Independent Films, Film Profiles

Body Snatchers (1993 film)
by Abel_Ferrara

Body Snatchers is a 1993 science fiction film directed by Abel Ferrara. It is the third film adaptation of the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (the first adaptations being Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956 and a remake in 1978). Another remake, The Invasion, was released in 2007.The story revolves around the discovery that people are being replaced by simulations grown from plant-like pods, perfect physical duplicates who kill and dispose of their human victims. The "pod people", indistinguishable from normal people except for their utter lack of emotion, work together to secretly spread more pods in order to replace the entire human race.Body Snatchers was directed by Abel Ferrara (the director of Bad Lieutenant), with the story co-adapted by B-movie auteur Larry Cohen, and a screenplay co-written by Re-Animator's Stuart Gordon and Nicholas St. John, a frequent Ferrara collaborator. The film stars Gabrielle Anwar, Billy Wirth, Terry Kinney, Meg Tilly, R. Lee Ermey and Forest Whitaker.This film set its nightmare vision of conformity on a military base (filmed at Craig Air Force Base near Selma, Alabama), where an agent from the Environmental Protection Agency (Kinney) has brought along his family as he checks for toxic waste. The main character is the EPA agent's daughter, Anwar's Marti Malone, a teenager already alienated from her newly remarried father and stepmother (Tilly) even before pods enter the picture.