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Body Snatchers (1993)

Dir: Abel Ferrara

Marti Malone(Gabrielle Anwar, "Scent of a Woman") her Father, Steve (Terry Kinney, "OZ"), her Stepmother, Carol (Meg Tilly, "Psycho 2") and her young Brother Andy (Reilly Murphy) are on their way to a Military base in Alabama where Steve, who is with the Environmental Protection Agency, has an assignment to conduct tests on the chemicals stored there.
Whilst at a gas station a coloured soldier waylays Marti in the restroom and babbles something about 'them' being here and that they get you when you sleep, she breaks free and calls for help but the man has gone.

When they arrive at the base Steve is given short shrift by General Platt (R. Lee Ermey, "Full Metal Jacket") who makes it clear he does not want him there.
To add to the unsettling atmosphere, Andy tries to run away to get away from 'the strange people', Major Collins (Forest Whitaker, "Bird") asks Steve vague questions about what effects the chemicals can have on the mind and many of the soldiers and civilians on the base are acting very weird and very unfriendly.

Marti hooks up with General Platt's tearaway Daughter Jenn (Christine Elise, "Child's Play 2") and falls for handsome soldier Tim (Billy Wirth, "War Party") as she tries to make the best of their stay at the base.
But Marti soon learns that the base has become a hive of Extra-Terrestrial activity, as the Human's there are slowly 'replaced' by identical 'pod creatures' who plan to take over the World……..

Bad luck seeped into the very being of what should have been Ferrara's big budget break into the mainstream, as Studio indecision and general apathy with the finished product ensured that the film had nothing but a delayed, very limited, theatrical run and would ultimately end up as video shop shelf filler (thus meaning that Abel's first and only widescreen movie was more often seen in a pan 'n' scan version).

This does not mean however that we are dealing with one of the great cinematic injustices of our time, in fact Ferrara's version of Jack Finney 's novel (already filmed to great success in 1956 and 1978) is, on the whole, the slightest of the three big screen adaptations.
This is mainly due to two main faults, the first is that the movie is set almost entirely on the Army base and so loses the apocalyptic, widespread disaster aspect of the other films (there are no chases through 'pod creature' filled city streets here) and the other is actually a strange one, and that is the film is too fast-moving for it's own good.
There is very little build-up to the 'invasion' and instead we are given a limited (and obviously abnormal and far from everyday, due to the fact it's an army base) setting, where things are strange and sinister from the very start, and where many characters have time for only one scene before being caught up in the Alien take-over.
For example, Ermey, Whitaker and Tilley are given such limited screen time we never get to know anything about them at all, Whitaker in fact only has a meagre two scenes in the entire movie!
Whereas the other versions gave us a build-up showing normal, everyday existence in everyday towns and cities and a group of fully formed characters interacting with each other as they go about their normal routines, Ferrara's version gives us strangeness, regimented behaviour and sinister goings-on from the get go, thus losing that vital contrast aspect to the story that shows how horrifyingly changed things have become since the invasion compared to how they were before it, and it's non-entity characters mean there is no real bond with them or between them as they face the Alien threat.
There is no character here to even slightly compare to Donald Sutherland's wonderful lead in the 1978 version, or any of the relationships seen in either the '78 or '56 incarnations.

That is not to say the movie is all bad or all a failure. There are in fact some highly effective sequences and visual jolts. If the '78 version upped the FX and the explicit visualisation of the 'taking over'/pod sequences compared to the far tamer '56 movie, then Ferrara's version ups these aspects into a whole new dimension.
The shots of translucent tendrils snaking into noses and mouths are suitably gross and unsettling and very well executed.
And if the film does not have a scene as jolting as the brutal destruction of Sutherland's 'double' in the '78 movie it makes up for it with its own twist that sees any partly formed 'clones' (looking like skinned and boiled corpses) attacking those that have interrupted their 'birth' process. A sequence where Marti is grabbed by the leg in a darkened room by a gurgling, grasping, half-made 'clone' is highly effective.
The 'scream' of alarm the creatures let out (used so famously in the '78 movie) is brought into Ferrara's version also, and although not as scary as it's earlier use it does add a nightmarish quality to the Aliens.

The Cinematography by Bojan Bazelli (Ferrara's "China Girl"/"King of New York") is another of the rare successes in the film and he gives us some wonderfully atmospheric set pieces.
Sequences like the pods being gathered from the water at night and Tilly (or at least her body double) appearing naked from the shadows drip atmosphere and give the film a stylish, nightmarish edge missing from it's screenplay.

Acting is pretty non-descript as a whole, but Wirth makes a solid, likeable male hero, Anwar does a good job with her limited character as does the young Reilly Murphy (whom Ferrara used again in his "Dangerous Game") who has one of the best scenes in the film when he discovers he is the only one in class not to have drawn the exact same picture as the already 'cloned' children. It's a really creepy scene and makes you wish it was part of a more substantial movie.

The unsuitably short running time (roughly 80 minutes) means that, as well as any build-up or characterisation being sacrificed, many good ideas, scenes and set-ups are simply thrown away or seem as half-formed as the interrupted Aliens.
And that a grand total of 5 people (including Larry "Q" Cohen, Stuart "Re-Animator" Gordon as well as Ferrara's long time collaborator Nicholas St. John) all had a hand in the screenplay/adaptation at one time or another, it seems even more unfathomable that ultimately such a small scale, simplistic movie came out of it.

Ferrara handles the horror/chase sequences pretty well, but it's a shame to say that the dialogue/interaction scenes that are normally his strength are rather lifeless and lacklustre and there are only fleeting glimpses of his talent here.

Ultimately then we have an average film at best, that is rightly eclipsed by the earlier 'Body Snatcher' movies, which is far too light on plot build-up, characters and scope (as well as it's Director's personal strengths) to be taken as anything other than a curiosity containing only a few isolated moments of interest.
For Ferrara completists only.