The World's End (2013) – BONUS ROUND

 Okay. I admit it. The Invasion was an altogether lackluster entry to close out this series on. Not even in a fun cathartic way. Just a disappointing affair all around.

I was bracing for this and had planned a bonus entry for the end of this month. Sort of a palate cleanser and an extension of the old saying about not going to bed angry.

At the start, I was going to use this spot to give a shout-out to the recent movie Little Joe.  A shout out I will still give as preamble here anyway – it isn't quite a Body Snatchers-style movie, but it is one very genuinely inspired by the series.

Why am I not making the whole write-up about this, then?

Because damn – as I waded through the nihilism-heavy back end of The Invasion, I kept finding myself thinking of Edgar Wright's The World's End (a movie that Wright himself openly compared to Body Snatchers and similar movies of the 'comfy catastrophe' genre), and how, without explicitly going for it, it nailed the general thematic aspects of the Body Snatchers story much more effectively compared to the official remake.

...and, because, like most adults living in the year 2020,
I can't help but feel the best solution to disappointment is drinking.

In comparing to the other entries in the series, The World's End is – to me anyway – the Gallant to The Invasion's Goofus. Where the latter makes its changes to formula for reasons that ultimately don't feel like they're achieving anything, Wright's own pod equivalent – the robotic Blanks – thread in well with the two main themes Wright is addressing in the film.

Which is the other area where The World's End excels in this race. Not only does it make them work well with the story - in general, it feels like it has a much better grasp on the themes it's trying to convey.

First, we have a continuation of one of the themes from Wright's earlier Hot Fuzz – the continued criticism of gentrification. As our movie's heroes return to their old home town to find all the pubs redesigned with a downright eerie uniformity – to the point where even the beer descriptions read like a set script – one can see the obvious critique of modern mass marketing at play. It's even more overt when you read up on the behind the scenes – in some interviews, Wright's description of the Network (the intelligence behind the Blanks) describes them as a sort of intergalactic Starbucks. Not necessarily malicious, simply just propagating its brand, much like the pods - simply existing and doing what comes naturally to it.

The final act of the movie, in turn, plays like a sort of oddly comic riff on many of the earlier movies' debates between human and pod – humanity isn't championed in the eyes of the stoic higher intelligence by love or hope or art. Instead, humanity's champion is Gary King (Simon Pegg, in probably one of his best performances to date) a problem alcoholic who has spent much of the night prior to that confrontation coming to terms with the fact he has lived as a complete and utter human trainwreck since high school ended. His argument is brash, irrational, unapologetically profane, and, to that end, incredibly human.

Humanity's hero, everyone.

It's also part of where the other interesting variation on a theme comes from – the allure, and danger, of nostalgia. The entire reason Gary and his former friends wind up returning to their old stomping grounds is itself born out of Gary's desire to try to complete the famous pub crawl they all attempted and failed in their youth. For him, this is all an attempt at reliving a childhood that the rest of the group has since left behind (and, as he learns, ultimately never really existed.)

Enter the Blanks, which quite literally offer that past fantasy – not just to Gary, but the entire group. That promise of youth, old romances, and reliving past high school glories plays as a different take on the 'perfection' offered by the alien intelligence. That it offers it as a choice (albeit with a very stacked deck) does make the Network a bit more nuanced an antagonist than most iterations of the Pods, but at its core it is still much in the same vein.

It's an interesting two-step that would be right at home with the story's tendency to address the issues and concerns of the age it's taking place in – there is definitely more of a feeling of relevance to be had in Wright's shared themes of a sanitized corporate buyout or the lengths people go to pursue an idealized past that never was (personal or not) that has helped the film age to far more success than the muddled nihilism that the most recent mainline Body Snatchers brought to the table.

and on a lighter note, this just makes a great
callback to the iconic pod shriek.

It's a brother from another mother (father, technically), but damned if it doesn't feel right at home with the best this particular series has had to offer.

There. That's a note I can close this month out feeling a bit more satisfied with.

With that said, I hope you're all staying safe and sane this year (we're all gonna need it soon) and to you all I wish a Happy Halloween.

...I mean...

SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK

The Invasion (2007) – A Good Streak Has to End Some Time

A few more days here, another sixteen years there, and we come to the next installment in this run through the evolution of the Body Snatchers series.

As I've gotten older, I've come to realize I don't get the same zeal in a bad movie takedown I once did. There's definitely a catharsis to it, but it's not something I find myself going out of my way for the way I used to.

