Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

          The storyline of the 1958 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers is so tethered to the historical moment in which the film was made—a period of anti-Communist paranoia and rampant conformity—that it seemed unlikely a remake could update the storyline’s themes in a meaningful way. And yet that’s just what director Philip Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter accomplished with their 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which equals the original film in terms of intelligence, social commentary, and terror. The premise, taken from Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, is the same in each movie: An alien race arrives on earth, gestates copies of human beings in plant-like pods, and kills the human beings in order to replace them with the “pod people” who serve the alien race’s hive-mind. In the ’50s, the plot distilled the clash between jingoistic postwar Americans and the supposed radical element of domestic communists. In the ’70s, the plot crystallizes divisions between lockstep consumers and counterculture freethinkers.

          The hero of the 1978 version is Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a San Francisco health-department inspector who loves his co-worker, Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), even though she’s romantically involved with an uptight businessman named Geoffrey Howell (Art Hindle). Geoffrey is among the aliens’ first victims, but since Elizabeth has no idea what’s really happened, she’s unable to explain disturbing changes in his personality. Concerned for Elizabeth’s emotional welfare, Matthew introduces her to his pal David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), a pop psychologist with a predilection for catch phrases and turtlenecks. The Kibner angle is one of many clever flourishes in the 1978 version, because the film’s tuned-in characters initially believe they can solve their problems with talking-and-listening therapy—the very sort of human contact threatened by the aliens’ nefarious scheme. Yet Kaufman’s movie isn’t entirely preoccupied by sly observations of modern life, because the director is just as adept at generating excitement.

          The picture has a menacing atmosphere right from the first frames, with everything from shadowy photography to the weird look of the pods contributing to a frightful aesthetic. Kaufman stages a number of effective suspense scenes, like the scary bit at a mud bath run by Matthew’s friends Jack (Jeff Goldblum) and Nancy (Veronica Cartwright). Richter’s witty dialogue and Kaufman’s preference for naturalistic acting allow the actors to sketch individualistic characterizations, and Nimoy, in particular, benefits from the sophisticated storytelling—this is probably his best work outside the Star Trek universe. Watch out, too, for a just-right cameo by Kevin McCarthy, the star of the 1958 version—and do yourself a favor by ignoring the underwhelming later versions of this story, which include the Abel Ferrara-directed dud Body Snatchers (1993) and the Nicole Kidman-starring disaster The Invasion (2007).

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: GROOVY

Piranha (1978)

          Of the myriad killer-fish flicks that followed Jaws (1975), the tongue-in-cheek Roger Corman production Piranha is probably the most beloved. While not a great movie by any measure—or even, quite frankly, a particularly good movie—Piranha is endearingly self-aware, satirizing its own silliness even as it delivers enough gore and nudity to please B-movie enthusiasts. Directed by the exuberant Joe Dante with a tip of the stylistic hat to Jack Arnold, the pulp specialist who made the original Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), the cheaply produced Piranha tells the slight story of a summer resort getting attacked by a school of genetically engineered fish. The piranhas were created in a government facility, then accidentally released by a bounty hunter (Heather Menzies) and a mountain man (Bradford Dillman) while searching the government facility for signs of missing teenagers. (The teenagers, naturally, were the piranha’s first victims.)

          Most of the picture comprises a Huckleberry Finn-inspired rafting trip during which the heroes, along with a loopy scientist (Kevin McCarthy), slowly discover the piranhas’ lethal potential. After being captured by and escaping from nefarious government types (who, of course, want to cover up the crisis), the heroes try to prevent the killer fish from eating all the young swimmers at the resort, which lies dead ahead on the river.

          Boasting a whimsical screenplay by future indie-cinema star John Sayles, Piranha actually suffers for having too many jokes, because the wiseass tone and the chintzy special effects make it impossible to get frightened. Luckily, Corman stalwart Dick Miller steals the show with his thoroughly enjoyable performance as the resort’s cantankerous owner, because it’s fabulous to watch him keep a straight face while saying things like, “Don’t bother me about the goddamned piranhas!” Dante refined his jokey approach to horror with later hits including Gremlins (1984), and the killer fish he released into the world proved durable. No less a figure than James Cameron was hired (and fired) as the director of the awful sequel Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), and the original movie was remade with even more gore and nudity as Piranha 3D (2010).

Piranha: FUNKY

Dan Candy’s Law (1974)

Given my affection for Canadian Westerns, Donald Sutherland, and obscure ’70s dramas with Native American themes, it pains me to report that the only film featuring all three things is almost completely uninteresting. Originally titled Alien Thunder and wisely renamed for American release, Dan Candy’s Law follows easygoing Mountie Dan Candy (Sutherland) as he tracks a fugitive Cree Indian called Almighty Voice (Gordon Tootoosis) across the vast, wintry landscapes of the Saskatchewan province circa the late 1800s. Almighty Voice’s original crime was slaughtering a government-owned cow to feed his family, but then he killed Candy’s partner (Kevin McCarthy) during an attempted arrest, and fled in fear with his pregnant wife. Director-cinematographer Claude Fournier shoots the Canadian wilderness well, capturing the harsh majesty of untamed open spaces, and he’s aided greatly by Georges Delerue’s plaintive score. But the film’s script is useless, an endless string of perfunctory scenes in which Candy treks across Canada while he talks about doing things that are more interesting than anything he actually does. We also see vignettes of Almighty Voice and his extended family living off the land while avoiding capture, but the movie never properly develops the theme of Native people trying to reclaim some measure of their lost sovereignty. Toward the end of the picture, Sutherland briefly tries to do some sort of unhinged-avenger thing, but his attempt is undercut by hapless direction; the broad tonal shifts in Sutherland’s performance from anger to exuberance seem forced instead of natural, because it’s never clear whether Candy is driven by decency or vengeance. Tootoosis and Chief Dan George lead an ensemble of Native supporting players, and though all of them add authenticity, none gets to do anything viewers haven’t seen in a zillion similar films. The pace of Dan Candy’s Law picks up briefly during the requisite bleak finale, but since the film hasn’t built up an emotional head of steam, the denouement feels arbitrary instead of powerful.

Dan Candy’s Law: LAME