Donald Sutherland Archives

Over the years there have been many versions of the alien body snatcher idea. The 1951 Robert Heinlein novel “The Puppet Masters”, may well be the earliest entry in this sub-genre. However the movie adaptation comes very late to the party following in the footsteps of three versions of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1953, 1978 and 1993) and two versions of “Invaders From Mars” (1953 and 1986). There have also been a number of tangentially similar films such as “The Thing” (1982), “The Hidden” (1987) and “Night of the Creeps” (1986). On top of this both Star Trek and The Outer Limits produced episodes based on Heinlein’s story. Even Roger Corman ripped it off for “The Brain Eaters” (1958) and was sued by Heinlein as a result. All that considered, it is strange it took so long for a direct adaptation.

The Puppet Masters was somewhat of a passion project for Michael Engelberg. The producer had been pushing for the film to enter production since the mid eighties. He was assisted by his long term friend and Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Disney didn’t have a lot of experience with this kind of film however, as a result production was a tad bumpy. The script ended up with countless re-writes, two competing scripts were being developed simultaneously at one point. Directors were hired, minds changed, a third new script was developed and then finally a variation of the original script when to filming with a whole lot of compromise.

Invaders From Space

The Puppet Masters is directed by Stuart Orme. A strange choice given his career until that point was mostly directing made-for-TV movies (And still is). The screenplay was provided by by a combination of David Goyer, Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott. Eric Thal stars as “Sam Nivens”, Donald Sutherland as his father “Andrew” who runs a special branch of the CIA that deal with extraterrestrial activity and Julie Warner as xenobiologist “Mary Sefton”.

The team are called in to examine a site where a UFO is suspected of landing near a small town. When they arrive they quickly determine something is up with the inhabitants of this town and after a confrontation with one realise they are being controlled by an alien lifeform. What follows is a tactical battle between the two sides. The invaders do their best to take over key personnel while the humans try to detect the invaders, figure out what they want and most importantly find a way to kill them without killing their hosts.

Stars And Slugs

Coming as late to the pod party as this movie does has left it in a difficult position. Trying to repackage the original body snatching story to appear fresh and unique in a sea of similar stories that came after the original novel is a difficult ask. It’s most obvious imitator “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” already re-invented itself twice and the second version of that story from 1978 is still regarded as the gold standard for the theme. The earlier 1953 movie was no slouch either. Both versions pushed the fear and paranoia to the extreme. Puppet Masters is more focused on the bigger picture, than on individual characters. This is more about the war between the humans and the space slugs, instead of the paranoia of the individuals. The result is interesting, but not especially compelling.

The cast is a relatively strong one, with the big name unfortunately being Donald Sutherland. A fantastic actor for sure, but unfortunate because he was also in the 70’s Bodysnatchers movie and as I mentioned, that is the gold standard. There was no possible way that this film wouldn’t be constantly compared to the 1978 classic with Sutherland being the face of both. His performance in the film is good, as you’d expect. But since he isn’t the lead, he is largely wasted. All his inclusion does is lead to harsh comparisons with a better movie. The actual lead is Eric Thal (When he’s not being controlled by space slugs) who puts in a solid performance. Keith David and Julie Warner are pretty good too. It’s not the acting that lets this one down.

Bad Adaptation

This is a film made out of compromises, resulting in a final product that probably didn’t please anyone involved. It’s not a fair reflection of Heinlein’s novel, it’s not that different to the various other body snatcher films it doesn’t really offer any great moments. While the screenplay gave up most of the cool moments from the novel to executive pressure, the director Stuart Orme failed to make anything that remained at all memorable. The movie is all bland and dry. There is a reason he went right back to made-for-TV movies after. The cast do their best and there are elements of the plot that are interesting but none that really make it compelling.

It’s a real shame, but that’s Hollywood. Maybe one day someone will make a better adaptation. For now we just have this. It is conceptually interesting in places, but nothing in the film really stands out and it’s ultimately a movie you’ll have forgotten minutes after watching. This is a solid 5/10. Not a total waste of time, but also not a recommendation. If you want a more fun version of the story on screen, watch the Star Trek episode “Operation — Annihilate!”

For tonight’s horror we’re checking out the early 70’s horro/Thriller movie “Don’t Look Now”. This is from British director Nicolas Roeg, based on a short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. The screen play is from Allan Scott and Chris Bryant and stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Graeme Clifford deserves a special mention as the movies editor. I don’t normally mention the editors (Which maybe I should), but in this instance the movie wouldn’t be the same without him.

There will be spoilers here, since it’s impossible to talk about this film with tackling it’s conclusion. This is a film where almost nothing can fall into place without that final context, so if you do not wish to have the 50 year old movie spoiled for you, skip ahead to the conclusion section which I will leave spoiler free. You have been warned.

A Series Of Events.

The actual plot of the movie in it’s driest form is simply John (Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Christie) attempting to move on after the death of their daughter who drowned while playing in the back yard of their country estate. Laura gains some peace after a chance interaction with a blind psychic woman. The woman that explains her daughter is still with them and happy (Albeit still dead). John meanwhile is plagued with strange visions and believes he keeps seeing glimpses of his daughter.