I'm saying that up front for a reason – I didn't go into this one expecting a cinematic drag. With that in mind, I'm still willing to admit The Invasion is probably the most disappointing watch I have had tied to this project since switching to the franchise format.

Besides the fact this just makes the whole thing look
incredibly vague and uninteresting, the knowledge that
Daniel Craig's career just gets THAT much better
after this just makes his being squandered here hurt that much more.

Yes, I say this even after having watched 2011's The Thing and Omen IV: The Awakening. The Thing, while misfired, seemed to have its heart in the right place, and Omen IV at least managed to get an honest to God laugh out of me (albeit not by design.) That still puts them both ahead of The Invasion for me in the final estimate.

Again, I want to make this very clear – I went into this trying to find good in it. I won't pretend I wasn't skeptical, but I still gave it the benefit of the doubt. Hell, I was even getting curious to see how it'd play in the aftermath of the first three in relatively short succession.

Turns out, sadly, not very well. From the jump, this surpasses Ferrara in terms of taking departures from the source. Granted, on its own, departure can be a good thing, but there's still a limit. In this version, much of the old premise is gone – of the original pod concept, the only thing that they seemed to maintain was an alien lifeform (the pod is now a spore) that needs you to sleep to take over. Granted, even the reasoning there has been altered – the spore doesn't so much grow a new you as it infects you and rewrites you, with sleep as a catalyst (and the infection now spread by people vomiting on their targets. No, you read that right.)

Pictured - a still from a setpiece that literally involves
dodging vomit on the subway.
Go look it up. I'm not making this up.
I'll wait.

With that tenuous a connection, it was hard not to suspect, while watching, that this movie started as something else and then in the process got retooled into a Body Snatchers movie – certainly common enough in the realm of horror sequels and remakes. Surprisingly, this is one time where the process was reversed – the project was meant to be a more straightforward adaptation, then the writer diverged wildly in an attempt to modernize it, leading to what we got back in 2007.

Again, difference in and of itself isn't a bad thing. If this were a better movie, I'd likely be commending it for its taking the chance. As it is though, the changes don't really feel like they add much to the movie, save for someone deciding this series had a criminal lack of people spitting/puking on each other.

I'm trying not to harp too much on the changes, lest this simply read as purist rage. The problem is, unlike with earlier changes in content, I'm not entirely clear as to the why of many of the changes beyond 'it's modern.'

For a series that I have earlier lauded for its ability to adapt its themes to the concerns of the time, The Invasion is particularly frustrating. I've given it some time since watching trying to parse out a singular theme it's trying to explore to the extent the previous versions did (even if by accident in 56) and it all just keeps coming back to the immortal words of David Byrne: “You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything.”

and while I'm comparing this to films which felt like
they had a clearer idea what they wanted to convey -
spending a large chunk of this in a supermarket just
left me wanting to watch The Mist.

For a movie made in 2007, it does feel like it's trying to make some commentary with its changes. The new method of transmission, for example, could read as addressing the growing concern with flu outbreaks – albeit that theme then makes a strange read of the movie's use of inoculations, which in the current environment, can manage to read first as anti, then pro vaccination.

I'd be inclined to give more of the benefit of the doubt that they weren't quite intending a theme there, but for the fact that the changes were in the interest of a more modern take to begin with, to say nothing for the fact that, by the fourth go around, the idea that a Body Snatchers movie is saying something is sort of expected by now unless the people making it say otherwise.

Which leads to probably one of the biggest issues with what this movie is saying – when it addresses the idea of humanity and emotion. It's a concept that's been at the core of every iteration of the series, even in its more (relatively) apolitical early incarnation. In truth, the series started to drift from this with Ferrara, but it's such a stark departure here as to become jarring.

In earlier iterations, the idea of the negative side of human emotions is simply framed as part of the pods' argument – they offer humanity a freedom from fear, hate, etc, albeit at the cost of the positive emotions such as joy and love that other versions offer as a counter point. In this, the emphasis feels almost exclusively fixed on the negative emotions, with human characters dwelling on it even before the aliens start taking them over. Even when the movie ends with humanity surviving the titular invasion, it is presented with a dour counterpoint as Jeffrey Wright only dwells on all those more negative traits of humanity surviving.

Also adding to the 'Where were you going with this?' factor:
This version has people who just have inherent
immunity to the spore. For seemingly no other reason
than to justify the 'happy' ending.
Just wanted to observe that is all.

