Title: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
About four months ago, I read Finney’s novel The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You can read about it here. This week, I managed to find time to watch both the 1956 film and the 1978 film. They both follow the basic plot of the novel. A man and a woman hear stories of people seemingly being replaced by identical copies that act somehow differently. They remain skeptical until one of their other friends finds an apparently inanimate body that is slowly transforming into a human. Horrified, they rush to the authorities. The authorities do nothing. Everyone around them starts turning into emotionless animatrons. They desperately try to figure out a way to stop the progress of these transformations or at least try to find a way to raise the alarm to the larger world. These pod people turn on the couple and implacably chases them. They’re exhausted but know that if they fall asleep that they will become pod people themselves. Will they survive? Will humanity be saved?
There are several common scenes between the two films. A mutual friend and his wife first find a body that is in the state of transition. To rescue the woman, the man must break into her basement, sneak into her bedroom, and carry her off to safety. The couple and their mutual friend and wife hole up together for a while. This safe house is no longer safe when they find four pods ready to take over their bodies. They watch as the pod people start loading trucks to distribute the pods far and wide. This leads them to understand that all of humanity is at risk.
In a nod to the original, the 1978 film replicates the famous scene using the actor from the original film where he runs from car to car screaming that they’re coming for all of us and that we’re next.
The 1956 film hews pretty close to the novel. The main characters are a doctor and a woman recently returned to the small town. The other characters in the film are the same as in the novel. The 1978 film is set in the much larger San Francisco. The man works for the city health department and the woman is a research scientist. The woman becomes suspicious when her boyfriend suddenly begins to act unaffectionately.
So, right away, a difference between the two films is small time life vs big city life. In the small town, everyone knows everyone. It’s hard to believe that someone has been taken over by an alien when you’ve seen that person every day of your life. In the big city, there’s a lot more anonymity. People are ignoring each other anyway, so why is being possessed by an alien different?
The pacing of the 1956 film is much tighter. It efficiently tells the story in eighty minutes. The 1978 film takes its time. It’s just under two hours. I think that I preferred the tighter pacing. The extra 35 minutes didn’t really add that much to the story.
It’s probably not shocking that the special effects was much better in the 1978 film. In the 1956 film, the transformation was pretty much represented using something like soap bubbles. In the later film, it was much more realistic. Some of the added screen time was dedicated to showing the development of the pod as well as the destruction of the human body as the pod person took over.
Also probably not shocking is that the acting is better in the 1978 film. It’s fair to say that method acting had not caught on everywhere by 1956. The acting, while serviceable, is pretty wooden. In 1978, with actors like Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, and Leonard Nimoy, the acting is much richer. Weirdly, Robert Duvall even makes a very brief appearance with no lines.
Finally, the ending is different between the two and both are different than from the novel. In the novel, due to unexpected resistance, the aliens basically give up and search for another planet. In the 1956 film, the doctor alone survives the small town. Desperately he leaves the town to try to warn the world. Believed to be insane, he is only believed when, in the last minute of the film, a truck containing pods is in an accident, validating his story. In the final moments, the authorities are finally leaping into action, hopefully not too late to stop the invasion. In the 1978 film, one survivor (the friend’s wife) comes up to the leading man at the end of the film and seeks help. To her horror, he is now a pod person. All hope is lost. Considering what all had happened to the US over the preceeding twenty years (Vietnam, Watergate, assassinations, etc), the pessimistic ending probably seemed appropriate.
Which did I like better? Hmmm, hard to say. If you’re in the mood for a horror film, the 1956 version is probably the way to go. If you’re interested in a film that leans more heavily upon social commentary, you should go with the 1978 version.
dorkenstein 