Episode 19: Body Snatcher Movies, feat. Jim Laczkowski of Director’s Club Podcast

ALIEN INVADERS, MIND-ALTERING SPACE SLUGS & BLACK MAGIC MADMEN ARE COMING TO STEAL YOUR CORPOREAL FORM & USE YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!

Welcome back for a more typical episode of Genre Grinder. Gabe’s finally done talking about SOV horror movies and is joined by Now Playing Network & Director’s Club co-host Jim Laczkowski to take a long, very nearly complete look at Body Snatcher Movies. Specifically, science fiction – or at least sci-fi adjacent – movies that feature usually alien, sometimes human, and almost always malevolent entities that possess human bodies, stealing identities, and/or creating automaton doppelgängers (pod people, robots, zombies, et cetera).

Given the scope of the discussion this time around, the discussion has been loosely broken down into an introduction and four categories (note that we cover more than the movies listed and the time spent on each movie varies):

00:00 – Intro: Invaders from Mars (1953), literature & television
14:08 – Part 1, The Official Invasion of the Body Snatchers Canon: Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers (1993), and Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion (2007).
54:02 – Part 2, Invasion of the Body Snatchers Successors and the Unofficial Representatives of Each Decade: John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Larry Cohen’s The Stuff (1985), Robert Rodriguez’ The Faculty (1998), Edgar Wright’s The World’s End (2013), and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017).
1:16:12 – Part 3, Alien Slug Parasite Movies: Bruno VeSota’s The Brain Eaters (1958), Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps (1986), Stuart Orme’s The Puppet Masters (1994), Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher (2003), and James Gunn’s Slither (2006), including Gene Fowler Jr.’s I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958).
1:47:43 – Part 4, Unique Variants and Final Thoughts: Hajime Sato’s Goke the Body Snatcher from Hell (1968), Gary Sherman’s Dead and Buried (1981), and everything else.