On one hand, I get it – it was 2007 (and this project actually started in 2004), people weren't in a particularly happy headspace at the time. But even with that context in mind, it's hard to really look at this and feel like it's really saying anything specific to the time beyond 'Boy, humanity sucks, am I right?'

Which, again, raises the question of why go to all the trouble of so completely remaking it if you're really not going to have a clear vision of where you want to go with it. As it is, this movie has threads that could have made for interesting exploration, but never really feels like it does much more than chew them over for a little while and never really come a single conclusion about them.

I would be more likely to forgive a lot of this if the movie still worked as a thriller. Sadly, it's in that sort of nexus of a movie that manages to be both underwhelming and technically overproduced (at the same time, so I don't even have that to take solace in here.

There has been talk since about offering another take on the series – and honestly, I stand by what I said in earlier writeups, there is still pretty fertile ground for this concept to take root in (no pun intended.)

This time it just didn't take is all.

Well, we'll see what happens if that new one comes.

Until then.

Body Snatchers (1993) - Well, THIS Got Scarier With Time

Welcome back. You're just in time for a fresh round of pods.

Now, you WILL remember to keep these properly watered in your rooms, right?

Look, I'm just concerned is all. I'm still seeing some emotions and I think these plants could help.

...wait. Let me try that again.

ANYWAY, we're jumping ahead in time, this time by fifteen years. It's a new generation and a new kind of Body Snatcher, this time with a new title, and a new director in the form of Abel Ferrara (which was weird for me to remember coming in this time with memories of Bad Lieutenant and Ms. 45.)

There IS still a fair amount of unsettling nonsexual nudity
but nothing quite on the level of Harvey Keitel's breakdown scene.

As an evolution of story, Body Snatchers differs considerably from either of the two prior movies. The pod people are still there, and function in much the same way as in the previous versions, but that is about it. In this case, the medical examiner hero of the past two movies is now a secondary, with the movie instead focusing on his daughter (played by a young Gabrielle Anwar) as the family is moved out to investigate strange goings-on an army base.

If you haven't figured out where it goes from there, well...I don't know what to tell you except keep taking care of those plants. It'll be over soon.

As I've said a few times now, one of the things that's fascinating about this series is how its core idea is adaptable, able to change itself to fit the themes and fears of whenever it is made, whether by design or simple happenstance.

In this case - well, welcome to a post Gulf War brand of pod people.

With that in mind, as some of you have already likely picked up on – Ferrara's decision to set the movie on an army base is a major part of where this movie is going thematically. This is probably the most thematically pointed of the four takes on the story produced to date – by the time Marti (Anwar) and her family arrive at the base, the pods have already taken over much of the populace. Thanks to the tendency of military culture to lean heavily on conformity, this change in the social structure isn't registered right away. Much of it is simply treated as standard army culture rather than an indication of shed humanity.

Okay, so it's not particularly subtle, but then no rule stated it had to be. For what it's worth though, Ferrara mostly conveys it well. At times it can be a little too on the nose (such as a sequence involving Marti's little brother in school where the students' art projects are all the exact same drawing) but even then, it doesn't feel like the movie slows to beat you over the head with it.

One other area where this particular version stands out – while not as uniquely grim as its 78 predecessor, Body Snatchers is arguably the entry in the series that could be described as the most overtly horror-based. Much more time is spent on sequences of people being taken over by pods – up to and including seeing the fate of a human fully taken over within the first act, a reveal previously kept till near the ending. It's understandable in some ways – by this point, the concept of the pod person was already a part of our cultural lexicon, so Ferrara didn't have to play it as coy, the audience already knew what it was getting into.

To its credit, the quick cut presentation of the scene still
makes for a pretty unsettling first reveal, even if you
know what's coming.

This more open approach to the creature and body horror leads to arguably the movie's strongest sequence – an extended scene in which soldier Tim (Billy Wirth), feigning being a pod, has to work his way through an army hospital that has been turned into a conversion center. Ferrara keeps the focus predominantly on Tim and the occasional looks at what he sees, and all the while we hear sounds of soldiers screaming as they're restrained and sedated or the sick, wet sounds of bodies collapsing as they're fully taken over. It manages to be both blatant but also careful enough to make sure it doesn't over play any one visual, creating an altogether disturbing tableau, made all the more effective by the extra challenge that Tim is required to keep a straight face through all of it.

Following this fairly nightmarish scene, we get an ending that is, to this point, probably the closest thing to an upbeat end (give or take for the studio mandated ending to 56, that is.) Of course, even that ending is laced with heavy ambiguity that the pods have already outpaced the survivors, and it's only a matter of time before they escape from one threat into another.

