Body Snatchers (1993)

Director: Abel Ferrara
Writer(s): Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, and Nicholas St. John, from a screen story by Raymond Cistheri and Larry Cohen, and a novel by Jack Finney
Starring: Gabrielle Anwar, Meg Tilly, Terry Kinney, and Billy Wirth

I have to confess that I have not seen either of the other “body snatcher” films (both of which go by the name Invasion of the Body Snatchers, rather than this abbreviated title): the 1956 original, or the 1978 remake. From what I understand, that actually makes me the target demographic for Abel Ferrara’s “modern update”, which is a term that generally means the special effects are updated, while everything else just goes to shit. In this case, that assumption would be accurate.

Marti Malone is a teenage girl, and also the unnecessary narrator of the story. She is traveling with her family to an army base in Alabama, because her father, Steve, works for the EPA, and has been sent there to run tests on the water system. Along with Steve and Marti, we have Andy, Marti’s young brother, and Carol, the required “hated stepmother” stereotype. The trip gets off to a pretty ominous start when, in the restroom of a gas station along the way, a man dressed in military fatigues holds Marti at knifepoint, and warns her that “they attack you when you’re sleeping”, to paraphrase. She screams and tells her parents about the incident, but of course the soldier is miraculously gone by the time they get there.

The rest of the trip goes without occurrence, and they arrive at the military base a short while later. While everyone else is helping to put things away, Marti goes for a little stroll—and ends up trespassing in a restricted area. She is about to turn around and go home when up rolls Jenn Platt in a fancy car. The two have never met, but true-to-movie form Jenn orders Marti into the car, she complies, and now they are automatically friends. We learn that Jenn is the daughter of the base commander, and so she can basically run around with impunity.

Andy, meanwhile, gets the feeling that something is wrong, after all of the other kids at the base fingerpaint the exact same picture during daycare. He attempts to run away from the base, but is picked up by young, attractive Tim (that will come in handy soon), a chopper pilot (that will come in handy later) who returns him to his home, and catches the eye of Marti. Things don’t get any better for that poor kid, when that night, he has the misfortune of witnessing his mother decompose right before his eyes, while a “replacement” steps out of the closet. This is how the “body snatchers” work: As the random man in the gas station bathroom told Marti, they wait until the victim is sleeping, then slip long tentacles into every facial orifice they can. That data seems to be transmitted to a pod, which then replicates an exact human clone after a few minutes, which then hatches. And once the replica is complete, the old body basically “deflates” away. The “body snatchers” are imperceptible from their human counterparts, except for one telling difference: they cannot show emotion.

This leads me to a pretty dumb flaw in the movie’s logic: in order to trick them, all you have to do is not show emotion. That’s it. You would think that such an advanced species—one that can completely create a perfect replica of a human being in just a few short minutes—would give the replicas the ability to sense whether or not someone is an actual real human, or one just suppressing their feelings, but they can’t. Then again, many zombie movies feature humans that merely have to shamble and “act dead” in order to blend in, so it must merely make an easy writing device.

I think we can all tell what’s going to happen from here: the “disease” quickly spreads, and it’s up to the remaining survivors to put a stop to it. Of course, we know Tim doesn’t die because he’s the only one that can operate a chopper, and Marti doesn’t die simply because she’s the main female lead, and they never seem to die. Other than that, I won’t reveal the many twists and turns, just in case you actually plan on sitting through this.

There are some effective ideas and sequences at play here, which prevent this from being a complete waste of time. The inhuman screams of the clones, used to alert others when humans are nearby, is actually pretty chilling. It loses its impact the more often it gets used, but the first time is especially creepy. And even though I complained about the ease with which the replicas can be fooled, I did kind of like the way they attempt to figure out who is human, by saying something incredibly mean or sad and waiting for a reaction. The way they prey on human emotion in this regard is pretty unique. The updated effects are pretty good, too, though a lot of the themes (and ideas) were put to much better use in the underrated The Hidden. The cast is also largely above average, with Forest Whitaker, in a small role as Major Collins, and Terry Kinney as the father, Steve Malone, in my opinion the best of the bunch.

The reality that a major Hollywood remake is braindead certainly comes as no shock, but what is surprising is the name attached to it: Abel Ferrara. I’ve not seen a whole lot of his filmography, but he has long been known as a director who pulls no punches (reportedly, his own wife walked out of a screening of his incredibly violent gangster epic King of New York, along with about forty others). In Ms. 45 he tells the tale of a woman who is raped twice in one day, and gets her revenge by seducing men and then shooting them to death, while The Addiction draws parallels between vampirism and drug addiction. This isn’t a man who generally takes the easy way out, so it was shocking to see that he made such a predictable, largely soulless picture.

