For their 1978 remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, director Philip Kaufman (writer of THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES) and screenwriter W.D. Richter (later did BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) updated the Don Siegel film and/or Jack Finney story into a chilling paranoia tale for their era. But it has held up incredibly well, remaining one of the more unsettling alien invasion movies in existence. The original was a low budget indie production, this is a much slicker production, but they were allowed to keep their gut-punchingly pessimistic ending, and that goes a long way.
This came out the year before ALIEN, and its opening has a similar combo of timeless practical effects and matter-of-factness about mysterious threats from the dark reaches of the universe. The credits play over a gorgeous sequence of strange plants on some planet somewhere – transparent tubes, whisps of smoke, I don’t know what – as their seeds float up and drift through space, as mentioned in the Siegel film.
In San Francisco the seeds land on some wild plants and, over time, produce some sort of slime. I have no idea how they did the shot of tiny tendrils reaching out from a leaf. Small pink blossoms sprout on top of other plants, and a woman notices one and plucks it off. She is Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams, SHOCK WAVES, DAYS OF HEAVEN), she works at the health department and has an interest in plants and says she thinks it’s a grex. “That’s when two different species cross-pollinate and produce a third completely unique one.” (read the rest of this shit…)
“A kid. I didn’t know it’d be a kid.”
“Women are lonely in the ‘90s. It’s our new phase.”
GAS FOOD LODGING* is another one from IRS Releasing (
May 7, 1991
One could reasonably assume that a Stephen-King-based TV movie in the ‘90s would be a Mick Garris joint, but in fact it’s a different notable horror director: Tom McLoughlin of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES fame. He also did ONE DARK NIGHT and, come to think of it, co-created She-Wolf of London with Garris. This one comes from a King short story first published in Cavalier in 1974, and later included in Night Shift. It was adapted by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal, whose all-over-the-place filmography at this point included 
