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February 27, 2015, marked the 10th anniversary of Leonard Nimoy's death.

Spock may still live on thanks to Ethan Peck in "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," but without Nimoy, there wouldn't be a Spock. I think Nimoy himself had accepted by the end what a big part "Star Trek" was going to play in his legacy. You don't go from writing "I Am Not Spock" to writing "I Am Spock" without realizing that.

Nimoy played a lot more parts than just the Enterprise's Vulcan science officer, though. He'd been acting for over 10 years before he booked "Star Trek." Some of his other most famous roles were between the cancellation of "Star Trek" in 1969 and its return in 1979, via "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." During that hiatus, Nimoy played the Great Paris on the "Mission: Impossible" TV show, began to host "In Search Of...,...

Max subscribers are in for a treat this month: a new batch of films has arrived on the streaming service in June. These additions include a late ’90s classic, an underrated early 2000s comic book movie and a Martin Scorsese masterpiece that deserves even more respect than it typically gets. The streamer has also added one of the greatest parody films of all time to its platform, as well as the best “Hunger Games” adaptation that Hollywood has produced to date.

Here are the seven best movies that are now streaming on Max in June.

“Casino” (Universal Pictures) “Casino” (1995)

“Casino” has had a difficult time escaping the shadow of “Goodfellas.” Its narrative, cast and stylistic similarities to that film have invited comparisons between the two titles ever since “Casino” hit theaters in 1995. It has inevitably fallen short in those comparisons — as would most movies when compared to “Goodfellas” — but that...

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This June, Max is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the highly anticipated return of the period drama series The Gilded Age to the streaming release of the hit film A Minecraft Movie. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Max next month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 5 best films coming to Max in June 2025 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (June 1) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90% Credit – Lionsgate

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a dystopian action thriller film directed by Francis Lawrence from a screenplay co-written by Simon Beaufoy and Michael DeBruyn. Based on the 2009 novel Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, the 2013 sequel film continues the story of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark after...

Something domineering and not of this world is infecting the thriving artistic community of Greenwich Village circa 1957 in the new comic book series Howl. Written by Alisa Kwitney with artwork by Mauricet, the first issue of Howl is now available from Ahoy Comics, and Daily Dead caught up with Mauricet in a Q&a feature to discuss the new five-issue series, including paying homage to comic book artists from the ’50s, instilling Greenwich Village into the story as its own authentic character, and collaborating with Alisa and the team at Ahoy Comics to bring this sci-fi story to otherworldly life!

You can read our full Q&a with Mauricet below, check out our previous Q&a with Alisa Kwitney, and be sure to keep an eye on Ahoy Comics' website for more details on Howl and their other exciting comic book series!

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions for us,...

Something controlling and not of this world is making its way through the thriving artistic community of Greenwich Village circa 1957 in the new comic book series Howl. Written by Alisa Kwitney with artwork by Mauricet, the first issue of Howl hits shelves this Wednesday from Ahoy Comics, and Daily Dead caught up with Alisa in a new Q&a feature to discuss the new five-issue series, including the story's connection to her parents, the fascinating (and surprising) research she conducted to prepare for the story's ’50s setting, and reteaming with the talented artist Mauricet to bring out the story's distinct ’50s pulp sci-fi style.

You can read our full Q&a with Alisa below, and be sure to keep an eye on Ahoy Comics' website for more details on Howl and their other comic book series!

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions for us, Alisa, and congratulations on Howl,...

Abel Ferrara’s sci-fi horror Body Snatchers was largely overlooked in 1993, but it’s aged remarkably well in the decades since.

Movie-goers and film scholars have argued for decades over which side of the political divide director Don Siegel and his collaborators fell on when they made Invasion Of The Body Snatchers at the height of the Cold War in 1956. Did it tap into contemporary fears of an insidious communist takeover, or was it a Crucible-like jab at McCarthyist witch hunts?

Siegel always maintained that he didn’t have politics in mind when he made the film, adapted from author Jack Finney’s novel, The Body Snatchers; he simply intended it to be an entertaining, disturbing thrill ride. And what a thrill-ride it is: starring Kevin McCarthy as a small-town doctor who’s slow to realise his patients – and gradually the entire town – is being replaced by soulless pod people – it’s a tense,...

