I've seen the 1950's Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. But I had never seen the 1970's version. I had it on good faith from my parents that it was dumb and couldn't hold a candle to the 1950's version.

But I decided to watch it anyway and find out for myself.



Plot: Donald Sutherland works for the health department, and his lady friend comes to work with an odd claim -- her boyfriend isn't her boyfriend. He looks exactly the same, but something about him is utterly different and she's concerned that she's going crazy. Donald reassures her, but begins to notice weird things going on around town...

Things It Did Right!

I can't fault this movie for its casting. I knew Donald Sutherland was in the lead role -- but I was surprised to discover, as the film spooled out, that it also featured Leonard Nimoy (as a psychologist friend) and none other than skinny, baby Jeff Goldblum (as another friend of theirs whose relationship with them is really unclear).


And then it turned out Jeff Goldblum's wife was played by the (grown up) little girl from the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds. So, I enjoyed those surprises. Everybody gave good performances and were pretty convincing at what they were asked to do.

Problems
In case you're not aware, there was a prior Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie made in 1956, starring Kevin McCarthy (of UHF fame).


The premise is essentially the same. People begin to get concerned that people they know somehow aren't those people. It's a scary, interesting premise -- nicely filmed -- and, frankly, the 1956 movie carries it off pretty effectively. It's creepy and scary and well-acted.

And, in my opinion, the 1978 movie does compare poorly to the 1950's movie.

Bits and Pieces
The movie felt the need to over-explain some things -- like, repeatedly trying to convince us that there were no aliens in this movie (in spite of the fact this movie begins by showing us alien life arriving on the planet). I think this was a miscalculation on their part. If they're going to follow the same pattern as the original movie, with starting slow and letting the audience wonder whether or not people are crazy or whether there really is a threat (and if there is a threat, what the nature of it is), they needed to not explain at the beginning that yes, there really is a threat and here's the nature of it.


Granted, the movie is called "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" -- so it's a good bet there's some kind of invasion, and that some body-snatching of some nature takes place. But they didn't need to spell it out completely at the beginning of the film. Why tell us right off the bat it's aliens? It was aliens in the first movie -- maybe, this time around it's something different. Maybe it's zombies, or demons, or a naturally occurring bacteria that comes out of a volcano every 10,000 years and causes a leap in evolution... WHATEVER. Even if it's not different, at least make us wonder whether it might be different.

Also, why does Donald Sutherland work for the Health Department when it doesn't really figure into the movie? Working for the government in a generic sense more or less does -- but not his main job, which is inspecting restaurants.

Also, Kevin McCarthy (star of the 1950's film) made a special appearance in this movie -- with lines that he delivered in the original film. It was a bit of an overly-cute callback for this type of movie, i.e. the grim 1970's sci-fi downer.


Not to spoil anything... but this was the best picture of him I could find.Story
There's a situation in this movie which was a microcosm of the larger problems with the film -- and this is it:

As much as I enjoyed the surprise of finding young Jeff Goldblum in this film, I was really confused as to his character in relation to the rest of the characters in the film. Leonard Nimoy is a psychologist that Donald Sutherland knows, who is brought into play when people begin to wonder if they are crazy. Jeff Goldblum... is apparently a part-time poet that they both know who is jealous (??) of Leonard Nimoy for unclear reasons (because Nimoy's book, about psychology, is more popular than Jeff Goldblum's book on poetry?) ... and he also owns a mud-bath parlour.

"I like flowers, too. Did I mention that?"I am so confused. Why is a part-time poet angry that his poetry didn't get ready at Leonard Nimoy's book signing? -- and why is it such a big deal anyway that his poetry didn't get read, when he seems to have a thriving mud parlour business and is happily married? For a supporting character, he was hopelessly and needlessly complicated, and then never explained. I'm not saying you can't have an odd supporting character -- or a supporting character who is unique or weird in some way -- but why in ways that didn't make sense or support anything? Especially when, "He's my brother, and he hates that I have a popular book and he doesn't," is practically all the explanation we needed?

As I said, this is a smaller version of a larger problem of the movie -- which is the story itself. The 1950's version is pretty direct about what the threat is and how it works. This movie stirs up the waters and makes them pretty murky; the first person taken over by a body-snatcher immediately loses his interest in sports -- however, later "snatched" people are shown still going about their routine activities -- going to book signings, managing porn theaters, etc. Does it remove your personality or doesn't it? And if it just removes your emotions -- do you still attend showings at a porn theater, just because it was something your pre-snatched persona used to do? Very unclear. Plus, it seems as though people taken over by body-snatchers share some kind of group mind at times -- and at other times, you can totally buffalo them into thinking that you're one of them "by showing no emotion".  The "mechanism" of how the body-snatching works is both over-explained and muddied.

Ultimately...
It wasn't a bad movie to watch -- a bit grim, but I had an idea how it was going to work out in the end already, so it didn't really depress me or anything like that. And the acting and special effects were good (I especially enjoyed the scene where we finally get to see what happens to the original body of someone who is body-snatched. A very nice practical effect!) However, there were a lot of weird story choices made, and it wasted a lot of time muddying story waters that didn't need to be muddied and clarifying story waters that didn't need to be clarified.

I'd recommend it for a viewing, especially if you happen to like some of the actors involved -- but beware that it's far from a perfect experience.

RecommendedWith Reservations