Suitable Flesh (2023)
H.P. Lovecraft Adaptation/Bodyswap Horror
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this is a venture into bodyswap horror that proves immensely entertaining ride
Bodyswap and Identity Exchange
Bodyswap is a term used on this site to refer to films where characters swap their minds into different bodies. Usually the body the person finds themselves in is someone who is very different to their self.
Variations include where people swap age; where men and women swap gender; where characters find themselves in a body of a different race; or where people are transferred into the bodies of animals.
Most of the treatments here are light comedy but there are also a number of horror treatments concerning brain transplants and body hijacking. There are also various SF versions that take place in futures where people regularly switch into ‘sleeves’. There have also been a number of variations in the genre of Surrealism.
Tales from the Hood 3 (2020)
African American Horror Anthology
Tales from the Hood was a horror anthology made by African American filmmakers that worked familiar horror themes in around race issues. It has developed a small cult reputation. This was the second of two sequels
Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)
Teen Transplanted Into a Robot Dinosaur Body
One of the films that came out in the aftermath of Jurassic Park, notable only for the absurdity of its premise wherein teen Paul Walker’s brain is transplanted into an animatronic dinosaur body and he struggles to reconnect with girlfriend Denise Richards
The Tenant (1976)
Apartment Block Paranoia/Identity Exchange
One of Roman Polanski’s least recognised films in which he both directs and plays the lead as a mousy man driven to a state of paranoia and the point he loses his identity by the neighbours in a Parisian apartment building
The 10th Kingdom (2000)
Fairytale Parody Mini-Series
Hallmark mini-series set in a world 200 years after the classic fairytales have occurred, this wittily deflates or contrasts classic story elements with the present-day
13 Going on 30 (2004)
Young Girl in a Woman's Body
Essentially a rehash of Big in which a tormented teen wishes she was thirty and wakes up as Jennifer Garner. Amiably average without ever finding the wistful charms that Big had
3 Women (1977)
Cryptic Identity Exchange
The great Robert Altman was one of the most individualistic and downright eccentric American directors. His most head-scratching efforts were when he experimented in genre cinema like this cryptic and baffling work in which three (mainly two) women appear to exchange identities
Trancers (1985)
Time-Travelling Detective
One of the more enjoyable films from Charles Band with Tim Thomerson giving a highly entertaining performance as a hard-boiled detective travelled back from the future
Trancers II (1991)
Time-Travelling Detective
The first of several sequels to Charles Band’s Trancers with Tim Thomerson as a hard-boiled time-travelling detective. This does a passably okay job of following up on its predecessor
Transfer (2010)
Future Where the Aging Swap Minds Into Younger Bodies
A strong and intelligent science-fiction film about a future where the aging buy younger bodies from the Third World to transfer their minds into
Turnabout (1940)
Husband-Wife Bodyswap Screwball Comedy
A madcap screwball comedy in which a husband and wife swap bodies. The very first bodyswap film. From director Hal Roach who discovered Laurel and Hardy
Vice Versa (1988)
Father-Son Bodyswap Comedy
One of a spate of bodyswap comedies in the mid-1980s where father and son Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage end up swapping bodies
Warning (2021)
Anthology of Future SF Tales
An anthology film that has been intended in the same vein as tv’s Black Mirror, offering a series of dark reflections of technological changes
Watermelon Man (1970)
White Man Wakes Up as a Black Man/Satiric Comedy
From Melvin Van Peebles who made the first Blaxploitation film, a satire in which a white man wakes up to find he has turned black. This takes a savage bite out of race relations but ends up without teeth in being distracted by Godfrey Cambridge’s raucous loudmouth performance
A Whisker Away (2020)
Anime/Girl Transforms Into a Cat
A sweet and quite lovely anime where a girl befriends the boy she pines after being offered a mask that transforms her into a cat body – only to then have her own body stolen
The Wretched (2019)
Body-Snatching Witch Next Door
The biggest box-office hit six weeks in a row in 2020, albeit during Corona lockdown. This gets some extremely creepy effects in that managed to work on a jaded viewer
Xchange (2000)
Body-Swapping Future
A modest and surprisingly well thought out SF film set in a future where swapping bodies is commonplace only for a man to find his original body has been stolen
You Won’t Be Alone (2022)
Folk Horror/Body Hopping Witch
An absolutely extraordinary work of Folk Horror about a young witch who learns the ability to inhabit the bodies of others
Your Name. (2016)
Anime/Cross-Time Bodyswap
Makoto Shinkai anime that starts as a light and fluffy piece about a boy and a girl who keep waking up in each other’s bodies but expands out into a wholly different story, gaining unexpected emotional depths