¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

Candidate #3

LITTLE JOE

(May 2019)

“Fear can distort our perception of reality until we actually see what we are afraid of… or what we secretly wish for…”

Every living thing on this planet impacts the environment, in both small and big ways, but it’s only humanity that does so with other motives besides survival and adaptation.

And prominent amongst those other motives is profit.

Not only are considerable risks taken because large amounts of money stand to be made, but all this is undertaken with an arrogant sense of certitude, then covered up by the lie that it’s all for the “betterment” of mankind.

That smug sense of entitlement--we do so because we can--lies at the very heart of Jessica Hausner’s Little Joe.

“We are entering a new era here. The first mood-lifting, antidepressant, happy plant… that’s fit for market. I mean, you can imagine the benefit for humanity implicated in this innovation.”

Relocating from Into the Badlands, Emily Beecham plays plant breeder Alice Woodard, whose latest work, named after her own son (Kit Connor), is the titular (and quite possibly sinister) “Little Joe.”

The flower’s been genetically engineered to maximize its scent production, a smell that is literally meant to make those who take a whiff of it happy.

There’s money to be had from that idea… any quick shortcut to happiness is something people would gladly pay for.

And, since this is ¡Qué horror!, it should come as no surprise that the ultimate cost for the happiness Little Joe is capable of inducing is so much more than mere dollars and cents.

“It would be a mistake to deny who you really are.”

Working from a script she co-wrote with Géraldine Bajard, Hausner presents us with a quietly unsettling title that has potent echoes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, highlighting that fear of realizing, far too late, that while everything around you may still look the same, it’s all fundamentally different.

And, far worse, no one else seems to mind because ROI is king.

“Please don’t be offended, but your theory lacks any sort of evidence. There are simply no symptoms. And who can prove the genuineness of feelings? Moreover, who cares?”

Parting Shot: Alongside the former Badlands Widow, we also find Ben Whishaw and Shallow Grave’s Kerry Fox in the cast, so even more reasons to check this one out.

(Little Joe OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

reVIEW (44)
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

Having watched Nicholas Roeg’s classic “psychic thriller” Don’t Look Now last night, I decided to make a mini-Donald Sutherland festival of it, and booked a return trip to San Francisco circa 1978 to watch, for the umpteenth time, the pod people take root, in Philip Kaufman’s awesome Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

1978.
I missed seeing Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers with my family because I had to stay home, sick. The next day, my older brothers regaled me with some of the film’s highlights, including of course, the bit with Pooch, and that nasty, nasty last shot. (Even back then, the term “spoilers” was alien to my brothers.)
I got to see the film later on, and it’s to the credit of Kaufman and everyone else who was involved with this second cinematic adaptation of the Jack Finney novel, The Body Snatchers, that the movie still worked like gangbusters, even if I already knew some of the vital beats of the narrative.
Over the subsequent years, Invasion of the Body Snatchers would remain the solid core of my Kaufman Three, to be joined by 1983‘s The Right Stuff and 1990’s Henry & June.
And even now, three decades later, the film still gets me.

Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) is an employee of the Department of Public Health, who, along with co-worker Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) and some friends, gradually uncovers an insidious invasion of our planet, by alien pods that duplicate humans, producing identical replicas that possess the memories of the original, though stripped of all emotion.
While the first film adaptation—Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956—was an allegory for an America under the shadow of the Red Scare and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Kaufman’s spin on the material is a wildly effective exercise in urban paranoia, and the fear of conspiracy.
In the film, the city that is arguably the most free-thinking and liberal in the United States, San Francisco, becomes ground zero for this creeping, unseen invasion whose ultimate goal is total conformity. Utilizing the trappings of civilization—the vast, faceless bureaucracy; the daily workings of a bustling metropolis—as both mask and tool, this sort of take over, a cultural and societal cancer, if you will, is far more disturbing than the death rays-a-blazing gambit of other science fiction invasion films like Independence Day or War of the Worlds.

Aside from the effective leads, Kaufman also drafted Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright (as Jack and Nancy Bellicec), as well as Leonard Nimoy (as psychiatrist David Kibner), who deliver some excellent supporting performances.
Kaufman also gathered some great behind-the-scenes personnel, including pioneering sound designer Ben Burtt, who provides some truly unnerving aural effects (one can never truly shake off the pod shriek), and make-up effects wizard Tom Burman (fourth on my list of Best Special Make-Up Effects Dudes, Ever),* responsible for the major creepfest which was the multiple pod births in the garden sequence.
And the cameos…
Kevin McCarthy runs out of the 1956 version, right into this one, and Don Siegel trades in his director’s chair for the driver’s seat of a cab. Priceless.

As I mentioned above, this film is 30 years old, and it’s still as powerful and disturbing today as it was back then. Kaufman hit this one dead on, succeeding where the third and fourth adaptations (Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers and Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s The Invasion) ultimately failed.
In point of fact, in this post 9/11 age where all—even governments—are suspect, and where racial profiling is a questionable exercise since skin colour cannot genuinely reflect a person’s inner ideology, Kaufman’s grim vision of a society changed overnight is perhaps even more chilling today than it was in 1978.

* Number one: Rick Baker.
Number two: Rob Bottin.
Number three: Tom Savini.
Tom Burman has been keeping busy recently working on TV’s Nip/Tuck and Grey’s Anatomy. Back in the day, he also did notable make-up effects work on Oliver Stone’s The Hand, Paul Schrader’s remake of Cat People, the Michael Myers-less Halloween installment, Season of the Witch, Brian De Palma’s Body Double, and slasher fare like My Bloody Valentine and Happy Birthday To Me.

Parting shot: Aside from all its other strengths, Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers also sports the cruelest use of “Amazing Grace” outside of an American Idol audition show that I’ve ever seen.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of the fourth film adaptation of The Body Snatchers, The Invasion, as well as Steven Spielberg’s take on War of the Worlds, can be found in the Archive.

(Invasion of the Body Snatchers OS courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)