Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by rico (A) on November 02, 2004 at 09:59:59

The wide screen black and white 1956 classic has been remade twice, with yet another remake due in 2006. The studio forced director Don Segal to add an opening and closing to make the scary film more optomistic. I always eliminate those portions when viewing, and start at the point where Kevin McCarthy's Miles Binnel arrives on the train and end when he is careening about the highway trying to stop people and convince them of the existence of the pods and their imminent takeover. This one never fails to scare me. Future director Sam Peckinpaw has a brief part. Segal always denied thet the pods were symbolic of communism.

McCarthy makes a cameo in the the stylish 1978 remake (his appearence is more appropriate if you do eliminate the faux beginning and ending of the first film), which stars Donald Sutherland in the protagonist role, this time as a public health inspector. Brook Adams is the co-worker gradulaly falling in love with him. Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright also star as a writer and his mud bath emporium ownwer wife. Leonard Nemoy plays the psychiatrist. This one also has its charms and one of my all time favorite sequences is the debate between Sutherland and a chef over whether the object Sutherland has tweezed out of a stock is a caper or a rat turd (as a result capers are always called rat turds in my house). This one does have the downer ending. Gerry Garcia plays a dog owning street musician who ends up in a bad way.

The less said about the next remake, called simply "Body Snatchers", the better (it wqas produced by the same producer who did the 1978 film, Robert H. Solo).

I know nothing of the 2006 version save for a scant piece of information in the IMDB regarding its existence.