Body Snatchers ***½ (1993, Gabrielle Anwar, Billy Wirth, Terry Kinney, Meg Tilly, Christine Elise, R Lee Ermey, Forest Whitaker) – Classic Movie Review 11,694

Abel Ferrara’s taut and tense 1993 sci-fi horror film Body Snatchers stars Gabrielle Anwar, Billy Wirth, Terry Kinney and Meg Tilly. It is only loosely based on the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, with a new screen story. 

Director Abel Ferrara’s 1993 American sci-fi horror film Body Snatchers stars Gabrielle Anwar, Billy Wirth, Terry Kinney, Meg Tilly, Christine Elise, R Lee Ermey, and Forest Whitaker. It is only loosely based on the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, with a new screen story by Raymond Cistheri and Larry Cohen. The screenplay is written by Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli and Nicholas St John.

The 1993 sci-fi film Body Snatchers is an unexpected second remake of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and a remarkably restrained for visceral horror director Abel Ferrara in his first venture into the sci-fi genre. There seems no pressing reason for this reworking because, although Body Snatchers departs the farthest of the three films from the original novel, and is relocated, realigned and re-themed, there is no particular special new vision or Nineties reinterpretation. Nor, since it goes out of its way to be unsensationalist, does it have any more punch than Siegel’s Fifties version or Phil Kaufman’s Seventies version Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Nevertheless it is brimful of atmosphere and menace thanks to the Alabama military base setting for the alien invasion, and the performances grip and are compelling. The main character this time is Steve Malone’s daughter Marti, and Gabrielle Anwar makes a convincing heroine as the teenager who finds her military scientist family taken over by the extra-terrestrial pod people who kill humans and clone them with Stepford people. Meg Tilly is especially creepy as her stepmother and Billy Wirth is a handsome action-man hero as the military helicopter pilot who romances Marti (Anwar) and tries to save her.

Terry Kinney plays US Environmental Protection Agency agent Steve Malone, who goes to to the Alabama military base to test any effects on the ecological system caused by military actions, taking along his second wife Carol (Meg Tilly), his first marriage teenage daughter Marti (Gabrielle Anwar) and her half brother Andy (Reilly Murphy). Andy runs away but is brought home by helicopter pilot Tim (Billy Wirth), who is instantly attracted to Marti.

Ferrara films tautly, making full use of the wide screen, light, shade and filters in the outstanding photography by Bojan Bazelli, and underscoring the picture with a lively soundtrack by Joe Delia. But this is a piece with a long build-up, which Ferrara cannot spice up with horror effects, and thrill-seeking genre fans may find it rather dull. However, many might admire it for its intelligence and stylish film-making. The sparing trick work, when it finally comes, is most effective.

Body Snatchers was shown to acclaim in competition at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 1993. But then Warner Bros had little faith in the film and finally released it on 14 January 1994 in just a few dozen cinemas in the US so its box office gross there was only $428,868 on a budget of $13 million. It went straight to video in Britain.

Producer Robert H Solo had already produced the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The cast are Gabrielle Anwar as Marti Malone, Terry Kinney as Steve Malone, Billy Wirth as Tim Young, Meg Tilly as Carol Malone, Reilly Murphy as Andy Malone, Christine Elise as Jenn Platt, R Lee Ermey as General Platt, Forest Whitaker as Major Matthew Collins, Kathleen Doyle as Diana Platt, G Elvis Phillips as Pete. and Tonea Stewart as Mrs Fitzpatrick.

The main difference of this version is that it takes place on a US Army base in Alabama instead of a California small town in the novel and the 1956 film or San Francisco in the 1978 remake. The first two films develop the theme of an evil organised conformist pod society invading a free civil society, but the theme in Body Snatchers is the link between the mindless conformity of a military base with the mindless behaviour of the pod people since the Alabama personnel are being replaced by emotionless imitations grown from plant-like pods, with the duplicates being physically indistinguishable.

Body Snatchers is directed by Abel Ferrara, runs 87 minutes, is made by Dorset Productions and Robert H Solo Productions, is released by Warner Bros, is written by Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli and Nicholas St John, based on a screen story by Raymond Cistheri and Larry Cohen, and the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, is shot by Bojan Bazelli, is produced by Robert H Solo and scored by Joe Delia.

Co-writer Stuart Gordon was set to direct, but Ferrara took over.

Jack Finney’s story was originally serialised in Collier’s magazine in November–December 1954 and then published as a novel in 1955.

A fourth adaptation, The Invasion, was made in 2007. The novel is also the basis of the 1998 The Faculty and the 2019 Assimilate.

 © Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,694

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