Don’t. Trust. Anyone. Arrow Video is set to release The Invasion starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig on 4K Uhd for the first time ever on November 11, and Bloody Disgusting is exclusively debuting the official trailer for the 4K restoration. Find it down below.

Since its first publication in 1955, Jack Finney’s classic sci-fi/horror novel The Body Snatchers has inspired numerous adaptations and created a whole subgenre of era-defining alien doppelgangers in books, film, and TV. 2007’s The Invasion was ahead of the curve, its eerily predictive shift toward a virus-like contagion more frighteningly resonant in a post-pandemic world.

In the 2007 adaptation of the classic tale, a space shuttle crashes to Earth carrying an alien organism. Soon people are changing, becoming detached and emotionless.

People like CDC director Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam) who is investigating the crash. Meanwhile his ex-wife, psychiatrist Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman), sees the same...

The movie with arguably one of the most memorable final shots of any film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, will debut on Prime Video on Nov. 1. The final scene, featuring the late Donald Sutherland, has gone on to become a frequently-used meme, especially during the spooky season.

The 1978 film, also starring Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, and Brooke Adams, was actually a remake of the 1956 film of the same name. Both the remake and the 1978 film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers were based on the 1955 novel, The Body Snatchers, written by Jack Finney.

While the 1956 version is considered to be one of the greatest sci-fi horror films ever, the remake might be even better. Directed by Phillip Kaufman, who wrote Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981), the film has a Certified Fresh 93% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 82% audience score.

Related 'Its Tough to Make a Good Movie': Jeff...

Mention the late Donald Sutherland, and chances are the first thing that springs to mind is the horrifying final shot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). His frozen face and alien howl put the finishing touches on a truly frightening motion picture. Sutherland made recurring but infrequent appearances in the horror genre, never lightly and always with something interesting to lend to the production. None of them landed with quite the power of Body Snatchers, which continues to resonate to this day. The film is doubly impressive considering that it's a remake.

The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956 is widely considered not only one of the greatest movies of the decade, but also one of the greatest sci-fi horror movies ever made. Yet, the 1978 version, directed by Phillip Kaufman, tops it in almost every way, which is a remarkable accomplishment considering the masterpiece that preceded it. Other remakes have improved upon the original,...

There are some stories in the history of film that end up being repeated over and over again. Some of these are just simple categories like vampire, werewolf, and zombie films. Some of them get a little more granular and specific like the story of Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Finally, we can get even more granular and look at a specific title that has made the rounds a few times. I Am Legend by the wonderful and prolific Richard Matheson was made into three different movies with Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and finally I Am Legend. While King Kong and Phantom of the Opera probably have the most, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has the most consistent offerings. The 2007 iteration was a bust but the other 3 are all incredibly solid. With the 90s version turning 30 we thought it was worth seeing if it was a generic...

You used to hear the refrain from horror film fanatics with a lot more frequency – the original was so much scarier.

And while this is still true to some degree (the films of John Carpenter have been remade with an oddly uniform lousiness), there are still plenty of horror films that have been remade well. Sometimes the remakes are just as good as the original. In rare cases, it even surpasses the original.

Here is our definitive list of the very best horror remakes ever.

(United Artists) “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978)

Don Siegel’s 1956 classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is based on Jack Finney’s story “The Body Snatchers,” which was serialized in Collier’s in 1954 and published as a novel shortly after, has been remade several times over the years. But the very best iteration is still the 1978 version, the first since Siegel’s, from director Philip Kaufman and writer W.D. Richter.

Since Jack Finney’s “The Body Snatchers” was first published 70 years ago, screen adaptations — official and unofficial alike — have taken place in small-town USA, Me Decade San Francisco, a military base, high school and so forth. All had a gist in common: humanity being infiltrated and co-opted by a shape-shifting invasive force from outer space. Loosely playing on that theme, Zach Clark’s “The Becomers” adds a new wrinkle, in that this time the body-hopping entities don’t necessarily intend conquest. They just want to co-exist, peacefully. But it turns out they may have chosen the wrong planet and/or species, because they discover today’s mankind is perhaps too messed up to be worth the trouble.

That’s a good premise for the kind of sly, deadpan absurdism Clark aims for here. But despite its fantastical hook, this episodic narrative lands short of the curiously winsome black comedy quirkiness...

