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In San Francisco everyone can hear Veronica (Alien) Cartwright scream. In the ultimate urban nightmare, to sleep is to die, to be replaced by a soulless alien duplicate. Less a remake of the 1956 classic of the same name, more a fresh vision of Jack Finney's source novel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the archetypal story of humans supplanted by unemotional "vegetable pods". A masterstroke is the introduction of SF icon Leonard Nimoy as a very West Coast relationships guru determined to explain everything in terms of urban psychological alienation, and the story does prove more unsettling on the big city's forbidding streets. This is very much an ensemble movie, with outstanding performances from Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams, and what proved to be the first of several key genre roles for Jeff (The Fly, Jurassic Park, Independence Day) Goldblum. With minimal effects and very little gore, but filled with unnerving camera angles and a underpinned by a chillingly effective score, the film is relentlessly suspenseful, culminating in a sequence of terrifying set-pieces and a truly spine-tingling finale. More resonant with each passing year, the story was reworked in 1993 as Body Snatchers.

On the DVD: While the print is more than acceptable there is a loss of detail and some shimmering artefacts in the very dark scenes. The disc is not anamorphically enhanced, which really should be a standard DVD feature. Still, the picture is considerably ahead of VHS and the stereo sound is highly unsettling. An eight-page booklet gives an intelligent overview of all three Body Snatchers movies, and director Phil Kaufman's commentary is packed with information. --Gary S. Dalkin

Release Date: Jun 19, 2000
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