Parents' Guide to Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Far from a trashy horror remake, this sci-fi chiller is arguably the best of the four adaptations of Jack Finney's novel, as well as one of the most entertaining and pointed movies of its decade. San Francisco-based filmmaker Philip Kaufman set Invasion of the Body Snatchers in his own city, making its unique geography and personality part of the story's fabric. The evil, green organic matter is juxtaposed by cityscapes, all steel, glass, and plastic. As written by the great screenwriter W.D. Richter (Big Trouble in Little China, Home for the Holidays), the characters are misfits and outcasts. The first time we see Sutherland's Matthew, he's fishing a rat dropping out of a tureen in a restaurant kitchen, followed by Cartwright's Nancy hefting a man out of a mud bath. By contrast, Elizabeth's straight-arrow boyfriend, Geoffrey, is first seen glazing over in front of a TV screen, headphones blocking out the world. (He's already a "pod person.")

Kaufman explores the story's potent themes—the idea of the individual versus the collective (and which is bad, which is good, and why)—with more fervor and humor than the other movie adaptations of the book, and they're still timelessly relevant. (The other versions include Don Siegel's 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Abel Ferrara's 1993 Body Snatchers, and Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2007 The Invasion.) And some of the movie's most legendarily creepy/scary moments have lost none of their power. Siegel and actor Kevin McCarthy, from the 1956 version, appear as a taxi driver and a paranoid man, respectively, while Robert Duvall has an uncredited cameo as a priest on a child's swing set. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is highly recommended to anyone who's still human.