Invasion of the...?

"It wasn't the Martians who invaded Earth...

It was the imbeciles!"

- Alejandro Jodorowsky (1992)

Well. Having conquered Hollywood, the pod people have gotten their mitts on a superior artefact of US B-movie heritage: Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The original leaves me a bit cold, but the 1978 remake is fondly remembered from a impressionably-aged viewing at my local drive-in (in company of my mum, who was a Donald Sutherland fan). Super-fine cast, supporting Sutherland & Brooke Adams in the leads, included Leonard Nimoy, and cameos by Kevin McCarthy and Don Siegel (star and director, respectively, of the 1956 original).

Abel Ferrara's modest tv-movie adaptation has its several merits as well; it reframed the original story around the central character of a teenage girl dislocated, with her US Marine Dad, to a new home on an Alabama army base. Suprisingly enough, it essays the condition of adolescent displacement anxiety & identity crisis with a genuine sympathy. The understated ending is chilling - some singular qualities within Ferrara's testosterone-addled oeuvre.

Anyway: viddy the trailer for the newest remake...

It starts with an explosion and ends with a car chase. Inbetween times, Nicole Kidman tries "not to emote" (not terribly difficult. an inspired bit of casting - this particular plank should be able to pass quite well for a passionless alien, I should think).

There seems to be a horribly mawkish sentimental plot-strand about Nicole Kidman's small human. The confused political allegories are a thin tissue of horseshit veiled over a good ole yankee obsession with Volk, and dangers presented by pesky outsiders - "they're here, they're amongst us... keep watching the skies!"

Anyways, the film sounds ridiculous and has already bombed at the box office.

(I pinched that cover graphic to the original novel from this site, which provides an interesting treatment of Capgras Syndrome)