Billy Wirth in Body Snatchers

from production notes:
Since his co-starring role in director Joel Schumacher'sThe Lost Boys, BILLY WIRTH (Tim Young) has become a fast-rising screen personality. On film he has starred in War Party for director Franc Rodam,Who Killed Baby Jesus, Seven Minutes in Heaven and Zalman King's Red Shoe Diaries.
His television appearances include a regular role on the NBC series Nothing in Common, and the leading role in the ABC pilot Crow's Nest. He has also guest-starred on Wise Guy, The Equalizer, The Ellen Burstyn Show pilot episode and Tales From the Crypt for HBO.

Terry Kinney saw "a parallel between the emotionless aliens and the numbness of drug abuse in this generation." For Gabrielle Anwar, whose teenage character is on the brink of self-discovery, the film was about "finding and keeping one's identity when it is easy to be swayed by others." From Billy Wirth's perspective, the story "teaches a lesson in the power of love."
Forest Whitaker, who plays the pivotal role of a humanistic doctor, believed "in the end, it's better to feel something, even pain, than not feel at all." And, after trying to articulate the meaning of it all, the ever-practical Meg Tilly decides that 'Body Snatchers' is just a great popcorn movie.

PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BEGINS ON `BODY SNATCHERS;' ABEL FERRARA DIRECTS CONTINUATION OF SCI-FI CLASSIC TO BE DISTRIBUTED BY WARNER BROS.
PR Newswire-02/19/92

Producer Robert H. Solo and Warner Bros. have announced the start of principal photography in Selma, Ala., on "Body Snatchers," an original film inspired by the provocative science fiction classic, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Director Abel Ferrara ("King of New York") brings his unique vision and an entirely new dimension of the chilling story of human life being inexorably taken over by aliens -- the soulless, emotionless "pods."
Meg Tilly ("Valmont"), Gabrielle Anwar ("Wild Hearts Can'tBe Broken") and Terry Kinney (Broadway's "The Grapes of Wrath") star in the contemporary thriller. Also appearing in leading roles are Billy Wirth ("The Lost Boys"), Christine Elise ("Beverly Hills 90210"), R. Lee Ermey ("Mississippi Burning") and Reilly Murphy ("Stepkids").

HUMAN BEANS
THE LATEST 'BODY SNATCHERS'
Review compiled by Maxine

It's not every science-fiction metaphor that's still relevant after four decades. In Abel Ferrara's BODY SNATCHERS (Warner Bros., R), people are once again being replaced by soulless replicas, look-alike zombies that emerge from squishy alien pods. This time the setting is a U.S. Army base in Selma, Ala., where EPA scientist Steve Malone (Terry Kinney) arrives with his wife (Meg Tilly), their 5-year-old son (Reilly Murphy), and his teenage daughter (Gabrielle Anwar) from a previous marriage. The base, of course, turns out to be a camouflaged cult of pod people.
The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is often described as a parable of McCarthyism, but its political overtones have long since paled next to its nightmare vision of an America in which everyone talks the same, dresses the same, thinks the same-a middle-class suburbia homogenized by mass culture. Ferrara as the director of Bad Lieutenant and many offbeat genre films returns the story to its low-budget roots. His new Body Snatchers is inky and somber, with some of the creeping bad-dream naturalism of George Romero's Living Dead films.
First to fall prey to podhood is the hostile young stepmother. As an actress, Meg Tilly has often seemed a bit of a space shot, but here her China- doll remoteness fits in perfectly. She's never more terrifying than when she raises her finger to point at her family and lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Ghoulishly effective as this bit is, it's taken from Kaufman's version. What's original here are the queasy special effects: The pods sprout long, wet tentacles-endless worms-that wrap around people's faces, poking into mouths, noses, ears.
As pop metaphor, this Body Snatchers is the skimpiest and most abstract of the three. The notion of a military base as a symbol of mindless conformity isn't exactly revelatory, and the characters remain sketchy and underdeveloped. Ferrara, though, does get a quietly compelling performance out of Gabrielle Anwar, Ferrara uses Anwar's beauty memorably in a scene in which Marti, having been captured by the pod people, lies covered with tentacles as her helicopter pilot boyfriend (Billy Wirth) tries to save her. Before he can tear the worms off her face, her newly emerging pod self sits up, nude and beckoning. For a moment, he's so transfixed he can barely bring himself to let the zombie goddess die.