Invasion of the body snatchers

Year of release : 1978

Run time : 1h56m

Genre : Sci Fi / Psychological Horror

Cast : Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy

The movie is based on the 1955 novel "The body snatchers" by Jack Finney, and is a remake of the 1956 movie of the same name.

A parasitic alien race is flying through space (they lost me at that scene, when I saw the alien parasite didn't need anything to survive and could survive the cold of space and travel for so long!), and lands on earth. It lands on earth, where, upon settling on plants, it turns into beautiful small pod flowers, looking like a sort of cacti.

Elizabeth is a scientist for the San Francisco health department, and when seeing these flowers, has the amazing idea of taking one home. Not just that, but she puts it by the bed, right next to her boyfriend's head.

The next morning, he is acting strange, the glass the flower was in, is broken, and he gets up early, to throw the trash in the garbage truck! When she hugs him she feels him different,as he shows no emotion, and she is scared of him thinking he's been replaced.

Matthew Bennell (Bennell is also the name of Nicole Kidman's character in the 2007 remake) is also working for the Health Department, and inspects restaurants. He is hated among the employees of the restaurants, as due to the unsanitary conditions, the restaurants could close and they could lose their jobs, so they smash a bottle on top of his car.

He is good friends with Elizabeth who confides in him her boyfriend is acting strange. She follows her boyfriend around, and sees him meeting with people he is not friends with, carrying something looking like pods around.

They tell Matthew's friend, psychiatrist David Kibner, who thinks she's just crazy. The psychiatrist confesses lately (all week!) there have been a lot of cases of people saying their loved ones aren't themselves, but he just says it's just a coincidence! Everybody is just acting crazy all of a sudden because they don't want to commit, it's not that there's actually something going on! I've never seen such a bad psychiatrist, the way he is gaslighting everyone, but at the end you realize, it wasn't that he was bad, it was that he had ulterior motives!

After the Bellicecs (close friends of Matthew) find a humanoid looking like the husband, they call Matthew. The wife, Nancy, tells the husband to stay awake, as it seems the thing feeds off him.

Matthew tells them to call his friend, Kibner (I don't know why, his answer for everything was that useless doctor!), and calls Elizabeth who is not answering. He drives to her place, and breaks into the home she shares with her boyfriend, to find her sleeping and changing, as outside, among the plants there was another version of her which was growing! He rescues her and calls the police, reporting a body!

Matthew keeps on calling the police on Elizabeth's boyfriend, saying he wants to report a body! Which was cracking me up, 'cause he sounded crazy!

He stays with Elizabeth, and the Bellicecs, trying to stay awake, as they feel if they fall asleep, they would be replaced by the pod people.

I enjoyed the movie, it's really good for an old movie. The visual effects / creature features are great especially for 1978!

What I didn't like, and this has nothing to do with the movie, was the fact, the characters were pretty helpless, they had no one to turn to, they were cornered, as most people who could help, were turned, and were on their tracks. The movie doesn't have an ambiguous ending, like the 1993 version, or a happy ending, like the 2007 one, but a bleak one.

The acting was good, but not as good as in the 2007 movie. Veronica Cartwright was the best. She also plays in the 2007 version, in which she plays Nicole's patient who is afraid of her husband, one of the first people who say there's something different about their loved ones. She was good in that one too.

I didn't like the soundtrack. I did like the sounds made to suggest the pods were alive, like the in utero sounds.

The movie grossed 24.9 million dollars at the box office, against a 350.000 dollars budget!

The movie received positive reviews, and quite a few award nominations.

SPOILERS Apparently not many people knew how the movie was going to end, as the plot twist at the end was only revealed to Donald Sutherland the night before shooting! Veronica Cartwright, who is the only one who is still herself,by the end of the movie, might have been in the dark about the twist ending too, until she filmed it!

Movie trivia : Apparently Sutherland's character was written as having curly hair, and they had to curl his hair every morning!

You can watch the full movie here, for free :

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9g8wfg

Rating : Worth a watch !