With the passing of Donald Sutherland, I was looking through his catalogue for stuff I hadn’t seen yet as I like to look at the entire catalogue to find some hidden gems. What I was reminded of while looking was his stellar horror output over the years. Fallen, The Puppet Masters, Don’t Look Now, Virus, the Salem’s Lot TV miniseries, and of course Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors are all fun to great but for my money, his turn in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (watch it Here) and really the movie in general, is his best stuff. After buying the wonderful 4K from Kino Lorber and rewatching it, I’m also ready to crown it as the best San Francisco based horror movie too. While it can feel every bit as long as it’s 1 hour and 55-minute runtime, it uses that slow build tension to...

This August, Prime Video is bringing you a lot of entertainment with the highly anticipated Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, an all-new action-comedy film starring John Cena and Awkwafina titled Jackpot!, and an animated Batman series titled Batman: Caped Crusader. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Prime Video this month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 10 best films that are coming to Prime Video in August 2024 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

Fargo (August 1)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

Fargo is a dark comedy crime drama film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The 1996 film follows the story of Jerry, a sales manager who is under a huge debt. To repay his loan he hatches a plan to hire two henchmen to kidnap his wife and...

It’s been almost 70 years since the first of four film adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers was released and in that time we’ve yet to meet a single one of these so-called “snatchers.” I suppose that’s the point, since if they have to snatch a body, they don’t have bodies. This plays directly into the way the story, in its various adaptations, serves as a metaphorical horse to be hitched to any topical cart, the non-corporeal snatchers (presumably extra-terrestrial) view us as all-purpose vehicles for their…what? Bodies, minds, or souls? Don Siegel’s 1956 film, still considered to be the quintessential version of the story (though Philip Kaufman and Abel Ferrara’s remakes aren’t exactly chopped liver), actually conceals the answer behind budget compromises and plot holes: They are us, or we could be, if we don’t watch out.

Through the...

The Invasion (2007) is considered the worst of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies, turning the horror story into a big-budget action film. Body Snatchers moved the action to an isolated military base, with director Abel Ferrara working from a screenplay co-written by Stuart Gordon. The most recent was 2007's The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. The original novel ended surprisingly upbeat, but how do the different iterations of the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers endings stack up?

Related Invasion Of The Body Snatchers Scream: How The Movie Made The Sound Effect

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers from 1978 is arguably the best adaptation of the novel, and here's how its chilling scream effect was created.

Movie Title

Director

Rotten Tomatoes Score

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)

Don Siegel

98%

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

Philip Kaufman

93%

Body Snatchers (1993)

Abel Ferrara

71%

The Invasion (2007)

Oliver Hirschbiegel

20%

The Invasion (2007) Dr. Bennett Finds...

The Body Snatchers story has been adapted into four movies, with the 1978 version considered the best. The Invasion (2007) was a troubled production that failed to capture the essence of the original story. The 1993 Body Snatchers remake and the 1956 original are highly regarded, with the latter influencing many sci-fi horror staples.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers' tale of humans being replaced by emotionless alien clones has graced screens in four different decades. Jack Finney's 1954 sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers has been adapted into four different movies, each bringing its own unique spin on the tale. While it's become quite common in recent decades for any movie that's popular enough to get remade, it's not very often that the same story gets told in more than two films, barring public domain items like the works of Shakespeare and books like Dracula and Frankenstein.

It's not hard to see why the Body...

Donald Sutherland starred in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, playing Matthew Bennell. The film, directed by Philip Kaufman, is praised for its depiction of 1970s America, ensemble cast, and special effects. Sutherland's performance is praised for his versatility and embodying a desperate victim.

Donald Sutherland, the Canadian actor who recently passed away and was mostly known for films like Don't Look Now, The Hunger Games, and Animal House, among others, was a classic performer who imprinted his own identity on his movies. It didn't matter if he played the lead character or if it was a more secondary performance; Sutherland had the presence needed to make every role a memorable one. Among his most notable renditions was playing Matthew Bennell in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Bennell is the lead character in Philip Kaufman's 1978 version of the literary classic by Jack Finney, The Body Snatchers. The second...

Some stories are simply too good to be contained within a single film, and that's especially true in the horror genre. Many film tales of terror have been remade, sometimes as a cash grab, but mostly because these classics are timeless. It doesn't always make sense to attempt rebooting an iconic movie, but often, a fresh take on a classic can be more original than a derivative new property.

