Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney (30 page)

Rosa finances the operation for no particular reason, and Mark raises the sunken sub so quickly and easily that it is not a very impressive accomplishment. The sub is towed to dry-dock and repaired; an expert mechanic named Tony Moreno is brought in to get it shipshape. There are some awkward moments with Mark's friend Linc, a black man with an English accent who comes across as little more than a token attempt to appear relevant in the era of civil rights demonstrations. Rossiter sneers and calls him a "freedom rider" at one point; Linc later replies, sarcastically, that Rossiter should bring him a "nice, shiny watermelon."

The robbery is planned with little suspense. The only tension in the film comes from the relationships between the members of the gang who plan to rob the ship. There is a love triangle between Mark, Vic, and Rosa, but she obviously prefers Frank Sinatra to Tony Fran-ciosa (though Franciosa is much closer to her age, at 37) and the expected confrontation over the beautiful Italian woman never materializes.

The robbery of the
Queen Mary
is also rather different on film than in the novel. On film, Mark, Vic, and Eric board the luxury liner and rob the bank and the bullion room. Mark and Eric escape by boat after Vic is distracted by a large diamond ring on a female passenger's hand. He tries to pull it off of her finger and is shot by a chivalrous sailor. 
Gone is the plan to rob the passengers one by one; gone, too, is the Nazi subplot of the magazine serial.

Mark and Eric make it back to the sub but leave the money in the boat in their haste to escape a U.S. Coast Guard destroyer that has spotted them. There is an effective sequence where the sub hides underneath the
Queen Mary
, but the film ends with a cliché as Eric wants to torpedo the Coast Guard cutter and Mark tries to stop him. Eric pulls a gun, Rosa deflects his arm, and Tony Moreno is shot in the back. Mark, Linc, and Rosa escape by diving off of the sub's deck into the ocean, leaving Eric to be killed as the Coast Guard cutter rams the sub full steam ahead.

Assault on a Queen
ends with a sequence where the three survivors climb aboard a raft and start paddling for South America, happy to have escaped with their lives.

Assault on a Queen
was a novel with problems, and it was made into a movie that wasted the talents of writer Rod Serling and a number of good actors. Jack Finney's works would not be filmed again for twelve years, until a remake of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
appeared in 1978. The world of 1978, as depicted in Philip Kaufman's reworking of Don Siegel's original film, is much different than the world of 1956. Viewers of the new film were expected to have some familiarity with the story already, and the mystery of whether the main characters were sane or insane is not a part of the new film.

Instead, it opens with a scene where the space spores drift away from their own planet and across outer space, landing on Earth and sticking to plants in San Francisco. The entire film has a strange, disoriented feeling right from the start, courtesy of director Kaufman's penchant for using odd camera angles and spooky music. Instead of a small-town doctor, Matthew (not Miles) Bennell is now a big-city health inspector, and Elizabeth Driscoll (no longer Becky) also works for the city. Matthew's job is to look below the surface of things to find the disease and decay that lie beneath — as is shown when he finds a "rat turd" in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant.

From the start of the film, nothing in San Francisco seems right, but no one notices. People run through the streets in fear and there is a general sense of paranoia and unease. Soon enough, characters begin to suspect that loved ones are not themselves. One of the many updates to the 1970s is the suspicion— voiced by various characters — that a conspiracy is afoot, much like the government conspiracies that were widely believed to exist at the time. Symbolism is plentiful in the film, including Matthew's cracked windshield through which he sees the world. Yet the jaded health inspector is so used to things being broken that he doesn't notice anymore.

Director Kaufman pays homage to the 1956 film twice: with actor Kevin McCarthy, who runs in front of Matthew's car, still warning drivers that "you're next!" as if he has been doing it since the prior film ended; and with director Don Siegel, who plays a sinister taxi driver who tries to turn Matthew and Elizabeth over to the pod people.

The basic plot remains the same, as Matthew and Elizabeth are slowly drawn into the horror of realization that people are being replaced by emotionless pods. This time, Jack and Nancy (not Theodora) Belicec run "The Belicec Mud Baths" and psychiatrist Mannie Kaufman is now best-selling pop psychiatrist David Kibner, played by
Star Trek's
Leonard Nimoy. Kibner tries to rationalize his friends' concerns with 1970s psychobabble; Nancy's biggest concern upon discovering the replacement pod for her husband is that it is infected with some sort of disease.

The film as a whole is disquieting, featuring color, shock, and gore, where the original succeeded through subtlety and suspense. About two-thirds of the way through, it becomes an elongated chase, losing any mood and thoughtfulness that it had built up in exchange for an attempt at excitement. The mood of the era surfaces again when Kibner and Jack Belicec trap Matthew and Elizabeth in Matthew's office; Kibner tells Matthew, "you'll be born again into an untroubled world," and suddenly the pods seem like members of a religious cult.

Near the end, Matthew destroys a large greenhouse full of pods in a series of explosions and fires. While this scene somewhat recalls the conclusion of the novel, where Miles sets fire to a field full of pods, the visuals and the sound are so shrill that the effect is lost. True to form for a 1970s film, the 1978 version of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
ends on a downbeat note — Nancy Belicec meets Matthew on a San Francisco street, only to learn that he has been replaced by a pod. His scream that reveals her as human fades in to the closing credits.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
would be remade a second time in 1993, but first one of Jack Finney's latter novels,
Marion's Wall
, would be adapted as
Maxie
and released in 1985.
Maxie
is as bright and cheerful as
Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
released only seven years before, was dark and gloomy. It stars Glenn Close as Jan Cheney, who is possessed by the spirit of deceased silent movie actress Maxie Mal-one (Marion Marsh in the novel). The story has been changed considerably in the transition to film. Jan is now an efficient secretary to a bishop, and Nick is a librarian pursued by an amorous female boss.

