Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Collector's Edition) | 
 enlarge | Actors: Brooke Adams, Maurice Argent, Joe Bellan, Veronica Cartwright, Tom Dahlgren
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $9.74
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Rating:  99 reviews
Format: Collector's Edition, Color, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 117 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: M108292
UPC: 027616082923
EAN: 0027616082923
Theatrical Release Date: December 20, 1978
Release Date: August 7, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this remake of the 1956 cult classic terror slowly and silently strikes San Francisco as the city is mysteriously covered by alien spores that produce strangely beautiful flowers. Unbeknownst to the people the flowers are the bearers of alien pods that make a spiderlike webbing that captures their victims as they sleep and replicates their human form. Although they still look human the victims are transformed into emotionless creatures by a strange race of aliens out to consume and control humanity--and only four people are left to stop them. Donald Sutherland stars as Matthew Bennel a Department of Health inspector whose close friend and coworker Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) is overwhelmed by fear and paranoia when she begins to suspect her boyfriend Geoffrey (Art Hindle) of no longer being human. Together with their friends Jack (Jeff Goldblum) and Nancy (Veronica Cartwright) they are out to stop the bizarre alien invasion before they fall victim to the alien pods. Leonard Nimoy costars as Dr. David Kibner a guru psychiatrist who might not be whom he seems. This haunting parable of human paranoia is a creepy glimpse of a city overrun with robotlike yuppies threatening to wipe out all of humankind. Sutherland gives a knockout performance as the leader of the last four humans left in San Francisco in this terrific blend of B-movie science fiction and modern terror.System Requirements:Running Time: 115 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: PG UPC: 027616082923 Manufacturer No: M108292
Amazon.com
Jack Finney's classic science fiction novel has been the basis of three big-screen adaptations, beginning with the 1956 chiller Invasion of the Body Snatchers and most recently as 1994's underrated Body Snatchers. This acclaimed 1978 version from director Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) is every bit as creepy as the '56 original, and it fits perfectly into the cycle of paranoid thrillers that thrived in American movies of the 1970s. Kaufman stylishly directs from an intelligent screenplay by W.D. Richter, while Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams lead a distinguished cast (including Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, and Veronica Cartwright) and must fight for survival as the population of San Francisco is systematically cloned by alien "pods" from a distant, dying planet. The atmosphere of dread and paranoia grows increasingly intense as the complexity of the alien invasion is gradually revealed, until nobody can be trusted to be who they appear. Finely tuned performances enhance the film's eerie atmosphere, highlighted by moments that will lurk in your memory long after the movie's over. MGM's DVD release includes a full-length audio commentary by Kaufman, a "pod culture" retrospective, Body Snatchers trivia, production notes, and the original theatrical trailer. --Jeff Shannon
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| Customer Reviews: Read 94 more reviews...
 Insatiable October 24, 2008
Richard Kelly (Sheridan, W. USA)
Excellent! A must see! Certainly a collector's choice. Well acted! I'd definitely recommend it to others!!
Kaufman's revisonist remake of "Body Snatchers" will keep you awake October 8, 2008
Dennis W. Wong
Usually remakes of films that were successful the first time don't succeed but sometimes they do like in this sci-fi/horror film by Philip Kaufman. Aided by a great cast headed by Donald Sutherland in a rare good guy role, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright and Leonard Nimoy as ever Spock like as the New Age shrink--we get off beat thriller with overtones of dark humor. The humorous puns at the age of conscicousness fall right in the line with the impending horror of the situation that the main characters fall into. This is what marks this remake or revisonist film of the original a little different. Also of course with a higher budget, we get some pretty good gross out effects particularly when Sutherland and Adams run over one of the pods. Jazz composer/musician Denny Zeitlin's score also accentuates the drama and tension of this piece. As far as the other remakes or revisions of this classic tale by Jack Finney, forget it!! The latest one with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig was a dud and the Abel Ferrara version with the lovely Gabrielle Anwar was passable and short--that's the only praise I can give. If you liked the original '56 version with Kevin McCarthy (who does a cameo here along with the original director, Don Siegel)--then do check it out. I only gave this 4 stars because the original is still the best!!
 "There are people who will fight you, David..." July 26, 2008
J from NY (New York)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Philip Kaufmann's 1978 sci-fi/horror masterpiece "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" creates a sense of paranoia as effectively as ingesting a bad dose of LSD while being pursued by the local police, the Army, and Homeland Security.
Donald Sutherland plays Matthew Bennell, a local health inspector with a happy life in San Francisco who first appears admonishing a restaurant owner for trying to disguise rat feces in his customer's spaghetti as chocolate. "It isn't chocolate", Sutherland says as the camera closes on his huge nose: "It's a rat turd!" This otherwise humorous introduction is a fitting introduction for the film's content and underlying message: that somewhere, even in the calmest and most placid of situations, there is something very wrong.
Brooke Adams, a fellow scientist who works at Bennell's lab, begins to notice that her boyfriend is behaving very strangely. Once an average guy who enjoyed baseball and worked hard, he becomes numb and emotionless in his actions. Wondering if this is some kind of problem in her relationship, she makes the mistake of consulting Dr. David Hicks, the classic late 70's Freudian, self assured, Transcendental Meditation goofball. Kaufmann is obviously having fun ridiculing the post-1960's cultural debris: even the veiny, disgusting pink flowers that are slowly growing in the gardens of every SF resident suggests a rejection of the naivete of "Flower Power". Well here it is, Kaufman seems to be saying, and it can be used any way the establishment wants.