They're some of the biggest and longest-running franchises, but horror films can wear out their welcome with seemingly endless, uninspired sequels. Sometimes a reboot is necessary to reignite the fans' passion and hopefully spawn a new franchise. Lots of horror movies have been remade, but the truly great ones have multiple reboots.

Related 10 Classic Horror Movies That Deserve A Reboot

Classic horror films like The Bride of Frankenstein and Rosemary's Baby are definitely iconic enough to get their own reboots.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers...

Killer Collectibles highlights five of the most exciting new horror products announced each and every week, from toys and apparel to artwork, records, and much more.

Here are the coolest horror collectibles unveiled this week!

Invasion of the Body Snatchers 4K Uhd from Kino Lorber

The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers will invade 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on June 25 via Kino Lorber. The 1956 sci-fi horror classic has been newly restored in 4K in two aspect ratios — 2.00:1 and 1.85:1 — with Dolby Vision.

Don Siegel directs from a script by Daniel Mainwaring (Out of the Past), based on the Jack Finney novel The Body Snatchers. Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter star with Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes, and Ralph Dumke.

Special features include: new commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson; new commentary by film scholar Jason A. Ney; commentary by McCarthy and Wynter, moderated...

The Great God Pan is deemed one of the best horror stories ever in the English language by Stephen King. Invasion of the Body Snatchers remains relevant with themes of fear and identity appreciated by King. The Plot is hailed as one of the best novels about writers and writing by King, with high suspense levels.

Stephen King is one of the most acclaimed and prolific horror and thriller authors of all time, and, like the best writers, he is also an insatiable reader who does not hold back on giving recommendations. Kings interests are vast and varied, and over the years, hes lavished praise on classic novels from bygone eras and contemporary writers just getting started in the book industry. From referencing his favorite books in interviews, providing his thoughts for the blurbs of novels, and even giving shout-outs on his social media, there are many places where readers...

Clockwise from top left: American Fiction (Amazon MGM Studios), Psycho (Universal Pictures), The Idea Of You (Amazon MGM Studios), Pearl (A24)Image: The A.V. Club

A new romantic comedy starring Anne Hathaway, the Oscar-winning American Fiction, Mia Goth in the horror prequel Pearl, and a number of Alfred Hitchcock classics...

We’re zapping into science fiction territory and back into “re-adaptation” conversations this month for Revenge of the Remakes. Don Siegel and Philip Kaufman bring vastly different approaches to their Invasion of the Body Snatchers films, uniformly citing Jack Finney’s 1954 novel “The Body Snatchers” as their source. Kaufman isn’t directly remaking Siegel’s film but acknowledges its existence multiple times; there’s a literary influence behind both features, yet Kaufman can’t ignore what already exists. The same conversation arose in my The Fly analysis, and will assuredly surface again down the road. Invasion of the Body Snatchers can’t help itself from being a remake, and with decades apart, Kaufman evolves the product into a contemporary extraterrestrial nightmare (speaking for the late 1970s).

Everything about Invasion of the Body Snatchers showcases how cinematic advancements benefit remakes like The Blob or House on Haunted Hill, reimaginings of classics...

The sci-fi classic Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright and Jeff Goldblum) is out now on 4K Uhd (Blu-ray) and Limited Edition Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

Remakes of great films are usually on a hiding to nothing, but Philip Kaufman’s brilliant update of the 1956 classic Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is a rare and memorable exception. Transposing the action to the heart of San Francisco allows Kaufman to retain all the suspense of Jack Finney’s original story while adding caustic social commentary about the selfishness of the 1970s “me generation” that remains all too relevant today.

But it’s a paranoid thriller first and foremost, based on one of the most psychologically terrifying of all premises – what happens when you can no longer trust not just the authorities but even your nearest and dearest?

Synopsis:

When health official Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams...

Frank Sinatra went through phases like he went through wives. The legendary crooner and movie star could exhibit impeccable taste for what people wanted to see and hear, and then, in a few year's time, completely lose his grasp of the zeitgeist.

Sinatra was threatening to enter one of his down periods in the mid-1960s. The popular music scene was in the throes of Beatlemania, while moviegoers were tiring of the Rat Pack's antics. Who wanted to see Sinatra and the gang saunter their way through Western and gangster pastiches like "4 for Texas" and "Robin and the 7 Hoods" when they could watch Elvis Presley set the screen ablaze with Ann-Margret in "Viva Las Vegas"?

