Body Snatchers (1993)
Director: Abel Ferrara
Summary[]
A family moves to an army base to investigate possible effects on the surrounding ecological system caused by military actions. But unbeknownst to their parents, teenage Marti Malone (Gabrielle Anwar) and her kid half-brother Andy (Reilly Murphy) start noticing that people on this base are going missing, only to turn up completely devoid of emotion.
Male Deaths[]
- R. Lee Ermey [General Platt]
- Terry Kinney [Steve Malone]
- Reilly Murphy [Andy Malone]
- Forest Whitaker [Major Collins]
Female Deaths[]
- Gabrielle Anwar [Marti Malone] (revived)
- Christine Elise [Jenn Platt]
- Meg Tilly [Carol Malone]
Trivia[]
- It is loosely based on the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney.
- is the third film adaptation of Finney's novel, the first being Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956, followed by a remake of the same name in 1978
- The largest difference in this version of the story is that it takes place on an army base in Alabama, unlike a small California town in the original novel and the first adaptation filmed in 1956, or in San Francisco like in the 1978 remake. While the first two films portrayed the tightly organised, conformist "pod society" invading a free civil society, Ferrara's film, according to Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, made a connection between "the Army's code of rigid conformity, and the behavior of the pod people, who seem like a logical extension of the same code"
- Body Snatchers is the film which departs the farthest from the original novel, compared to the 1956 and 1978 versions. While Steve Malone, like the doctors Bennell in the earlier films, also has a medical/scientific profession, the main character in this film is his daughter Marti. The character of Becky/Elizabeth (Bennell's love interest and his companion during his escape attempt from the invaders) is dropped completely, as are Bennell's acquaintances and later antagonists Dr. Kaufman/Kibner and the Belicecs. Re-invented, however, are two elements which had been dropped from the 1978 version: A young boy (named Jimmy Grimaldi in the 1956 version, here Marti's half brother Andy) claims that his mother is not his "real" mother. Also, the film features a voice-over narration by the main character. Two ideas invented by the 1978 version are picked up here again: The mortal remains of the "original" human beings are picked up by garbage trucks, and the duplicates utter an outworldly scream when they discover a genuine human, thereby calling assistance from other pod people.