The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Body Snatchers (at least in the usage on this site) refers to non-human entities that steal human appearance. They can create identical duplicates of the human body, take over control of human minds or else this can be a form of Alien Possession. The key aspect of this is body snatchers replicate every aspect of humanity except for emotions.
Body snatchers appeared in a number of other classic works of the 1950s Alien Invasion film beginning with It Came from Outer Space (1953) and others of era, culminating in the key paranoia classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
The theme has regularly reappeared ever since then. Most commonly, body snatchers are alien invaders. In other variations, they can be Android duplicates, Parasites, plants or some form of Doppelganger or the idea of the changeling. Another variant on the theme is of the creature that hops between bodies, discarding one as its use runs out.
Historically, body snatchers is also a term given to those who rob graves, another recurrent theme in genre material. To avoid confusion, these are listed here as Grave Robbers.
Head-scratching effort from Japan’s Takashi Miike about a schoolteacher who gains superpowers after putting on a costume from his favourite superhero tv series. Miike never seems to be mounting a parody, while the film is too low-budgeted to ever work in terms of kick-ass superheroic action
An unsettlingly effective Irish Folk Horror film about a teen whose mother disappears and then returns ‘changed’
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the trio behind Shaun of the Dead, return to conduct a very similar effort – the story of a pub crawl that is affectionately mocking the characters’ nowhere lives, before taking an abrupt dogleg turn to become a comedic take on the alien body snatchers film
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that makes exacting effort to get the mood and period setting right
M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter Ishana directs a film of her own. Say what you will about nepotism, it is a really good film
An uninspired comedy about a neighbourhood watch encountering alien invaders that falls somewhere between Ghostbusters and The ‘Burbs. The film’s virtues lie less in the weak premise than in the director allowing the stars to freely improvise with occasionally funny results
This has a great premise – a camera crew revisiting the site of a cult mass suicide stir up the ghosts of the cult members – and a director who I always maintained had much untapped potential. Alas, the finished result seems to slip by his hands
A British response to the 1950s alien invader fad that swept the US. Despite a low-budget, this achieves an undeniable atmosphere of paranoia as a scientist discovers that his newlywed wife may be an alien infiltrator
Fascinating film with Scarlett Johansson as an alien visitor luring male hitchhikers. The film is beautifully made but frustratingly opaque in terms of explanations for what is happening. indeed, feels like a science-fiction film that has been stripped of any easy science-fiction handholds
Low-budget Charles Band produced film that has entertainment value for its cheesily absurd creature effects and an amazing cast line-up
From Larry Blamire, a deliberately ridiculous spoof of the 1950s alien invasion film. Blamire’s dialogue and the deadpan with which everybody plays is frequently hilarious
Though pitched as a prequel, this is essentially a remake of John Carpenter’s classic. Alas, this only finds the same phantasmagoric outlandishness as Carpenter did in a couple of scenes that may be moderately impressive for those who have never seen the original
John Carpenter at the peak of his career, remaking The Thing from Another World as a wild and phantasmagoric film steeped in paranoia that proved to be the absolute epitome of the era’s fad for air-bladder transformation effects
Quite decent Blumhouse film in which children suddenly go bad and begin playing malicious, murderous games with adults
Alien invasion film made by industry outsiders from South Africa. The plot is like a much better version of I Am Number Four but played out on a much more ambitious scale where the novice filmmakers do sensational things in the visual effects department on a minuscule budget
James Gunn takes over the Suicide Squad franchise and welcomely rescues it from the dud first screen outing, giving it his characteristically irreverent sense of humour
One of the films of cult director Larry Cohen in which he makes a body snatchers film involving sentient fast food. As to be expected from Cohen, this also becomes a sharp and witty satire
Appealingly quirky film that pays homage to the alien invaders genre of the 1950s as filtered through post-E.T. sensibilities where the invaders still live in a fifties timwarp
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
Ira Levin’s original novel wherein the men of a town replace their wives with subservient android duplicates seems to have its satiric point blunted when it comes to the film adaptation
