Remakes have been a Hollywood staple since at least 1959’s “Ben-Hur,” and horror movies are no exception. While most remakes such as “Evil Dead” or “The Nightmare on Elm Street” are at best forgettable, sometimes a director is able to take a classic movie and then proceed to make another classic. In fact, so much so that some don’t know that it’s a remake at all.
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”(1956) vs “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978); For the sake of brevity we are focusing on the first one and the only remake out of three that anyone remembers.
For all it’s been lauded as one of the best remakes of all time, the ’78 version of “Body Snatchers” does very little differently plotwise; in the small town of Santa Miria / big city of San Francisco, Doctor Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) / Health Inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) are confronted with a rash of people who insist that their loved ones are imposters, even though they look and act exactly the same. At first Bennell chalks this up to mass hysteria, especially after the people who came foreword later recant their claims. But when Bennell’s friend Jack Bellicec (King Donovan / Jeff Goldblum) finds a half-grown clone of himself, the horrifying truth is revealed – people are being replaced with alien doppelgangers with no emotion.
The problem with contrasting these two films is there isn’t much to contrast. Both movies have mostly the same story beats with mostly the same characters playing mostly the same roles. The ’78 film changes only the location, some of the names and updates to reflect then-current culture, like changing the main character’s profession.
On the other hand, the similarities make it easy to recommend one over the other. The remake simply does a better job of telling the story than the original film does. Twenty years of improvements in filming techniques and special effects help improve the creepy atmosphere. More importantly, every change the remake makes is for a specific purpose; changing the setting from a fictional small town to a real world city adds to the realism and the theme of paranoia – because it’s not just that people aren’t acting themselves, they’re also suddenly interacting with people they’ve never met. The first one is a good period piece of 1950s culture, but for scares there’s no beating the remake.
“The Fly” (1958) vs. “The Fly” (1986); Brilliant scientist Andre Delambre (David Hedison) / Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) has a horrific accident when he gets crossed with a common housefly in a teleportation experiment. The first movie has the scientist’s body parts switched with a fly, while the remake has him genetically spliced with a fly, slowing turning into a mutant monstrosity.
Both movies are unique in that the monster is more a tragic figure to be pitied rather then feared, even as he slowly becomes more dangerous as his mind deteriorates to that of an insect. They’re also unique in that most of the story is from the point of view of the scientist’s love interest. Delambre’s beloved wife Helene (Patricia Owens) struggles to save her husband while trying to keep her family together, communicating with him by typed letters and knocks, as he is unable to speak. In the remake, reporter Veronica Quafe (Geena Davis) falls in love with Brundle and has to watch helplessly as he literally falls apart, in a sequence that has been compared to watching a loved one die of AIDS.
The first film involves an upper-class married family with servants; while the remake features two unmarried middle-class people with accomplishments of their own. The remake averts the old adage of experimenting with what “man was not meant to know”; Brundle’s accident was because he foolishly experimented on himself during a fit of depression and a round of drinking, not because he was wrong to invent teleportation in the first place. There’s also the added twist that Quafge finds out she’s pregnant with Brudle’s child, which might be just as mutated as he is. The original does have an appearance by Vincent Price, even if he is criminally underutilized as a relative and friend to the Delambres, and the infamous, oft-parodied scene of a mutated fly screaming “HEELP MEE!”
Unlike “Body Snatchers,” the remake does enough differently that it’s worthwhile to view both, even if the remake is still the better movie. Be sure to bring tissues, however, as both are more tragic then horrifying.
