Fear of plants may or may not have been a recognized phobia before Philip Kaufman's dazzlingly creepy Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but it's contagious, on-screen and off. A silent invasion from "deep space" takes the form of tiny spores containing the seeds of alien life; these are transplanted into sac-like bodies, or pods, which settle next to sleeping humans, eventually replacing them with emotionless, blindly obedient replicas. But genuine emotions and individuality are barely discernable qualities, and that is the beauty of this film's paranoid vision. Kaufman's version of Invasion is more florid than the esteemed original, and to wonderful effect: having updated Don Siegel's classic to an age of fern encounters and ecology-San Francisco in the mid-seventies-he gave a special immediacy to the film's implication that blasé enlightenment is no protection against mind control. In fact, it carries its own bad seeds.