A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : REQUEL DEPT. : Reincarnation of ‘Body Snatchers’

If it’s kind of a remake and kind of a sequel, maybe that makes it a requel. . . .

Anyway, if you can’t get enough of those terrifying giant pods in the 1956 “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and the 1978 remake, don’t worry. Version No. 3, titled just “Body Snatchers,” is currently filming in Selma, Ala.

According to co-screenwriter Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”), it’s more of a remake than a sequel.

“We realized that it’s been 14 years since the last ‘Body Snatchers’ movie and that there’s a whole new audience that really knows nothing about the first two films,” says Gordon. “This one doesn’t depend on knowing about the first two movies. In a sense, it’s a second remake. That’s what it evolved into.”

Producer Robert Solo, who also produced the 1978 film, agrees. “It’s similar to what they’ve done with ‘Alien,’ ” he says. “It always runs on a parallel track, but the characters are different. The set of circumstances are different, but the mythology is the same.”

Solo says he optioned the rights to the latest version several years ago; the license he had to make the 1978 Philip Kaufman version was only for one picture. “I had to go back and acquire a new option for a remake or sequel.” According to Solo, Warner Bros., which will distribute the latest version, now owns the rights to novelist Jack Finney’s book, “Body Snatchers,” published in the early ‘50s. Originally Allied Artists, which made the 1956 version that starred Kevin McCarthy, owned the rights until Lorimar bought their film library. Subsequently, those rights ended up at Warners when that studio absorbed Lorimar.

The latest version, directed by Abel Ferrara (“King of New York”) and budgeted at around $12 million, involves an EPA scientist (Terry Kinney) who gets assigned to oversee the cleanup of hazardous waste on a military base in Selma. Accompanying the scientist to the location is his wife--played by Meg Tilly--and two children. The fun begins when many of the once-normal local citizenry begin to get that blank look about them, and fear and paranoia take over everybody else.

Gordon says that each “Body Snatchers” film has tended to reflect the nation’s current climate. The original novel and director Don Siegel’s film were a metaphor for the McCarthy witch hunts, he points out, while the 1978 “Body Snatchers” took aim at ‘70s psychobabble. And the latest installment? “It’s about the destruction of a family by the pod people,” he says. “It taps into the current paranoia of what’s happening to the nuclear family.”

As for the pesky pods themselves, Gordon says they’ll be even more frightening this time. “In this film, although the pod people will look like humans on the outside, on the inside they’ll be nothing like humans,” says Gordon. “If you were to cut one open, the internal workings would be more like a vegetable or plant.” Gordon also says that the film will use advanced special-effects techniques, including the computer-generated technique used extensively in “Terminator 2.”