A threat that, in this version, makes the idea of sleeping
even MORE unsettling.

Overall, Ferrara's take remains an interesting one. There's no denying it's a movie with something to say, even if it's at times a bit too blunt about what it's saying, but it also still keeps its story moving, even while it's making sure you don't miss the point. The end result isn't quite as to-the-bone unsettling as its predecessor, but it still manages a fair number of unsettling jolts all on its own.

I still don't know if I can agree with Roger Ebert's assessment that this was the best of the three. In fact, as it is now, I think I'd put it third in line – though less from any fault of its own and more just preference for the first two in their approach. Even with that placing, this still works well as a fresh take.

Also, given what followed the 90s, a dark commentary on the enforced conformity of military culture, particularly with an emphasis on the threat of it eventually working its way off base and weaving its way among civilians as well that feels uncomfortably prescient, so it's got that going for it.

Three for three so far and each has been enjoyable experiences, with something unique to say for them.

Now comes...well...we'll get to The Invasion next time.

With a comment like that, I suppose I've already tipped my hand about what I thought about it, huh?

Well, you'll get to hear me explain that more next time.

ARE YOU ASLEEP YET?
JUST CHECKING

Till then.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – It's the End of the World As We Know It (You Won't Feel a Thing)

Welcome back fellow humans. I trust you've all been tending to your gardens?

Getting lots of rest?

Good. Very good. Keep at it!

With that, it's back into the green house for cultivating another batch of pods for this year's Halloween run.

In what might be the biggest timeline jump I've done so far (give or take for how you want to read last year's segue into the extended universe of The Thing), we're jumping 22 years ahead from where Don Siegel left the town of Santa Mira, CA to its alien fate.

This time around, the baton went to Philip Kaufman – who saw this as an opportunity not to simply remake the original (which he has gone on record as being a fan of) but rather to make a variation on a theme.

Something about the desolate landscape on this poster just feels
incredibly appropriate given the tone the movie leans into.

Which is an interesting way to put it, given his version has, for many, become the definitive variation of the series – so much so that his version of the pod person has become the one ingrained into the popular culture, most famously in the image of them pointing and shrieking to identify those not yet turned.

Like its predecessor, this is an entry I was having a hard time deciding how to approach at first. One part because I've already discussed it on here back in the day, and one part because so much has already been said for it.

What's been said has been justified, of course. Over 40 years later, this movie still works well. True, some of the aesthetic is a bit dated, but that is pretty unavoidable. Once you adjust to that, the movie still plays very well as a thriller, slowly building its paranoia and taking that early time to let you grow to become invested in the small group of characters caught up in the growing menace.

Speaking of that slow burn, that's actually the aspect I wanted to focus on this time. Like The Thing last year, this is a movie I've revisited many times over the years, so for this, rather than just do to a general overview, I was challenging myself to stick to a single particular facet of the movie.

Tangential to where I'm going with this, I will die on the hill
that these versions of the pods are the most visually unsettling.

In trying to do that, it finally hit me just how well Kaufman builds that menace into the movie from the get-go. Some of it's easy to see up front – like the first movie, we have the numerous people who know something is wrong, but can't put their finger on what (there's definitely a social commentary aspect to the fact the first characters we see picking up on it are women and minorities who ultimately go ignored) – and that's by design to help bait the hook.

Then there's the parts that aren't as readily apparent to a first time viewer – things like the scene early on when Brooke Adams unknowingly picks one of the pods. Naturally, our focus is on her, but it's also hard not to pick up on the conversation going on around her, as children are led out to the garden by their teachers, encouraged to pick flowers to bring home to their parents. Once you know what's coming, it seems obvious, but watched in a vacuum, it plays as fairly benign.

Particularly compared to its later accompanying, and far darker, moment when a group of school children are being led into a building where they're being told it's time to take naps. By the time that scene occurs, we know the grim fate that awaits the kids far better than we do in that first moment, but revisiting that first moment becomes much darker in that regard in hindsight.

Given the larger scale this movie builds on compared to the
predecessor, I find myself subscribing to the fan theory that
Kaufman made a sequel where that bookend never happened
and Bennell's been on the run for years.

The same goes for the recurring scenes of the waste removal trucks. It's one of those aspects that reads as fairly benign on that first watch in a vacuum, then takes on a whole new tone on the revisit – particularly when you look in the hopper and note there is no other garbage in that mixture other than the almost literal ashes of the human race.