To be fair, Sinatra was still Sinatra, but after giving one of his finest performances in John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate," he started playing it way too safe. Bud Yorkin and...

Every generation gets the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie it deserves. To date, there have been four official adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers and each one adapts its premise to the concerns of the time in which it was made. The deep core of the novel asks, “what exactly is it that makes us human?” and then examines it through a non-human threat that attempts to replicate humanity but just can’t get it quite right. Every twenty years or so, a new version of the story applies that question to the current climate. We are right around that twenty-year mark. We are ready for a new Body Snatchers movie, and it should be about Artificial Intelligence.

In 1954 and 1956 when the novel and the first film version of the story directed by Don Siegel were released, the Cold War was America’s preoccupation. The brilliance...

Horror novels have a long history of being adapted into both brilliant and embarrassingly bad films, with Stephen King's works being no exception. Many successful horror novels, such as The Body Snatchers and The Haunting of Hill House, have been poorly adapted, disappointing fans and deviating from the source material. Films like Dreamcatcher, Pet Sematary, and Children of the Corn have received lackluster adaptations that failed to capture the terror and depth of the original novels.

For decades, great horror books have undergone some terrible film adaptations. From urban legends to true-crime books to bestselling novels, literature has influenced horror cinema since its silent, black-and-white origins. This longstanding relationship has blessed cinephiles with Gothic classics like Frankenstein and Dracula, cerebral thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho, and a multitude of Stephen King adaptations like The Shining and Misery. To balance out the brilliance of these cult favorites,...

The Wishmaster episode of Wtf Happened to This Horror Movie? was Written by Emilie Black, Narrated by Jason Hewlett, Edited by Juan Jimenez, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

Horror has had many periods and the late 1990s were very much for self-referential films, dark humor, and cameos. Wishmaster, or Wes Craven’s Wishmaster (watch it Here) as it was marketed at the time, is more on the dark humor side of things than self-referential. Still, it does have plenty of cameos and references to other movies to be found by those paying attention.

While the film was marketed as Wes Craven’s Wishmaster, the film was in fact, written by Peter Adkins and directed by Robert Kurtzman, two creators the world of horror already knew. Craven was an executive producer here, but his name put butts in seats back in the day,...

Baronet Books is best known for its Great Illustrated Classics series, but in the ‘90s, the Waldman imprint took a walk on the scary side. Between 1995 and 1997, various authors contributed to a set of children’s horror anthologies called Fright Time. Kids who stumbled upon these books — often at local discount stores, such as Dollar General — got their money’s worth, seeing as each issue includes “3 spine-tingling tales for young readers.” That’s two more stories than usual for books aimed at the Goosebumps demographic. There’s certainly an off-brand quality to Fright Time, though the cover artwork is anything but cheap. Illustrations as eye-catching as these are bound to lure in curious readers of all ages.

On the cover of the first Fright Time — these books have no individual titles, only numbers — a boy creeps outside a house, unaware of the decrepit old man watching him from the window.

Lorcan Finnegan's "Vivarium" is a trippy, frightening, disorienting sci-fi film anchored by Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg's stellar performances as Gemma and Tom, respectively. Gemma is a schoolteacher, and Tom is a handyman. "Vivarium" begins with the couple visiting a local real estate office to buy an affordable house. The agent takes them to Yonder, a new development housing complex made up of identical homes. Within moments of seeing unit nine, the agent disappears. Gemma and Tom try to leave. But no matter where they go or what they do, they end up back at unit nine.

Containing elements of every science fiction subgenre under the sun -- including body horror, alien invasion, and time loops -- "Vivarium" might appear to be a hodgepodge of better films. However, its distinct visual style and frightening exploitation of ennui elevate it. With a dynamite Imogen Poots, "Vivarium" engages audiences with its existential questions and ending.

Catching up on they've watched and read lately, Corpse Club co-hosts Derek Anderson and Jonathan James discuss Robert Eggers' The Northman, Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, Stuart Gordon's Dagon, Dean Alioto's The McPherson Tape, Junji Ito's Dissolving Classroom, and Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers on this episode of Daily Dead's official podcast!

You can listen to the new episode of Corpse Club right now on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Pandora, and SoundCloud!

