Originally a sci-fi novel written by Jack Finney in 1955, The Body Snatchers has been adapted for the silver screen four times :-
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) (Dir - Don Siegel)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) (Dir - Philip Kaufman)
Body Snatchers (1993) (Dir - Abel Ferrara)
The Invasion (2007) (Dir - Oliver Hirschbiegel)
My first viewing experience comes from the early 90s, when I was probably 13-14 years old, and watched Abel Ferrara's version on VHS for the first time. The film shook me up...badly. The chilling premise of alien hosts taking over your body when you sleep was simply...umm, unnerving. Adding to the mood and atmosphere of the film was Ferrara's dark and gritty, almost pseudo-realistic nightmarish vision of the original premise. Till date, I consider Ferrara's version to be almost equal to the original in terms of atmosphere. Sadly, not many have seen this one yet (I urge strongly to all those who haven't, FIND IT!) and it wasn't a big commercial success either. Hence it went into the unsung, underappreciated section of films which people forget about. Two things which still stand out for me today - Meg Tilly's bone-chilling proclamation ("Where you gonna go, where you gonna run, where you gonna hide? Nowhere... 'cause there's no one like you left!" :eek:) and the uber-gorgeous Gabrielle Anwar, who made my teenage heart race!
Then I watched the 78 version some years later, again on VHS.
Lastly the original - 56 version, on DVD.
And some years back, the latest one. Which I rewatched last night again, to see if it really was as disappointing as I remembered it to be. Sadly, I was right. Not even once throughout the film, I even remotely felt the terrifying dread which I did when I stared into Meg Tilly's eyes (in Ferrara's version) all those years back on grainy VHS. There was no semblance of a plot, just a connection of various loose ends. Nicole Kidman was too visible, too gorgeous and too bland - I can't think of anything else to describe her. Daniel Craig was a waste. All the other supporting characters simply weren't upto par. Simply put, the film lacked atmosphere and coherency, and adding to that the sweet ending of the film took away any semblance of a possible apocalyptic ending one would have hoped to see. Overall, a major disappointment.
Thoughts?