Body Snatchers

Body Snatchers is the third film adaptation of Jack Finney's science-fiction horror story, and it is not half bad either. The worst thing about seeing the film on video was missing out on the widescreen format, which during the credits promised fine visual experiences. Even on the postage stamp we were allotted, though, I could sense Ferrara's skill in using colour.

This version of the story takes place on a military base, where the Malone family arrives. The teenage daughter Marti is unhappy with the whole situation and not especially keen on her stepmother Carol either. Other, more diffuse problems arise when her little brother Andy refuses to stay at the nursery, where all the children draw exactly the same drawing except him. Shortly afterwards he insists stubbornly that his mother is dead and that Carol is not his mother. The audience knows more than all the characters put together, for we have seen the large pods that are the precondition for the transformation, during sleep, into an alien with a human body but without human feelings. The Malone family are almost the only living people left, apart from the base's doctor, who commits suicide, and Marti's new boyfriend, the helicopter pilot Billy.

For a third remake, the film is quite successful, but let there be no more of them, for that story cannot be varied much further now.