Looking for more scary good Corpse Club content? Be sure to check out our Corpse Club website and memberships. Not only can you view past episodes, but you can also sign up to be an official Corpse Club member to enjoy a wide range of rewards, including a shirt and pin that are to die for, access to bonus content, and the ability to suggest an episode topic!

Missed out on our previous episodes?...

This week’s horror and sci-fi home media releases are a fun bunch, as we have a lot of great new movies to look forward to, as well as a ton of killer classic titles headed home to various formats. If you missed it in theaters, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is being released alone and then alongside the first two Ghostbusters films as a three-movie collection, and for those of you who love mind-blowing animation, you’re going to definitely want to check out The Spine of Night. One of my favorite films from 2021 was Danishka Esterhazy’s Slumber Party Massacre, so if you missed seeing it then, now you can catch up with it courtesy of Scream Factory.

In terms of older titles, several of my favorite movies are headed to Blu-ray this week from the fine folks at Kino Lorber: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and both F/X...

Revisit 1970s eco-horror, a rotting commune, and Joe Hill’s short fiction in December 2021’s top horror picks. That chill down your spine has nothing to do with winter…

Gwen, in Green by Hugh Zachary

Type: Novel (reissue)

Publisher: Valancourt Books

Release date: Dec. 7

Den of Geek says: Anything recommended via Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell is an auto-read. And to be honest, we could all use a dose of vintage eco-horror…

Publisher’s summary: After receiving a large insurance settlement, young couple Gwen and George fulfill a dream by buying their own little island, a secluded, private paradise surrounded by a lush green landscape of plants.

What the real estate man didn’t tell them was that a tragedy took place years earlier in the cool, clear pool near the house. And the waters still hold a terrifying, centuries-old secret.

Soon George begins to notice strange changes in his wife.

Hello, dear readers! Before those of us in the States get ready to gobble down our Thanksgiving dinners later this week, we have a brand new batch of horror and sci-fi home entertainment releases to look forward to first. One of this writer’s favorite films of all time, Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) is getting the 4K treatment from Kino Lorber this Tuesday, and Arrow Video is resurrecting both The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch and Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge on Blu-ray as well (this is also very exciting news in my world). Arrow is also re-releasing a handful of other titles—The Cat O’ Nine Tails, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and C.H.U.D.—and the first season of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery is headed to Blu-ray as well.

Other releases for November 23rd include Chupa, Lair,...

This first remake of the 1956 sci-fi classic retains many of the original’s story points, clears up the bio minutiae for literal-minded viewers and adds a fascinating social commentary about ’70s lifestyles that’s almost as depressing as the idea of being ‘replaced’ by an alien simulacrum. Philip Kaufman’s first big hit is a worthy picture that’s maintained its high reputation … and it’s even scarier in today’s socio-political climate.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1978 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date November 23, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, Leonard Nimoy, Art Hindle, Lelia Goldoni, Kevin McCarthy, Don Siegel, Tom Luddy, Stan Ritchie, David Fisher, Tom Dahlgren, Garry Goodrow, Michael Chapman, Robert Duvall.

Cinematography: Michael Chapman

Production Designer: Charles Rosen

Film Editor: Douglas Stewart

Original Music: Denny Zeitlin

Written by W.D. Richter from a...

It's 67 years since Jack Finney's classic Invasion Of The Body Snatchers was first published, and few books have ever inspired so many cinematic interpretations. Though it's set in the 21st Century and focused on teenagers, this latest version, directed and co-written by John Murlowski, goes back to the source material for many of its ideas, as sharp-eyed viewers will observe in the opening scenes. It's not a great film - and where teen takes it concerned it will always be hard to compete with The Faculty - but it's smarter than it looks on the surface and it packs in enough thrills to be appealing to young people as yet unfamiliar with the way that this story has wound its way through US film history.

Zach (Joel Courtney) and Randy (Calum Worthy) are best friends trying to make their names with a video blog which documents the realities...

Body snatching is a subgenre in sci-fi and centers around aliens being able to somehow manipulate humans, whether it's through controlling their brains, mimicking their appearance to others, or even replicating them with alien avatars. Arguably exploding in popularity thanks to Cold War-era paranoia before evolving to reflect social anxieties of their respective decade, the body snatcher film has always changed but the fears remain the same.