The Pod People, according to the logical Dr. Hicks, come from a dying planet and want to survive; they wait for human beings to fall asleep, and then create an exact double which eradicates memory and personality entirely. There are such repulsive, I-want-to-throw-up moments in this movie that I'm surprised it was rated PG-13. When Sutherland's Bennell is forced axe and torch his Pod duplicate, the special effects are so realistic as to make one churn. The streets of the city become gigantic Pod Production areas: people mechanically carrying what look like gigantic watermelons. The atmosphere of panic and terror (there is no real chance of Bennell, Adam's character, Jeff Goldblum's pretentious but noble poet actually escaping) grows to such a pitch that within half an hour it's pretty obvious what is going to happen. Perhaps the most chilling scene is when Bennell calls 911 to inform them of what is happening. The response on the other line is: "Stay right there, Mr. Bennell." They know exactly who he is and exactly where he is.
The ending of this movie is perfect, though I won't reveal it. This is chock full of surprises, gross-outs, and in it's own way serves as a sort of warning sign for what happens when we stop paying attention to controlling factors around us. A must see.
Excellent viewing experience even today! July 2, 2008
M. D. Fonseca (Thunder)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
SPOILERS BLEOW
A classic in every sense of the world. Acting is superb, direction also, all that accomplished with a modest budget and without mind-blogging visual effects.
The enphais is in the characters. The sense of doom and unescapable death for the main characters is suffocating and the final scene, although experienced viewers can see the outcome, is shocking.
A real science-fiction gem.
Urban Paranoia and Social Alienation Trigger the Fear Factor in a Classic Take on the Pod People June 15, 2008
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I haven't seen Philip Kaufman's (The Right Stuff) supremely chilling 1978 movie in thirty years, so the 2007 DVD is a great excuse to revisit one of the most atmospheric and thematically intriguing sci-fi thrillers I have ever seen. Ostensibly a remake of the low-budget 1956 classic, this version foregoes the former's allegorical references to the then-prevalent Red Scare in favor of a post-Watergate mindset of escalating urban paranoia set most appropriately in the Mecca of acceptable non-conformity, San Francisco. Kaufman and cinematographer Michael Chapman (Raging Bull) effectively evoke an off-kilter world overtaken by an encroaching sense of disquiet with a heavy use of crooked camera angles and elongated shadows that make the film downright noirish. Moreover, thanks to W.D. Richter's sharp screenplay, the film has a hip, almost blackly comic tone that makes a nice contrast to the scarifying situation being depicted. Overall, I find this film more entertaining than the original.
The macabre plot begins with health inspector Matthew Bennell and his colleague Elizabeth Driscoll, who encounter a strange, unidentifiable flower they see growing everywhere. At the same time, people all over the city, including Elizabeth's boyfriend and the local dry cleaner, are acting peculiarly distant and devoid of emotion. It eventually dawns on Matthew and Elizabeth that aliens in the form of plant pods are slowly replacing the local populace with robotic duplicates. Accompanied by their mud-bath-owning friends Jack and Nancy Bellicec, they are determined to find a way to escape the city before they fall asleep and become transformed into pod-derived automatons. What makes this version particularly compelling is the palpable idea that you can live in a city amid thousands of indifferent strangers and see how easily an increasing army of pod people can infiltrate it without much resistance. Even though the method of dehumanization is far-fetched, the theme resonates because the macro-level trend is happening in a more figurative sense even more now than in 1978.
You wouldn't expect the acting to be noteworthy in what may seem like a genre thriller, but the offbeat cast is razor-sharp. As Matthew, Donald Sutherland effectively plays an uncharacteristically sympathetic part, and his eccentric screen persona works particularly well in this context. Coming off of Terence Malick's acclaimed Days of Heaven, Brooke Adams, with her distinctively throaty voice, gives a smart, watchful performance as Elizabeth, the character who first notices that something is amiss. It seems a shame her subsequent career never fulfilled its initial promise. The interplay between Sutherland and Adams has a quirky-funny chemistry that brings an unexpected comic element to the film. Jeff Goldblum (The Fly) and Veronica Cartwright (Alien) are no strangers to this genre, and they play Jack and Nancy with customary skill. Even Leonard Nimoy lends credibility as the know-it-all psychiatrist David Kibner, who tries to convince everyone that the strange goings-on reflect a mass psychological delusion. We know that's not true, and the scenes of the pod transformations, especially the key one in Bennell's garden, have that uniquely phantasmagoric effect that manages to be gross, scary and oddly amusing at the same time. Ironically, the film sags somewhat during the overextended chase scenes, and the piercing screams of the pods seem like a conventional touch for such a unique work. However, the final few minutes are well worth the wait. I live a few minutes away from the locale of that final shot, and I can't tell you how many times my friends and I have replicated that scene.
The two-disc 2007 DVD is a welcome package of an underappreciated film. The first disc provides the movie with an optional commentary track from Kaufman, a holdover from the original 1998 DVD. Kaufman is relatively low-key in his recollections, but he provides insight into the film's underlying themes, the creativity he had to encourage to produce the low-budget special effects, the challenge of using San Francisco locations, and the inclusion of cameos from Kevin McCarthy and Don Siegel, the star and director of the 1956 original. The second disc contains four featurettes, as well as the original theatrical trailer. The first is a cheeky retrospective look at the production, the sixteen-minute "Re-Visitors from Outer Space, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pod", which describes Kaufman's rationale and approach in updating the 1956 original. Kaufman, Sutherland and Cartwright, among others, are interviewed. The second short is not as interesting, "Practical Magic: The Special Effects Pod", only five minutes long, which gives a cursory look at how some of the special effects were created before the convenience of CGI. Sound designer Ben Burtt is the subject of the third short, "The Man Behind the Scream: The Sound Effects Pod", as he explains how he created the gaseous pod-birthing noises and the unique scream of the pod people when they identify unaltered humans. Chapman discloses the influence of film noir in his camerawork in the five-minute "The Invasion Will Be Televised: The Cinematography Pod".
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