Opening title sequence ↓
We’ve got a major big shot here. This was one of the first genre films with A-list actors.
Wha? Veronica Cartwright from Alien?! Nobody knows how to freak out like Veronica Cartwright can freak out.
Nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress.
Leonard Nimoy in his 2nd best role. So sad he got type cast as Spock because here is proof Nimoy was a truly fantastic actor.
“Okay wait, Jeff Goldblum is in this too? Are you kidding me? How come I’ve never seen this?”
Among the sounds Ben Burtt used for the pod growing scene, the heartbeat came from a ultrasound recorded on his pregnant wife. The pod screams were recorded pig squeals. Additionally, the natural diegetic sounds (crickets, birds, chirping) fade as the film progresses, until only mechanical sounds (sirens, the garbage trucks) are heard.
"Jazz musician and psychiatrist Denny Zeitlin composed his sole film score for Phil Kaufman's 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and he seems to have tried to pack a number of different styles into one. There is, of course, the ominous orchestral music typical of a horror movie. Then, too, there are small-band jazz passages that sound more typical of the composer. Some cues are played on a synthesizer. And there are moments that recall 20th century avant-garde classical music in its atonality and affection for found sounds."
"But, showers of small frogs, tiny fish, and mysterious rains of pebbles, sometimes fall from out of the skies. Here and there, with no possible explanation, men are burned to death inside their clothes. And once in a while, the orderly, immutable sequences of time itself, are inexplicably shifted and altered. You read these occasional queer little stories, humorously written, tongue and cheek most of the time, or you hear vague distorted rumours of them. And this much I know, some of them, some of them, are true." – Jack Finney
Compare the last words of the novel (above) to the opening monologue of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia:
“ . . . and it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just ‘Something That Happened.’ This cannot be ‘One of those things . . . ‘ This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can’t. This Was Not Just A Matter Of Chance. Ohhhh. These strange things happen all the time.” – Paul Thomas Anderson
*Pauline Kael (1919 – 2001) is considered one of the most influential film critics of her era.
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