Format: DVD from Cordova District Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.
One of the first movies that I can think of that scared the hell out of me was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the first one, which I saw when I was a kid. It’s a great set up for a film, and one that is so effective at what it does that the idea of “pod people” has entered cultural consciousness. Even if you’ve never seen any version of this story, you probably know what a pod person is. It’s one of the most adapted non-Shakespeare stories around in the sense that it has been done as a direct version of the book four times. Body Snatchers is the third version of the story, and while it doesn’t have the power or impact of the original or the first remake, it’s better than you might guess and far better than its obscurity would indicate.
One of the main selling points of the book by Jack Finney is that the base story and the concept of pod people is endlessly adaptable. In the 1950s, the original version of the story was accused of being both pro-communist and pro-McCarthyism. The 1970s version played in a similar sandbox, working at least in part as Cold War allegory. This third version in the post-Reagan years, seems to attack military culture in a world were enemies were suddenly fewer and further between.