Dread is a tricky formula to get right in a movie – it's easy to risk laying it on too thick and showing your hand, or couching too much in mystery that loses its value on a rewatch. Kaufman strikes a good balance here, with many of the smaller clues becoming much grimmer horrors filling in the margins on later viewings, more fully painting in the picture of what rapidly becomes clear is a larger destruction of humanity unfolding around our unknowing heroes.

The result is a feeling that, having now seen every entry in the series, feels ultimately unique to this movie. It's the one Body Snatchers film I would say manages to feel genuinely apocalyptic. There's others that flirt with that line with ambiguity, but no other entry sounds the death knell for the human race with as much certainty as this one does, and given how much of it is baked into the movie from the start, it really pays off in the final minutes of the movie – it's possible Veronica Cartwright isn't the last human left on the planet, or in the city, but for our purposes, she may as well be. And as such, it's hard not to sympathize and share in her terror as that knowledge hits home with one last alien shriek.

On that note - we as a society don't give Veronica Cartwright
nearly enough credit as an actress. This would have been an
easy scene to botch and she nails it - both in the initial shock
and horror as well as that subsequent moment where it looks
as though the last of her sanity has just snapped realizing
this is the end.

Which brings us to a close for another entry.

It will be a little less than twenty years before the next entry – though our own visit to Abel Ferrara's The Body Snatchers will be in considerably less time. Until then, stay safe, and keep watering those plants.

No reason. They just look nice, that's all.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

 It begins!

Welcome back to another October run at the Third Row. As discussed last time, this year the series of choice is that evergreen (no pun intended) sci-fi thriller staple, the Body Snatchers series. Further, as the title suggests, we're kicking things off today with the one that started it all (cinematically, anyway. Regrettably I hadn't gotten around to tracking down the original novel in a timely fashion for this one.)

It had been years since I really sat down and gave this a proper watch. In fact, I think the last time I saw it in its entirety before this was back when I wrote about it for the '31 days, 31 horror movies' formula. I haven't actually looked back at that entry because I wanted to go into this just off of the current impressions.

There's a particular aspect of this movie I want to get into, as it was one thing that struck me more on this viewing than it has in the past. But before I really dig into that, I just want to sound off on the movie on its own merits first.

So, I'll admit it as I'm writing this - I've looked at this poster many
times over the years. And this is the first time in all
of that I've really actually thought about, and got,
the significance of that handprint on it.

Having said that, this is still a very strong movie in its own right. It's one that sometimes tends to get overlooked given how large a shadow is (deservedly) cast by its successor, but it is still a movie well worth seeing in its own right. Siegel's version plays itself as a bit more low-key compared to what comes later, partly the benefit that comes from being the first in line and not having an audience that has a sense of what to expect (and whether you've seen the movies or not, the idea of a pod person is now pretty common knowledge thanks to pop cultural osmosis.)

The one area where the version can be said to stumble on its own merits is with regards to the movie's book-ending – a decision mandated by the studios to give the movie a more definitive ending.  
The first part isn't particularly troubling, for the larger movie – though, again, the knowledge it imbues the movie with does undercut the movie's slow reveal by giving you something to expect.

"Come on, guys! I'm not saying we have to spoil the entire movie!
How about just a little tease of what's coming, huh?
Just a little to let the audience get interested?"

The bigger problem comes with the movie's epilogue, an ending that feels very tacked on to give the movie a happier conclusion. In adding this in, the studio's undercut the original ending scene, where an utterly terrified Kevin McCarthy (who has already given a good performance prior to this scene, but knocks it out of the park here) frantically tries to warn others of the invasion he knows is coming, ending on his haunted expression as he shouts, both to the drivers and the audience, “YOU'RE NEXT!"  It's a genuinely great scene – and a good cap on McCarthy's performance – that loses a lot of its bite with the studio-mandated finale appending it.

If you only get to watching just one movie from this run, 78 is probably the best bet, but I'd be lying if I said 56 wasn't well worth your time just as a general watch (though again, feel free to consider skipping past the opening and ending – it won't be perfect as there is still narration, but you'll at least get the genuinely effective final scene as Siegel intended it.)

One of the more curious side effects I've accepted from living in 2020:
The realization that if I somehow travel backwards in time, this is
how I will probably come across to anyone I meet.

Before I conclude, there is one other thing I do want to go into – it's something that will be touched on with the other movies as well, but is of particular interest for me in the context of this first movie.