The second of three sequels to The Stepford Wives. I found the original implausible on any level and this is quadrupled when you get to replacing their children with android duplicates. A film that has been generated without anybody sitting and thinking about the premise on a practical level
Passable video-released Starship Troopers sequel the heads more in the direction of a body snatchers film. Directed by Phil Tippett
Mini-series that was a popular hit in its day, which largely steals its premise of a human and alien cop hunting a body-hopping alien from The Hidden. What makes the show work past its rather ordinary story, is the two leads and their wittily sparring Lethal Weapon-type relationship
Really quite funny film in which a teenage girl becomes pregnant with a body-snatching parasite. Think Mean Girls meets The Hidden
James Gunn directs a film about body-snatching alien slugs that proves enormous fun and comes packed to the edges with numerous genre references and homages
An alien body snatchers film conducted with a series of smart whiplash twists and turns – even surprisingly a sense of humour
Full Moon Entertainment produce a cheapo B-budget copy of Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Cult Anglo-horror film with a series of vampire killings that lead to Vincent Price trying to replace bureaucrats with androids
The second of the Resident Evil anime films. This is set before the release of the T-Virus and focuses on origin stories for some of the characters
The second of the Quatermass films. An alien body snatchers tale that suggests even the British government has been infiltrated. This is regarded by many as the best of the series
This adaptation of the Robert Heinlein novel was not a success when it came out but is a modest addition to the alien body snatchers genre with some undeniably effective moments
An interesting and unusual film where teens attending a house party find that it has been invaded by doppelgangers of themselves who are taking over their lives
Parasyte Part 1 was a manga adaptation filled with wild effects sequences. This sequel is an even better film that expands the characters and ideas in quite fascinating directions
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host’s bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
Going by the title you could easily dismiss this as an indie relationship drama (as I initially did) but what we instead get is a fascinatingly cryptic doppelganger film where a couple go on a retreat only to encounter idealised versions of themselves who seem intent on stealing their lives
A woman alone in a farmhouse fights off invading aliens. Undeniably, effective, this is an uncredited remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode The Invaders
A above average entry in the recent trend of horror anthologies featuring episodes from different directors, including Joe Dante and Mick Garris, featuring at least a couple of standout entries
TV movies of the 1970s can be this unexplored treasure trove of sophisticated and intelligent genre treatments. Case in point being this effort, a variant on a 1950s body snatchers film in which a man with a steel plate in his head discovers that the people of a small town are being taken over at night by aliens
Albert Pyun’s finest film. It is another of his standard killer cyborg films but comes with an often hauntingly written gritty Cyberpunk edge that makes it quite unique
Another effort in the sad slide into shabby amateurishness that marked that latter years of Tobe Hooper’s career, a muddled effort set around a mortuary involving body-snatching fungus and deformed relatives in the crawlspaces
Ridiculous action film produced at the peak of The X Files popularity about two detectives against a body-hopping alien and sinister government agency
In the late 2000s, Japan has produced a series of films drenched in gore, featuring absurd creature effects and action moves; this was the first of them – a wonderfully cartoonish film with rival bio-mechanoid creatures fighting
A modestly effective variant on the body snatchers theme with a scientist developing new plants coming to the realisation that the plants are taking over people’s minds
A unique and original variation on the bodyswap theme, told from point-of-view of an entity that passes through various bodies in a murderous spree as it tries to make its way back to the girl it loves
Yorgos Lanthimos has become a critically celebrated name in recent years. Here he has made an anthology of three surreal tales that come in his customary black deadpan
Another of the animated DC Comics films in which various of their regular characters find themselves incarnated in simulated combat arenas
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli makes a mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Dr Strange
The ninth of the Friday the 13th films and the most variant and fun of the series. This cheerfully turns expectations on their head and readily punctures the series cliches
One of the early directorial films from Roger Corman, a surprisingly vigorous and well written variant on the alien body snatcher film featuring one of the memorable alien creations of the era
It Came from Outer Space was one of the classics of the 1950s SF film. Here it was resurrected as a cable-made sequel. Without Jack Arnold or Ray Bradbury on board, the results are dreary
