INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

DENNY ZEITLIN

Rating:

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton: When people ask me “what is the scariest film you’ve ever seen”, my answer more often than not is this one: director Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I distinctly remember seeing this film on television in the early hours of the morning, some time in the late 1980s (which would make me around 14-15 years of age), and being slowly terrified by the almost imperceptible sense of impending doom and creeping menace that permeates the film. By the time the final scene comes along, I was already pretty shaken. That final shot of Donald Sutherland, mouth open, with that inhuman scream, pointing at a disbelieving and hysterical Veronica Cartwright drove me over the edge.

For those who don’t know, the film is a sci-fi horror tale based on a novel by Jack Finney, in which a group of affluent San Francisco folk (including Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright and Leonard Nimoy) discover that the city is gradually being taken over by alien being known as ‘pods’, who came to Earth as spores, grow into exact duplicates of their chosen victim, kill them in their sleep, and then take their place. Devoid of emotion or individual thought, these pod clones identify humans by emitting a piercing, ear-shattering scream and pointing, thereby alerting their fellow aliens to the presence of their next victim. Before long, public health inspector Matthew Bennell (Sutherland) finds himself in a race against time to alert the disbelieving authorities of the invasion, while all the time keeping himself and his friends out of the way of the seemingly unstoppable pods…

The story had already been made as a well-respected feature film in 1956 directed by Don Siegel and starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, and as subsequently re-made again by Abel Ferrara in 1993, but there is something about Kaufman’s film which makes it a classic. Maybe it was something to do with the political climate in the 1970s - the very human sub-plots of losing one’s identity, increased interference by government agencies, and the general paranoia that infected society at that time gave it such social relevance. Maybe it was to do with Kaufman’s excellent direction, W.D. Richter’s intelligent screenplay, and the generally accomplished performances which gave the sensationalistic storyline a thorough grounding in reality. Or maybe it was simply the fact that I was watching this movie as an impressionable teenager late one night, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies…

One aspect of the film which never really left a great impression was the avant-garde score by California-based jazz composer Denny Zeitlin, his one and only contribution to the film music genre during a career which began in the 1960s. In the film, Zeitlin’s music is often confused with the film’s sound effects track, and intentional blurring of lines on the part of the director and composer. There are traditional moments of orchestral scoring, most notably during the stark and impressionistic “Main Title”, the laid back jazz trumpet “Love Theme” for Matthew and Elizabeth, but the most interesting parts of the score are the more dissonant ones.

“The Discovery” accompanies the shocking scene of Jeff Goldblum discovering a duplicate of himself growing in one of the beds at his wife’s mud bath sauna, while “Rescue” sees Sutherland saving a comatose Elizabeth from the clutches of her pod. As the sense of tension and disorientation grows, so does the shrillness of Zeitlin’s strings and the frantic undulation of the synths. “Infiltration” is a suite made up of smaller cues, each one adding to the levels of paranoia and alienation through chaotic electronic stylings, unnervingly quiet percussion á la Goldsmith, scraping metal, and other assorted sound effects.

The film’s elongated finale, from “Flight” through to “The Reckoning” – as Matthew and Elizabeth run for the lives through the streets of San Francisco, evading pods and desperately trying to stay awake – sees Zeitlin employing increasingly dissonant textures and orchestral figures: crying violins, chaotic brasses, frantic and unfocused percussion, occasionally punctuated by brief outbursts of more thematic material (such as the seedy funk in “On the Streets”) and notable action sequences (such as the feverish pizzicato and piano combo in “Escape to Darkness”). More than anything else, this part of the score sounds like the music Goldsmith wrote for Planet of the Apes, or the work of composers such as Jerry Fielding, Leonard Rosenman or Lalo Schifrin from around the same period. It’s interesting to note just how many musical envelopes were being pushed around this time.

This release of the soundtrack of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the third issue from independent label Perseverance and producer Robin Esterhammer (a series that also includes David Bergeaud’s Prince Valiant, two Dr Phibes scores, and Michael Perilstein’s risible The Deadly Spawn). The score is most definitely a product of its time, a decade in film music where composers were not only allowed but positively encouraged to be innovative, test boundaries and explore the nature of what film music could be. Although there is little of what could be called “conventional” film music here, it nevertheless is of interest in terms of the way Zeitlin had the creative energy to tell such a terrible tale in such an out of the ordinary way. Recommended for fans of the film, but with reservations for those whose tastes don’t stretch much beyond the norm.

Track Listing: Note: Tracks 13-19 of this release comprise extracts of a 30-minute audio interview with composer Denny Zeitlin, in which he discusses in detail the creation of the score, from getting hired, spotting and preparing the music, through to the music technology used, the improvisational performance techniques, and the clash between his score and the film’s sound effects.

Running Time: 39 minutes 21 seconds

Perseverance PRD-003 (1978/2003)

Music composed by Denny Zeitlin. Conducted by Roger Kelleway. Orchestrations by Greig McRitchie. Special musical performances by Denny Zeitlin. Recorded and mixed by Dan Wallin. Mastered by Dino Lappas. Album produced by Denny Zeitlin and Robin Esterhammer.

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