The character of Nick's father, who provides the link to Marion/ Maxie in the novel, is replaced by that of Mrs. Lavin, played by Ruth Gordon. She is the Cheneys' eccentric landlady, and six decades before she was Maxie's dancing partner. The film's plot generally parallels that of the novel, with one important alteration in tone. Where Marion Marsh was saddened and eventually disgusted by what she saw of the modern world, Maxie Malone is delighted and finally vindicated by her experiences. Glenn Close switches back and forth from Jan to Maxie effortlessly, changing her accent and her behavior to suit each character.

The film's point, which is rather different than that of the novel, is that Jan needs to wake up and start enjoying life. This is expressed humorously by her boss, the bishop, when she tells him of her actions upon first being possessed. He tells her in reply: "that's not known as possession, that's known as living." The characters of Hugo Dahl, the former prop boy, and Ted Bollinghurst, the aged film collector, have been eliminated and, while Maxie does succeed in getting a part in a movie (this time, as the star of a remake of
Cleopatra),
she is entranced by the filmmaking experience. This is quite a contrast to the scene in the novel, where Marion performs nude in a movie and is disgusted by modern film.

The conflagration that ends the novel is also absent; in the film, Maxie voluntarily fades off into the spirit world, leaving Nick and Jan to drive off happily into the California sun.
Maxie
is an entertaining, funny film, but it has little in common with the novel
Marion's Wall
beyond the general premise and the skeleton of the plot. Still, it would have been a much better farewell on film to Jack Finney's works than the abominable
Body Snatchers.
Released in 1993, the third and final adaptation of Finney's novel,
The Body Snatchers,
is the last film adapted from his works to date.

The story is nearly unrecognizable, and it must have been puzzling for those viewers unlucky enough to see this film without knowing the premise in advance. This time, the story has been updated to 1993, and takes place almost entirely at a military base somewhere in the U.S.A. Instead of Dr. Miles Bennell or Matthew Bennell, the main character is teenaged Marti Malone, whose voiceover narration is heard briefly at the beginning and end of the film.

Marti moves to a military base with her family and problems begin right away. Her father is a rather weak man who is there to test chemical waste for the Environmental Protection Agency. Her stepmother is a poorly-drawn character, played by Meg Tilly, who demonstrates some of the film's worst acting when she tells Marti about halfway through that there is nowhere to run or to hide. There is also a little brother, Andy, who is in preschool. The child actor playing Andy is unappealing, and the viewer is not moved when his replacement is thrown from a moving helicopter near the end of the film.

Many words could be wasted explaining what is wrong with this film, which features considerable nudity, four-letter words, and graphic violence, but which is devoid of a single likeable character. Suffice it to say that the screenwriters and director appear to have watched Philip Kaufman's 1978 version of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
and tried to spice it up. Forrest Whitaker plays Dr. Collins, overacting wildly in his few scenes, and when he shoots himself in the head (filmed in loving detail and living color), the viewer wishes he could share the doctor's fate rather than watch another minute of this miserable film.

Fortunately,
Body Snatchers
was not the end for admirers of Jack Finney's work. The television adaptation of "The Love Letter" aired in 1998, and the musical version of
Time and Again
finally made it to the New York stage in 2001. As of this writing, in 2006, no more of Finney's works have appeared on screen or stage, but his many short stories and novels remain a rich source of material that may be mined again in the future, hopefully to good result.

Appendix I.

Writings by Jack Finney

Novels

1954 
5 Against the House

1955 
The Body Snatchers

1957 
The House of Numbers

1959 
Assault on a Queen

1963 
Good Neighbor Sam

1968 
The Woodrow Wilson Dime

1970 
Time and Again

1973 
Marion's Wall

1977 
The Night People

1995 
From Time to Time

Short Stories and Serials

1943

"Someone Who Knows Told Me…".
Cosmopolitan.
December, 1943.

1947

Manhattan Idyl.
Collier's.
April 5, 1947.

The Widow's Walk.
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
July 1947.

I'm Mad at You.
Collier's.
December 6, 1947.

1948

Cousin Len's Wonderful Adjective Cellar.
Ladies' Home Journal.
April 1948.

Breakfast in Bed.
Collier's.
May 15, 1948. 

It Wouldn't Be Fair.
Collier's.
August 28, 1948. 

Long-Distance Call.
Collier's.
November 6, 1948.

1949

Something in a Cloud.
Good Housekeeping.
March 1949. 

You Haven't Changed a Bit.
Collier's.
April 16, 1949. 

The Little Courtesies.
Collier's.
June 25, 1949.

1950

Sneak Preview.
Collier's.
April 29, 1950.

Week-end Genius.
Collier's.
May 20, 1950.

I Like It This Way.
Collier's.
June 24, 1950.

My Cigarette Loves Your Cigarette.
Collier's.
September 30, 1950.

The Third Level.
Collier's.
October 7, 1950.

1951

Such Interesting Neighbors.
Collier's.
January 6, 1951. 

Husband at Home.
Ladies' Home Journal.
April 1951. 

One-Man Show.
Collier's.
June 30, 1951.