All human character and identity is lost once the pods take control and birth out a new body absolutely the same as the old one. The emotionless duplicate bodies that walk amongst our main characters lack human quality and a sense of uniqueness, yet they communicate so well, almost without a whisper. It summarizes the entire feel and atmosphere of the film. This line puts the entire journey in perspective. “Something is passing between them all, some secret. “I keep seeing these people, all recognizing each other,” says Adams’ character Elizabeth as she suspects something has changed in San Francisco. What makes Invasion of the Body Snatchers such a treat is sensational sense of paranoia it instills in the viewer, let alone the characters, and how Kaufman so effectively portrays it and pushes it. Between the strength of these five actors, a great sense of paranoia begins circulating early on in the film, as suspicions rise about people who simply aren’t themselves anymore. The female leads are played by the recognizable but lesser-known Brooke Adams and Veronica Cartwright. The film features some serious star power, placing Donald Sutherland in a lead role as a public health worker, Jeff Goldblum as his paranoid friend and Leonard Nimoy as a know-it-all author and psychologist.

While Don Siegel’s 1956 version of Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers is quite possibly the best film to tell the story of an alien race that goes about its world domination without metal spaceships and with flowers, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 update holds a much more special place in my heart for a number of reasons.Īlthough I do love the small-town setting Siegel’s film takes place on, Kaufman moves Finney’s tale of paranoia and identity pandemic to the big city, making the takeover’s initial location San Francisco, a delectable setting for any genre film of the 1970’s.

By Michael Walsh Donald Sutherland stars in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'įew science fiction horror films capture the pure essence of paranoia quite like the ones that make a valiant effort to tell the body snatching story first written by Jack Finney.

Invasion of the body snatchers novel