But then again, maybe it doesn’t come as much of a surprise after all: we all need a paycheck, and I’m sure this provided Mr. Ferrara the artistic freedom to make his next few pictures. If that was his motivation, then I guess I can’t really fault him for that.

RECAP: It’s nowhere near great, but it’s short, and has enough cool effects, creepy scenes, and good acting to make it a decent timewaster. I’ve not seen the two previous adaptations of Jack Finney’s novel, both of which went under the longer title Invasion of the Body Snatchers, so I can’t compare this to either of them, but standing on its own merits, it’s a pretty predictable cash grab that serves as yet another curiosity in director Abel Ferrara’s abrasive filmography.

RATING: 5/10

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Ms. 45 (1981)

Director: Abel Ferrara
Writer(s): Nicholas St. John
Starring: Zoe Lund, Bogey, Albert Sinkys, and Darlene Stuto

VHS cover art courtesy of Retro-Daze

Hollywood is rife with stories of actors being consumed by the excess of a glamorous lifestyle, but very few are as genuinely heartbreaking as the story of Zoe Tamerlis, the beautiful lead actress of Abel Ferrara’s cult revenge thriller Ms. 45, who was only 17 years old at the time of filming. Three years later, she followed up her debut with an even bigger role in journeyman director Larry Cohen’s Special Effects, in which she played two leading parts. Even though she wanted to branch out from the shadow of Ferrara, determined to carve her own career path rather than merely latch on to his success, she returned to help him pen Bad Lieutenant, the infamous film that arguably put him on the map for good (after his normal writer, Nicholas St. John, refused to write it because of his devout Catholic beliefs). In between those last two projects, she married Robert Lund in 1986, a relationship that would technically last for the next thirteen years (though they were separated in 1997, neither filed for divorce).

If things sound like they were going well for her, they weren’t: she was a heroin addict. Now that’s nothing new in and of itself, but what makes her story so harrowing was her dedication to the drug: she was not just addicted to it, but came to believe it harnessed a power within her that otherwise could not be accessed. She went so far as to become an outspoken advocate of the drug, never once seeming to realize—or rather, maybe completely disregarding—the danger that her addiction was putting her in. She continued to write, finding inspiration from other junkies who met premature ends, such as model Gia Carangi, noted as one of the first “supermodels”, who spiraled into drug addiction before dying of AIDS at the age of 26; Lund was commissioned to write a screenplay based on Gia’s life, which would remain unfinished.

After separation from her husband in 1997, she moved to Paris, France, with a new boyfriend, only to succumb to heart and lung failure, exacerbated by her constant drug use, in April of 1999. Drug-related deaths are always sad, because many of them feel so preventable: if only people could have reached out to them, or made them see the error of their ways, we wouldn’t have been robbed of such talent so soon. What makes Lund's story so depressing is that her life felt like a linear story, one that was marching to an unavoidable, foregone conclusion. I cannot find any stories on how friends and family, specifically her husband, reacted to her heroin addiction—did they try to get her to quit, or did they just turn a blind eye and hope for the best?—but so strong was her faith in the illicit drug that none of that information even seems to matter. The limits of her talents (prior to becoming a writer, she was a brilliant composer/musician) would end there, never to be explored.

In Ms. 45, she plays Thana, a mute woman who is raped twice in the same day on her way home from work: once in a back alley (this rapist is played by Abel Ferrara), and then again at home, after unwittingly walking in on a burglar in the process of scouting out her home. She kills her second attacker in the act, by beating him to death with a tire iron, then becomes drawn to his gun, a Colt .45, which she takes with her wherever she goes. During the process of attempting to hide the body (she cuts the limbs off, puts each one in individual trash bags, then disperses them at random points throughout the city over the span of several days), she begins a transformation from timid seamstress, to full-on murderer of men.

