There’s, alas, never really been a time in recent history where the notion of humanity being silently overtaken by a malicious and all-powerful force hasn’t felt at least somewhat possible. Our collective fear of an unseen but unstoppable force destroying all that we hold dear has been perhaps the most potent and well-utilized weapon of the American right-wing for the past century. Perhaps that’s why we’ve gotten so many remakes (and films heavily inspired by) Don Siegel’s 1956 sci-fi horror Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That film portrayed an alien takeover wherein extra-terrestrial plant spores produce identical copies of the humans they are invading, leaving the characters terrified that they too will lose their autonomy to an almighty mass. Widely seen as an allegory for McCarthyism and the Red Scare, this film has since been appropriated repeatedly to explore various contemporary concerns centered on the loss of self. For director Philip Kaufman and writer W.D Richter, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the perfect story for the pre-Reagan era, a new generation of fear.
In the era of the New York and Los Angeles film school brats taking over the studios, Kaufman always felt like something of an outsider to this generation. A Chicago-born former history student who made San Francisco his home base, his work borrowed more from European cinema than Hollywood. His best movies are defined by their exploration of culture clashes, from the battle for creative and sexual freedom in the face of political and religious puritanism (Quills, Henry and June, The Unbearable Lightness of Being) to the poison of colonialism (The White Dawn). For his 1978 remake of Body Snatchers, Kaufman borrowed from his own experiences with the countercultural movement in the city of free love. The panic over communists may have died out by the end of the ‘70s but the post-Nixon, post-Manson period was still rife with suspicion. The idealism of the hippies was being forced out in favor of Greed is Good commercialist excess, and nobody was exempt.
The characters at the center of this new takeover of alien spores are from that generation of hope, now either eagerly holding onto the dregs of the good times or wearily part of the system. Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams are health inspectors whose eagerness to escape the growing pod population increasingly puts them at odds with the almighty majority. Leonard Nimoy, in one of his best and most hilariously smarmy performances, plays a pop psychiatrist whose advice on the impending invasion is a mish-mash of buzz phrases, casual gaslighting, and repackaged ‘60s peace and love philosophy. After initially dismissing one woman’s fear over her husband’s personality change as a frivolous relationship squabble, his post-assimilation advice is one of self-sacrifice for the greater good. The world is disorganized, he claims, and the numbness of life without conflict, personality, or opposition to the status quo will make everything better. Do or die.
In an interview with Annette Insdorf for her book on his work, Kaufman admitted that the impending yuppie and dot com boom takeover of San Francisco was on his mind while developing Body Snatchers. That particular invasion into the Bay Area turned “that more relaxed Barbara Coast city of bohemians, beatniks, artists, hippies, outcasts, and searchers into a city of strivers.” Seldom has San Francisco seemed so oppressive, a place of inescapable hopelessness where everyone is watching you for signs of dissent. Long before the city would be ravaged by the AIDS epidemic, a cost of living crisis, and tech bros, Kaufman made it the epicenter of a new kind of plague.
Rather than weigh the narrative down with exposition, Kaufman encourages the viewer to piece together the unfolding madness through the eyes of its leads. As they drive through the city unaware, you notice extras who stand a little too formally, who seem to be staring at Sutherland and Adams rather than going about their day. Dump trucks appear regularly, a chilling touch that hints at how the invaders are getting rid of the bodies they’ve replicated. Even close-ups of raindrops ring deeply sinister: are they alien spores or simple water? Sutherland and Adams scramble through the city looking for answers but they don’t come easily, a realization that only heightens their – and our – terror.
The birthing of the pod copies plays like a mixture of childbirth and grotesque bodily violation. It’s an agonisingly slow process, so startlingly unhurried that their takeover of the planet often seems like it should be easy to avoid. Yet Kaufman hints that humanity may want to sink into oblivion. In a time of immense political and cultural flux, between Reagan’s rise and the post-Vietnam trauma, with people desperate for solutions to their complicated lives, why not succumb to the peacefulness of non-existence? It’s nihilistic, even for a salty cynic like Kaufman, but it also ended up feeling prophetic. Free love and the idealism of San Francisco’s ‘60s peak would end up feeling like a pipedream by the time unfettered capitalism and “family values” conservatism would rule the new decade. That ruthlessness would leave behind decades of collateral damage, much of which we’re still trying to untangle in 2022, yet its thrall remains as potent as ever. Plenty of people vote for the bad guys and I’m sure many more would welcome the smothering efficiency of a life without identity. 
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Shudder, and various other services.
