AFS Essentials: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

As part of their summer Global Minds, Other Worlds: Global Sci-Fi Cinema series, the Austin Film Society presents Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). In this masterful remake of the '50s original, director Philip Kaufman confirms once and for all that soulless pod people are, truly, a mass-anxiety filmic allegory for the ages.

The first Body Snatchers (1956) saw alien seeds drifting to a small California town, quietly killing off its inhabitants and hatching zombie-like "human" replacements who stealth-multiplied until it was hard to tell exactly who was pod folks and who wasn't.

While the specter of McCarthyism obvs inspired the mood of the first film, Kaufman's update reflects the paranoid hangover of a late '70s America demoralized by Watergate and Vietnam. Stylishly shot against the backdrop of San Francisco, circa 1978, Body Snatchers stars Donald Sutherland as a health inspector who discovers plantlike growths killing San Francisco's denizens and replacing them with Pod People--listless beings virtually indistinguishable from real people (though lacking some human-y details like emotions and fingerprints.) There's a lot more graphic pod-bursting and creepy discarded-body ephemera to be had in this version, which also stars a youthfully androgynous Jeff Goldblum as well as a non-Vulcan Leonard Nimoy. Watch for a teeny uncredited cameo from Robert Duvall (and banjo-picking interludes from Jerry Garcia!) Kaufman's movie achieved the rare cinematic feat of remake outshining original, and it was a huge success at the box office.

Of course, given these fraught times, the paranoiac Pod People meme is being dusted off and repackaged again in the upcoming Invasion, starring the curiously immobile visage of Nicole Kidman. The casting is certainly relevant--Nic's been a pod person for some time now--but we think that tonight's showing of Invasion of the Body Snatchers will be your best bet for authentic creepytimes.

AFS Essentials: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Tuesday, July 3rd
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
9:45pm, Free for AFS members; $4 for all others
[Tickets]