
There’s so much terror running rampant in the streets of the city by the bay tonight, why don’t we cheer it up a bit with some Journey?
Nimoy is one of them! He’s emotionless and distant. Who would have ever known?
Why isn’t Goldblum saying, “space flowers” a meme yet? It doesn’t always have to be that homoerotic shot of him from Jurassic Park.
Director cameo at the phone booth.
The scenes with Sutherland walking around the city while trying to contact the authorities is very tense and confining even though it’s all outside. Kudos again to the cinematography.
$2.89 for a steak? Fuck do I miss the 1970’s.
Never thought I’d ever get to see a Georgia O’Keefe flower puke up a slimy Donald Sutherland clone.
The pod people sound effect is the same one used when Han Solo was thawed out from the Carbonite.
Yuck, everyone in the apartment is being duplicated and it looks like a painful process. It also looks like the floor of a peep booth in Times Square circa 1978.
I forgot the famous, “I didn’t tell them my name” scene.
The CIA and the FBI are all duplicated? The fucking wacko message boards were right!
Sutherland only destroyed his duplicate before running for the hills. That can’t be good for later on.
Fucking pod people and their incessant goddamn shrieking!
If the pod people are supposed to be devoid of all emotion, why the fuck do they scream so much?
Gorgeous use of shadow and tilted camera lens in this running away shot.
That’s not Jesus Elizabeth it’s a helicopter, try and keep it together will ya.
Original director of the 1956 version cameo here in the cab.
Our heroes shrewdly evade a pod roadblock by getting out of the cab. Desperate times and all that.
You should not have kicked that pod in disgust Donald!
Wikipedia tells me that Ben Burtt did the special sound effects, so hearing sounds that were to eventually be used in Return of the Jedi makes perfect sense now.
The entire city of San Fransisco is now pods, and Sutherland and Elizabeth are kissing. No time for love Dr. Jones!
A pub dart into the neck of Goldblum’s dupe, and throwing Spock dupe into a freezer = a quick escape.
Nancy knows how to walk among the pods by hiding your feelings and showing no emotion. In other words, act Republican. Bah-zing!
By that disaster of a pod man-dog amalgam, it shows that even on their planet there is some sort of bestiality. It’s funding the similarities that will bring us together.
Sutherland gets to tick off an entry in my bucket list by punching an old screaming pod woman in the face.
This international pod distribution set-up looks like the loading dock of a Whole Foods.
Elizabeth twists her ankle and can no longer walk. Fate sealed.
Amazing Grace being cranked on a nearby ship is a little on the nose donchya think?
Pod Elizabeth shows us that the naked result of duplication works very well.
Sutherland stumbles on to the pod growth factory and seems as bummed as I would be not to find a hydro plant instead.
Not for nothing but Sutherland did manage to take out a good number of pods and pod people by torching the warehouse.
All kids being duplicated to quiet pods seems like a damn fine idea to me.
Looks like Sutherland figured out how to manage his emotions and still have his daily like amongst the pod people…
Nope! Surprise twist-ending! Sutherland is a pod now too and Nancy is the only human left in San Fran.
No music during the end credits. Ballsy.

Final Thoughts: This was a really fun movie. Tense in all the right places, not a lot of gore, and some really sweet action scenes. We make a lot of jokes here at Schlocktoberfest about the near extinction of our readers, and I’d just like to say that if anybody says that we should just give up – well then, does anybody care to shoot it out?

Man to man?

Under western skies?

West of the Pecos?

Tumbleweeds at ten paces?

10,000 heads of cattle?

Cut ’em off at the pass?

Prairies?

Lariats?

Anyone for tennis?

Anybody?

Score: 8.5 Slimy Sutherlands (out of 10)

Was it Entertaining?:

Which was Better?: This movie is widely acclaimed as being the best remake ever. I can see that, it definitely raised the bar 44 years ago and thankfully all horror remakes since then have followed in its footsteps – and are all better than their originals.

Ugh.