Related: 10 Films You Probably Didn't Know Were Based On Books

The genre has its origins from three main books. The first was the 1938 novella, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. A few decades later came Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters in 1951, and Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers in 1954. Here are all the film adaptations of these books, ranked.

Generally considered at least the equal or maybe (!) the better of Don Siegel’s influential 1956 classic, Phil Kaufman’s 1978 update transposes Jack Finney’s paranoid original to a new age San Francisco setting. Some have pointed out that a story based on people becoming suspicious of their neighbors’ unusual behavior might be better set somewhere other than San Francisco, but it’s pretty widely accepted that this is the best of the remakes.

The post Invasion of the Body Snatchers ’78 appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

This taut sci-fi thriller about a genetically engineered plant with a mysterious scent keeps the viewer guessing to the very end

In Danse Macabre, his piercing analysis of the horror genre, Stephen King cites a key moment of uncanny weirdness from Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers. Convinced that her Uncle Ira is not her Uncle Ira any more, the apparently delusional Wilma Lentz has discreetly checked his neck, where Ira had a tiny scar. “And the scar’s gone?” our narrator asks, suddenly excited by the possibility of proof. “No!” replies Wilma, almost indignantly. “It’s there – the scar – exactly like Uncle Ira’s!”

That moment of what King calls “utter subjectivity, and utter paranoia” kept coming back to me while watching Little Joe, an icily satirical psychological sci-fi thriller from Jessica Hausner, the Austrian writer-director behind Lourdes and Amour Fou. A fairytale-inflected yarn about a genetically engineered...

Natalie Zutter Jul 8, 2019

Here are some of our favorite TV shows, books, and movies that tell a time travel story through letters, radio, and DVDs.

The epistolary novel—that is, a story told through letters—dates back all the way to the 1400s in the earliest versions of the form, counting Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as famous examples.

But what about the first time travel narrative told through correspondence? Could it have begun with a short story in 1959—or might one theorize that the epistolary time travel story will exist, has always existed, throughout the timestream? That certainly feels like the case with Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s new novella This Is How You Lose the Time War, featuring a pair of transdimensional pen pals.

At any rate, the form lends itself to a twisty story filled with...

The Get Out writer-director splices sociopolitical satire with clever, full-blooded chills

“We’re Americans.” That phrase, delivered in a deathless, deadpan drawl, echoes through the twists and turns of a movie whose very title slyly evokes the common abbreviation for United States. Having taken a scalpel to the covert racism of gliberal America in Get Out, writer-director Jordan Peele turns his gaze inward for this rip-roaring follow-up, which is fearsomely entertaining, consistently thought-provoking and occasionally bloody scary. A Twilight Zone mashup of Dostoevsky’s The Double and Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers, spiced up once again by a wit reminiscent of vintage Ira Levin, it’s a modern fable that locates our anxieties about outsiders in a guilty fear of ourselves. The result plays like a mirror-image riposte to the French-Romanian home-invasion horror Ils (Them), suggesting that, contrary to Sartre, hell is not other people; it is us.

“There...

A super-classic receives a super ‘Olive Signature’ Blu-ray release. CineSavant clears up some online rumors complaining that the disc producers didn’t do a full restoration. The original release Superscope version of Don Siegel’s soul-shaking chiller has been handsomely remastered — and with the extras we’ve awaited for 12 years.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1956 / B&W / 2:1 widescreen / 80 min. / Olive Signature Edition / Street Date October 16, 2018 / 39.95

Starring Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes, Virginia Christine, Whit Bissell, Richard Deacon, Bobby Clark, Dabbs Greer, Marie Selland, Sam Peckinpah.

Cinematography Ellsworth Fredericks

Film Editor Robert S. Eisen

Original Music Carmen Dragon

Written by Daniel Mainwearing from a magazine serial by Jack Finney

Produced by Walter Wanger

Directed by Don Siegel

One of the greatest of 1950s science fiction films transcends the genre so neatly that many don’t see it as Sci-fi at all,...

Although Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) has been released on Blu-ray before, there were bonus features from a planned 50th anniversary release in 2006 that have never seen the light of the home media market... but that will change soon. On October 16th, Olive Films will release the ’56 adaptation of Jack Finney's classic sci-fi novel like never before on a limited edition Olive Signature Blu-ray that will showcase the never-before-released special features from 2006, including an audio commentary with co-stars Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, moderated by filmmaker Joe Dante.