The very first alien body snatchers film. With Jack Arnold’s eerily haunted landscapes and a memorably literate Ray Bradbury script, this is one of the classic SF films of the 1950s era
An excellent remake of the Cold War classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original has now been smartly retooled for the 1970s and slots right into the Me Generation era with paranoia perfectly intact
The finest film to come out of 1950s SF cinema, concerning an invasion of pods that replicate people but for their emotions. The sense of paranoia and psychological tension is unsurpassed
A film about the alien invasion of a movie theatre that is screening an all-night marathon of old films. This has been constructed around clips of old 1950s sf films
The fourth film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers starring Nicole Kidman, this badly miscues many key scenes and is missing all the paranoid mood of the original film
Tobe Hooper’s remake of the 1950s alien invaders classic for Cannon Films has much better effects and more technical proficient than the original but misses any of its paranoid, alienated mood
Classic of the 1950s alien invader genre in which a young boy discovers that the adults around him are being taken over by Martian invaders. Director William Cameron Menzies makes striking use of sets to further a sense of alienation
A completely ridiculous film that throws in an incomprehensible mix of an amok A.I.’s that takes over a stealth plane, UFOs, mind control and military conspiracy and proves badly made on every single count
Albert Pyun makes an alien body snatchers film that has been shot Found Footage style and takes place entirely from the viewpoint of the dashcam camera of a police car
Obscure title that when seen is revealed to be a surprisingly well-made (in places) homage to the 1950s alien invasion genre and replication of the era’s style of filmmaking
Rather tatty remake of I Married a Monster from Outer Space made for tv. This is routine tv filler that has been churned out with little care or feel for the original.
Defying the sensationalistic title, this is actually a fairly reasonable entry in the 1950s alien body snatchers fad in which wives discover their husbands have been taken over by aliens come to Earth to repopulate their species
Unique and quite remarkable film about a teen in a nowhere town who recognises the traits of a serial killer in himself and then discovers that aging neighbour Christopher Lloyd is actually a shapechanging monster
This is regarded as a bad movie classic. An alien invasion tale, it was the first film on the theme of humans being replaced by androids. No worse than any other B movie of the era, it does suffer from a dullness
Andrew Niccol, a director of smart conceptual sf, seems mismatched on an adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel but Niccol tones down Meyer’s overripe teen romance to deliver a smart take on the alien body snatchers genre
Wonderfully madcap film with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing travelling aboard the Trans-Siberian Express in the 1900s realising they are facing a body-hopping alien
An Asylum mockbuster aimed to exploit the release of the Transformers spinoff BumbleBee. This has the unique distinction of being a Transformers-type film shot as Found Footage
A newlywed couple head to a cabin in the woods for their honeymoon. This seems to be a traditional backwoods horror but instead travels into an increasingly unnerving and way out territory
The Hidden was a wittily enjoyable hit about body-hopping aliens. This is a cheap sequel that substantially reuses material from the first film, while missing everything that made the original work
This was a minor cult hit at the time and concerns an alien that hops between human host bodies while having the invincibility of a Terminator. The idea is played with considerable panache and directed with great flair
This starts out seeming a backwoods horror before plants in the woods start erotically influencing the characters, resulting in a series of provocative scenes that combine plants and sex
The first in a trilogy of connected video anthology films that tell stories about alien visitors and abductions
A thoroughly demented Japanese sf/horror film about passengers of a crashed plane being menaced by a body-snatching alien vampire. Quite unlike any other Japanese monster movie, the colour schemes alone leave you giddy
The 28th Godzilla film, made for the series fiftieth anniversary and bringing every monster ever created by Toho together for a massive battle. The results are immensely satisfying
A rehash of The Stepford Wives recast along racial lines. It is a surprise to see a mainstream horror hit with a strong message about racism, not that Jordan Peele neglects the horror element either
A sequel to the original Westworld. Here the cleverness of Michael Crichton’s film is rehashed as a B movie plot about the amusement park now hosting android takeover conspiracies
Darryl Hannah is the queen of a species of body-snatching insects intent on invading Earth. This is a clear winner head and shoulders above any other contenders for the most ridiculous alien invasion work ever made.
