“A lot of things weren’t ideal, but we just went for it.”
That’s legendary writer/director Abel Ferrara, in one of the new interviews shot for Vinegar Syndrome’s 4K release of his cult classic Body Snatchers, the third major cinematic iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
It’s a rare studio movie outing for Ferrara, and as we learn through the disc’s many special features, it was often an adjustment for the exploitation icon to learn where the guardrails were with Warner Bros. Pictures. The result is a film with a sometimes confused tone, but as this new 4K restoration reveals, Body Snatchers is also so much more: a Gen-X ode to nonconformity wrapped in a gritty sci-fi horror skin. It’s essential Ferrara, and it’s finally getting the boutique 4K treatment it deserves.
As Ferrara outlines in his interview, he didn’t necessarily want to set the film on a military base, but previous drafts of the script from writers like Larry Cohen and Stuart Gordon meant that he and writer Nicholas St. John had to stick with it, shooting at an Alabama military base with help from the real armed forces (because Warner Bros. has that kinda pull). The original story is set in an everybody-knows-everybody kind of small town, while Philip Kaufman’s incredible remake is set within a scientific community in San Francisco.
Ferrara, lacking that kind of intimacy between characters, instead makes his film a story about a family already fraying at the edges, and what happens when an all-consuming alien force starts trying to pull them apart even more.
The military base setting, which allows Ferrara to play with long takes and anamorphic lenses to great effect amid the fencing and identical barracks, creates a sense of deep loneliness for the protagonist, teenager Marti (Gabrielle Anwar), who’s dragged reluctantly along with her Dad (Terry Kinney), stepmom (Meg Tilly), and stepbrother (Reilly Murphy). Marti’s Dad Steve works with the EPA, and he’s taking samples in all the places where the government stored its many chemicals and other weapons, checking to see how much might have leached into the soil, the air, or the water. Meanwhile, Marti starts to bond with the base commander’s (R. Lee Ermey) daughter, Jenn (Christine Elise), the base’s resident nonconformist.
On the surface, Ferrara is playing with some very basic, familiar elements to anyone who’s seen things like The X-Files, which debuted the same year, or other conspiracy thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s. The government’s hiding something, the soldiers are suspicious, there’s no fun to be had, and the stress of constantly moving is really getting to Marti, who’d rather be on her own than stuck with the woman who “replaced” her mom. Ferrara starts the movie, wisely, with a strange, violent encounter with what seems like a deluded soldier in a gas station bathroom, adding to the grit and the grime of the production. It creates an immediate jolt, and Ferrara keeps you on edge throughout the rest of the film before finally dialing the bombast up to 11 in a finale that showcases Warner Bros.’ budget for the film.
It doesn’t always work. I personally think the ending is a bit scattered and a bit too concerned with one-upping itself several times to produce a satisfying emotional conclusion, but Body Snatchers works because Ferrara knows exactly how to scare, how to titillate, and how to keep us on edge, something showcased brilliantly with this restoration. The grit of his production, the feeling of being stranded on a crumbling military base with nothing but a local bar to provide distraction, is baked into every frame, beautifully preserved and highlighted by the restorers.
The light also looks wonderful, particularly toward the end, when Ferrara uses searchlights and spotlights – the harsh light of military surveillance – to shoot through blinds like bright blades. It looks gorgeous, and given how hard this film was to find for so long, it’s about time we got to see it like this.
The special features, including a wonderful deep dive into the film’s production in a commentary track by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, all add to the feeling, outlined by Ferrara himself, that he was basically getting away with something when he made this picture. There are moments that have a pure, low-budget exploitation soul, all dissolving corpses and tangled root-like tentacles, and that feels like vintage Ferrara, something the interviews underline.
My only real gripe is that we don’t get more of these cast and crew stories, particularly with Ferrara himself. I could listen to him tell war stories from movie sets, punctuated by the occasional “Ya dig?,” for hours.
Vinegar Syndrome as a label is at its best when it’s shining a fresh spotlight not just on films that were nearly lost or underseen, but films that feel like a true feat of moviemaking which went largely unnoticed and unappreciated for years after its release. Body Snatchers is one of those movies, not a perfect film but a wonderful blend of studio thriller and Ferrara’s gnarly, relentless artist’s soul.
Now, we get to see it the way it was meant to be seen, and as is so often the case with pod person stories and their timeless studies of paranoia and assimilation, it’s as relevant now as it was 33 years ago.
Body Snatchers is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