As I said last time, and alluded to above, Body Snatchers is a fascinating property because it's one that consistently speaks to the times it's made in. Even when all the versions have the same core concept, the differences in culture at the times of each new version give them an incredibly different feel.

This stands out even more given that this first attempt was a movie that was, as far as most of the people involved were concerned, apolitical. Per interviews with many of the people involved (among them  McCarthy, movie's scriptwriter and the author of the original novel the movie was based on) they all simply saw this movie as being a straightforward sci-fi thriller with no real undertone to it.

Despite that intention, the movie was soon made into a rallying point by people on both sides of the political spectrum – with reads of the movie being both anti-Communist and anti-McCarthy in its presentation. Of the people involved in the making of the movie, director Don Siegel was the only person who really acknowledged a political factor going in – and even to hear him tell it, it was less a conscious effort, and more an acknowledgment that the paranoia sparked by Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts was going to make its way into the film whether they wanted it to or not.

"It's...it's either reading Karl Marx or naming names to the HUAC.
Depends which the audience finds scarier, but it's one of the two!"

In an age where people have debated the idea of politics in pop culture and horror specifically (an oftentimes disingenuous argument that ignores the subtext of many earlier classics of the genre), the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers remains one of the more interesting examples to bring up – it wasn't designed to be political, but it became that way just by sparking the right ideas at the right time.

Ideas that, to the movie's credit, still resonate now (watching the scenes of Santa Mira's children talking about how their older relatives have changed but never quite being able to explain it has a certain extra degree of haunting familiarity after you hear enough stories of people who've become estranged from loved ones that went down the rabbit holes of pundits, conspiracy theories, or oftentimes both.)

Again, I will be the first to admit, the 1978 Body Snatchers will likely always remain the gold standard of this property. Having said that, I'm pleased to see that the 56 still carries itself well now and still manages to feel like it has something to say for itself even now.

Pretty impressive for a movie that didn't feel like it was trying to make a statement at the time.

So far, so good. And if you're not sick of me singing the praises of the remake, check back here soon when we jumped ahead to the Philip Kaufman movie that solidified this series as pop culture shorthand.

Till then, this is your resident huma—Guy in the Third Row reminding you to take care of your plants and get lots and lots of sleep.

In closing, I would like to thank the Santa Mira Farmer's Market
for sponsoring this series - bring some pods home for the whole family.
No reason. They just might like them.

Can't Sleep, Pods Will Eat Me

Ahhh, I love this time of year. The air's cool and crisp, the leaves are changing, and, of course, the opportunity to bury myself face-first in horror and inhale deeply.

With that odd visual in your minds, welcome back to the Third Row, the site that has currently taken the status of 'annual curse', lying dormant until October, when it rises again to ramble across the earth.

2020 has been...let's just say it, cause we're all in it - it's been a shitshow. I've toyed with bringing this back in other forms throughout the year with mixed results, but in any event, I remain committed to the current October model.

For those who are just joining us this year, here's the rundown – way back in my younger, slightly more free timed days, this month took the practice of '31 days, 31 movies' as its model. It was fun, but the time does add up. A few years back, I decided I wanted to get back on the horse, but changed the model – picking a single horror franchise and doing a month-long deep dive on it. In past years, this has taken us through the Phantasm series, The Omen, and John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy (more thematic than franchise, but I'll happily take an excuse to talk about my loves of The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness.)

This year, I'm again testing the boundaries of the word 'franchise.' Like last year, the installments are all standalone, united under a common theme, but a much more direct one.

By now, many of you have likely guessed by the title of this piece – this year it's Body Snatchers time.

In other news, my attempts at herb gardening during lockdown
this year have gone hideously awry.

I'll admit it – I'm pretty psyched for this particular series run. A big part of that is the fact that, at it's core, the horror of the Body Snatchers is one that is fairly evergreen, and one that, as this dive will show, can be readily reinvented and retooled to sync up with any number of other real fears depending when it is made.

So keep an eye out here throughout this month. Things will be kicking off proper with the 1956 Don Siegel classic soon, followed by Philip Kaufman's iconic 1978 remake, then Abel Ferrara's fairly creepy 1993 offering, and coming to a finish with the 2000s remake.

Give or take for time, there will be some bonus content as well (alas, no wild Dark Horse tie-in comic this year that I'm aware of), but that will depend on how things shape up.

In the meantime, will be back here soon. Everyone, stay safe out there.

And oh yes,get lots of sleep.
No reason. Just something we humans all need.