Wannabe in the fad for Young Adult films. An alien invasion story that takes place without drama or engagement in anything that happens. This seems more interested in its teen love triangle than combatting the alien threat
Robert Rodriguez directs from a script by Scream writer Kevin Williamson. This wittily deconstructs the 1950s alien body snatchers film by way of The Breakfast Club
The third in a trilogy of spookily eerie Japanese vampire films. This echoes the basics of Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire in being set at a girls’ boarding school, which is spun in interesting ways
A thorough embarrassment on Christopher Lee’s resume – an early Charles Band film in which Lee is a stranded alien inhabiting the cloned body of priest in a convent of nuns
A standout work that starts as Riz Ahmed snatches his two boys, fearful of alien body snatchers, before leaving us wondering if this is not all in Ahmed’s mind
Lawrence Kasdan directs an adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a group of men on a weekend get together in the woods who find themselves in the midst of an alien invasion
Don’t Fuck in the Woods was a reasonably smart slasher film that came with an attention-grabbing title. This is a sequel that introduces body-snatching parasites to the mix
A smart and modestly enjoyable film that plays like a high school version of The Stepford Wives where troubled students are being brainwashed and turned into preppy high-achievers
This was one of the last gasps of the 1950s alien body snatchers genre. Conducted on a low budget, this nevertheless comes with some modest effect as a scientist and his family face mysterious doppelgangers
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman gives us an utterly mangled version of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series that has little resemblance to the books, yet makes little sense if you haven’t read them
Another among the shoddy last films Bruce Willis-made before retirement, an SF film about a rogue military team that decide to declare war on aliens. This is laughable in terms of military tactics
Hearkening back to the spirit of 1980s B budget killer cyborg/android movie, an entertainingly preposterous film in which a girl biker gang are pitted against a mad scientist and his army of killer androids
An anthology that offers a quartet of Christmas horror stories, including ones of zombified elves and a Krampus monster. Hosted by William Shatner who plays a radio talkshow host in the wraparound
Hilariously bizarre film with people dealing with an entity that is man with a massive mouth that is intent on swallowing an army of identical little girls
Tony Todd heads a B-budget body snatchers film about a neighbourhood being taken over by beings that promise a great transformation
This is a completely demented Hong Kong film about alien body snatchers who are hiding in an apartment building on Earth
Throwback to the 1950s SF film where alien body snatchers take over the nurses of a hospital. This fails to find the right cheesily absurd tone needed
Variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers with body-snatching doppelgangers emerging from mirrors. Directed with an impressive air of subtle, brooding disquiet, this manages to run up some reasonable twists on an oft-told tale
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis, before his retirement. Here Bruce is on form and gives a decent performance. The film is an Alien copy with the crew of a space mission under attack by a parasitic lifeform
B movie in which John Agar is possessed by a glowing alien brain, this unfortunately fails to live up to either its lurid vigour or its bad movie reputation
A B budget variant on the 1950s an alien body snatchers film uncreditedly based on Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. Other films in this niche created great paranoid atmosphere but here the results only look cheap and tatty
The film that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer director John McNaughton chose to make next – about an an alien criminal sentenced to Earth who is forced to ‘borrow’ people’s heads to replace its own
Abel Ferrara’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an overlooked film that settles in with an undeniable creepiness that is just as effective as the earlier versions. The metaphor for the pod people is more diffuse in this one but that does not mitigate the film’s effect