To be fair, Ferrara’s New York paints every male as a leering, psychosexual predator, and gives her many chances to utilize her new weapon. Men catcall Thana (and her friends) at every turn, they follow her to give her back the bags that she's intentionally dropping, they proposition her for sex, and the list goes on and on. Sickened by their actions, and slowly going insane from her previous abuse, she kills her attackers with a lessening amount of hesitation, and in the process, becomes a kind of feminist superhero, ridding the streets of misogynistic trash one bullet at a time. At first, she seems to do it out of necessity (the first man she shoots is running at her and screaming, so when paired up with her recent traumas, it’s easy to believe she feels she is doing it out of self-defense), but soon she is encouraging men to approach her, wearing dresses and layering on the make-up, and taking an active part in luring them to their deaths.

Since she cannot speak, and doesn’t seem to have anyone close enough that she can confide in, she keeps her emotions bottled up inside, which eventually leads to a drop in her work quality. She assures her boss that it will get better, but it doesn’t; in what feels like a last-ditch effort to save her job, she agrees to go to an office-wide Halloween party with her boss, which leads to a violent but effective slow-motion finale where she completely snaps, and all the male partygoers become fair game.

Ms. 45 was critically reviled at the time of its release, largely dismissed by uncaring critics as irredeemable exploitation trash, but there’s plenty here that elevate it beyond the sleazy archetypes of that subgenre. Exhibit A is Lund's performance as Thana: removing her ability to speak gives her with a lot less to do, but she still manages to pull off a strong, and sometimes even emotionally-charged, performance. The sounds of her occasional (and barely audible) whimpers during the second assault are gut-wrenching, while the lingering scenes of her curling up after each of her assaults gives her all-too-human qualities that approach a realism missing from most exploitation films. Her facial expressions as she continues to deflect co-workers’ concerns also brilliantly convey a woman that is hiding much more pain than anyone should have to repress; this may not completely justify her transition into “avenging angel”, but it certainly gives us a good reason to understand it.

The film’s biggest misstep is the inclusion of Mrs. Nasone, the landlady of Thana’s apartment building who is always meddling in her affairs. The problem is, her intrusions are unconvincing and clearly serve only as a thin way to advance the plot. For example, in one meeting, Thana heads out of her apartment with a paper bag (that does happen to contain human remains, but that’s beside the point), and, without any provocation whatsoever, Mrs. Nasone aggressively inquires about what’s in the bag. In another, she inexplicably enters Thana’s apartment without any form of consent, leading her dog, Phil, to act suspicious around the bathtub and fridge. Her character might have been included for comedic effect, but she actually manages to be way more infuriating than humorous.

The film’s low budget is also an occasional hindrance, with a few bad performances and some weak special effects. The writing also seems to lose focus, such as a fairly early scene in which Thana sees someone reading a paper talking about one of her murders, but as the body count grows, and as she starts killing more and more people in public with a loud gun, there’s very little mention of her in the media. Likewise, there’s really no mention of police, until a couple make an appearance toward the end, after Mrs. Nasone calls them to report something weird that she saw after essentially breaking into Thana’s apartment. If the police and/or media aspects weren’t going to be fleshed out, why even include them at all? Completely removing them could have given the film an even stronger feeling of anarchy, while heightening the revenge fantasy components.

The climactic Halloween sequence, with its nightmarish, slow-motion soundtrack, ends things on a positive note. This is due, in no small part, to the finale of the scene, which shows a loyalty among Thana and her female “allies” that manages to be strangely, powerfully potent.

As feminism seems to be an ever-growing movement these days, with women continuing to be pushed around and playing second fiddle to their white male counterparts, it’s no wonder that this film has slowly earned a loyal cult fanbase. I would suspect such a following will only increase over the years; though it’s directed by a man, it still maintains a unique, empowering female viewpoint while also avoiding many of the sleazier aspects of typical “exploitation” films; the end result is a flawed, but ultimately gripping, revenge film that will sadly remain relevant far into the future.

RECAP: It’s flawed, and its low-budget sometimes does it no favors, but Ms. 45 is a gripping feminist revenge thriller that manages to avoid the usual trappings (and the general sleaziness) of similar exploitation films. Zoe Tamerlis/Lund is good as the mute seamstress Thana, who is raped twice in one day and begins a rather speedy descent into a man-hating feminist superhero, offing any man who makes a pass at her with a Colt .45 handgun. There isn’t much plot to speak of, and the whole formula does get a little old, with men approaching Thana (or, later, her enticing them to do so) and then her just as quickly dispatching them, but it works rather brilliantly as a feminist fantasy. Finale at a Halloween party ends everything on a brilliant note. Not surprisingly, it was reviled upon release, but is finally starting to get the attention it deserves; definitely worth a watch.

RATING: 7/10 

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