The psychics warn Laura that John is in danger. They encourages him to leave Venice, but he continues to be skeptical. . After a near death experience he starts to wonder if there was some truth to the warning. However he continues to be confused by his own visions and what they mean. Eventually he finds himself chasing after what he thinks is his daughter only to find out it is… well, it’s a psychotic dwarf woman, who kills him. The end. No, I didn’t make that up.

It’s All In The Edit.

The main thing to note is that this film is all about the editing and the themes. It is through the editing that it tells most of it’s story. It is a sort of expressionistic art piece of a movie. If you take away all the visual symbolism what you actually get is a very boring movie with a very strange ending and an infamous sex scene in the middle (Which is actually what it is most famous for). Judging it in in this way you could easily conclude this is a bad movie. In some ways it still is as I feel like there is an over reliance on themes and editing and perhaps most significantly, viewer interpretation. This places the movie as more of a chin stroking art house piece than a story or piece of entertainment.

That said, as more of an art based and theme based movie it does work. John is a man struggling with both grief and his psychic powers, neither of which he is willing to spend time accepting or dealing with it. There is an undertone that perhaps he is even out to punish himself for the events that lead to his daughters death. His daughter drowned and yet he chooses to move to Venice, the most water based city in the world. He has a poor grasp of the language too, which leaves him somewhat isolated. Although he goes about his day to day activity as if the grief is not impacting him, it is clear it haunts him.

Grief And The Need To Deal With It.

This is why a lot of the interpretations of the movie focus on dealing with grief and this was largely my read of the film too. But on top of (and deeply related to) this John is experiencing visions, which he is unable to accept as such. These visions are ultimately of his own death and the events immediately following it. For example when he sees his wife in Venice after she has flown back to England, what he is actually seeing is her at his funeral. But unable to accept such concepts he concludes she is somehow back in Italy and in trouble.

By contrast Laura, who had been struggling more with the death outwardly is able to find some peace when she is told by the blind psychic that her daughter is still with them and is happy. It could be interpreted that her and the psychics attempt to get him to leave Venice is actually talking about the city in a way that is symbolic of his grief and how he blames himself. He is warned, if he doesn’t lead he will die of it. This is true of his grief and of Venice.

The Self Fulfilling Prophecy.

Outside of the metaphors though we have a story of a man predicting his own death, but only drawn to the events that cause his death by his visions that predict it. This is the self fulfilling prophecy, except in this case John’s refusal to accept the visions for what they are becomes a factor. In most cases with such a story it is in an attempt to avoid the prophecy that it ends up fulfilled. These tend to be quite poetic, but here it is presented as more like a malicious ghost story. It actually reminds me of the TV remake of “House on Haunted Hill”, where one character keeps seeing visions of herself with a broken neck, and said visions eventually drive them to die in that manner.

This is an interesting aspect of finding ways to interpret this story. If the visions caused his death, were they given to him maliciously? Was the death of his daughter even just a part of some nefarious spirits plan to destroy the man. Yet the sheer randomness of a lot of these events suggest this is probably not the case. The visions could then be a combination of underlying thoughts of suicide interacting with his gift. Throughout the film we have the symbolism of red and of water, both linking the start and end of the movie and his and his daughters deaths. It certainly has some poetry to it, but it is also fairly obvious and heavy handed.

Red is a Warning, Red is Blood.

Most interpretations of the movie tend to suggest the psycho dwarf is the same killer that is mentioned several times throughout the story. However, that killer has been murdering young women via drowning and the dwarf kills John, a middle aged man, by slashing his throat. This is the key event of the film and yet seems to require a lot of justification by the viewer to make sense of it. I’m less convinced the two killers are meant to be the same. But either way this is clearly designed to throw the viewer of the scent. Ultimately John’s death is a random, meaningless act that is only given context through the characters personal journey. Not that this is a problem, because ultimately that reflect how life works. Most events are random, what gives it meaning is our personal journey.

As I mentioned, this film is very focused on the work of the editor. We constantly see splices of visions of the past and future throughout our journey. The music however, seems to have been stripped right down deliberately to force the focus onto the visuals. The most the music engages with the viewer is with the very dated love theme we get during the intercourse scene. Ultimately, I wasn’t a fan of the soundtrack.

The acting and directing is a bit of a mixed bag. Donald Sutherland does a fantastic job, but outside of that I didn’t find the characters terribly believable or realistic, bu then with such an arty movie you can never be sure if that is intentional or not. A lot of this movie feels like a day time soap, but unlike that form of entertainment, to enjoy this you need to be paying a lot of attention to the smaller things.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I didn’t particularly enjoy this movie. I appreciate the masterclass in editing that it is, the themes and the subtle brand of storytelling it employs. It is a movie with fascinating deeper layers, but not a great deal on the surface. Certainly it will appeal to the art house crowd, but I like movies to have deep layers and provide a solid surface level of appeal.

I should note, I watched this twice, once (My first ever viewing) the night before writing this review and a second time just before writing). My second viewing was better than the first and it is this kind of movie. The more you watch it, the more you gain from it. So perhaps my view will continue to improve over time. As it stands though, the best I can give this is a 6/10. If you like subtle movies with a lot of symbolism you’ll likely be a fan, if however you want a fun ghost story or thriller you may well be disappointed.

Tag: Donald Sutherland

The Puppet Masters (1994)