Olive Films announced the new Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Blu-ray release on Facebook, and filmmaker Elijah Drenner, who worked on the release, shared an insightful summary of what fans can expect on the Olive Signature edition, which is limited to 5,000 items.

From Elijah Drenner: "On October 16th, Olive Films will finally release what I hope fans will consider the definite...

Louisa Mellor Feb 26, 2018

Electric Dreams returns with a familiar story revised for the modern, therapy age. Spoilers ahead…

This review contains spoilers for The Father Thing and previous episode, Human Is.

See related Why Alex Kidd is better than Mario 80s and 90s videogames that lost their anime and manga licenses

Leaving an almost four-month gap between Electric Dreams’ previous episode and this story was an unwittingly judicious move by Channel 4. Not only would it have felt clumsy to show two alien-possession stories back-to-back, the relative complexity of the first—in which the alien invader turns out to be preferable to the human it imitates—would have emphasised a lack of the same in the second. With a good chunk of air between them, it’s easier to view The Father Thing on its own merits.

Easier, but not easy, because The Father Thing tells a story so familiar...

Last week brought the announcement that Warner Bros. has launched a new remake of the sci-fi horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with The Conjuring 2 screenwriter David Leslie Johnson to pen the script and John Davis (Predator) to produce. Since this latest remake marks the fifth-time author Jack Finney’s 1955 iconic novel The […]...

David Leslie Johnson, whose credits include The Conjuring 2, Orphan and Wrath of the Titans, as well as the upcoming The Conjuring 3 and Dungeons and Dragons, has been tapped to write a new version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, according to Deadline. John Davis (The Predator) will produce. Jack Finney wrote the novel that started it all, titled The Body Snatchers. First published in 1954, it envisioned the town of Mill Valley, California under invasion by seeds from space that have drifted to Earth. The seeds bloom into pods; once in proximity to sleeping humans, the pods grow into exact duplicates of the humans, only without emotions or independent thoughts. The humans then die. It wasn't the first science fiction novel to tackle the idea of plants somehow becoming a...

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Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is undoubtedly one of the most iconic stories in science fiction, which is perhaps why it’s been resurrected in cinema on a semi-regular basis. Since the first version of the tale arrived in theatres in 1956, we’ve seen a further three takes on that same narrative – some attempting to apply the social concerns of the time to the themes explored in the story. Now, we have a fifth heading our way, and this one comes from Warner Bros.

The source material is the 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney – which began life as a serial published in Colliers Magazine in 1954. For those unfamiliar, the story sees alien seeds drift to Earth through space, and grow emotionally void clones of unsuspecting town residents while they sleep. The residents are then turned to dust, and the clones replace them in their community. The clones do not reproduce,...

Author: Zehra Phelan

Warner Bros. alongside producer John Davis are about to embark on another remake, this time coming in the form of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

This latest outing will be the fourth time in which the story has been resurrected, the first being in 1958 which had Don Siegel at the helm and had tones of film noir, the remake came twenty years later in 1978, directed by Philip Kaufman and starred Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy and Brooke Adams and was considered to be one of the greatest film remakes. The most recent, entitled The Invasion, came in 2007 and starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig was a complete box office disaster.

Based on Jack Finney’s 1954 sci-fi novel, The story takes place in a small town invaded by aliens who plant pods that eventually open to become humans, a copy of those who lived in the town.

In the studio world's constant quest to mine familiar IP, this one was inevitable, folks. Deadline reported this afternoon that Warner Bros. has hired veteran producer John Davis (Predator, Alien vs. Predator, And Predators!) to lead the development of a new adaptation of Jack Finney's 1954 novel "The Body Snatchers", with The Conjuring 2 scribe David Leslie Johnson along for the ride. Davis is a man with a bazillion projects in development, so we'll just have to see how far this goes. Though in terms of sure bets this one should be firing on all cylinders. If you're a reader of ScreenAnarchy than you are no doubt a fan of at least one of the four film adaptations that's been made from the source material...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Break out the pods because it seems as though there's yet another remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers on the way. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. is developing what will be the fifth feature-film adaptation of Jack Finney's "The Body Snatchers". The novel takes place in a small town which has been invaded by alien pods which have drifted to Earth from... Read More...