Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
Directed By: Robert Wise
Produced By: Robert Wise
Written By: Michael Crichton (novel), Nelson Gidding (Screenplay)
Starring: Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, Kate Reid
Original Release: 1971
Reviewed By: John J. Joex
Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars
Synopsis: A satellite crashes near a small town in Arizona bringing an extraterrestrial organism with it that kills all but two people, an elderly man and a baby. The government activates Wildfire, a team of experts trained to deal with threats of this nature. They at first investigate the town, then retire to the state-of-the-art, multi-level Wildfire laboratory to isolate and investigate their findings. They discover that the alien organism, dubbed Andromeda, is a crystal-structured microbe that killed its victims through disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and that it is continuing to mutate. They cannot determine, though, why the old man and the baby survived and they keep them isolated as they continue to administer tests, and in so doing they stumble upon the fact that the organism came to Earth as part of a government initiative to produce biological weapons from micro- organisms of extraterrestrial origin. However, Andromeda mutates to the point that it manages to escape containment which sets off the failsafe that will destroy the facility to prevent the spread of infection. But the scientists determine this will actually have the reverse affect as Andromeda can generate matter from energy and this will cause a massive, worldwide contamination. It is then a race against time to stop the detonation and keep the outside world safe.
Review/Comments: The Andromeda Strain was a rare event in cinema when it came out in 1971 as it delivered a big budget, hard science fiction film dealing with mature themes. Whereas today Science Fiction and Fantasy has become quite prominent on the big screen, back then it had much less of a presence. And when films in the genre did come out they often aimed at the younger crowd. However, the Michael Crichton book it was based on hit the bestseller list in 1969, prompting the studio execs to give it a chance with a big screen adaptation. And they awarded it a faithful rendering which diverged very little from the original story which meant that it was a lengthy, slow-paced, intellectual movie. Now in the wrong hands, this could have proved disastrous and potentially resulted in an incredibly tedious film. But director Robert Wise was up to the task (who, despite having directed musicals like West Side Story and The Sound of Music, had previous genre experience with The Day the Earth Stood Still and would later helm Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Teaming with screen-writer Nelson Gidding, the two did an excellent job of distilling the story for movie-goers and keeping the movie from derailing into an overly-intellectual, techno-babble laden film.
The Andromeda Strain would give us an early version of the techno-thrillers that would later become quite popular with theater-goers, though it was much less Hollywood-ized than what we would see from subsequent entries like The Hunt for Red October or Crichton’s own Jurassic Park. It took a more sober, less glamorous approach to adapting the story and also eschewed big-name stars in the lead roles. The producers even avoided the temptation to cast a Raquel Welch-like actress in the role of the female scientist a la Fantastic Voyage (and guys, we could debate the pros and cons of this, but artistically it was the right move). The actors chosen were definitely more than capable in their performances, though, coming off as believable in their roles as dedicated scientists trying to combat a contagion of unknown origination. The scientists resolve the issues by thinking them through while employing their analytical and deductive skills, but do so without the film descending into a snooze-fest. An urgency is established early on when we see the results of Andromeda in the small town and this generates a palpable tension that helps carry the movie along as the team struggles to find a way to stop the threat.
And while the movie had little in the way of special effects (supervised by Douglas Trumbull ), it did have very high production values which showed up in the portrayal of the Wildfire facility, which acted as a lead character of sorts itself for the movie. And some may feel that the final scene when Dr. Hall must navigate the central core to deactivate the self-destruct mechanism was a bit contrived and Hollywood-ized, but the same set of events closed the book as well (and us Star Trek fans were already numb to the self-destruct gimmick). This did not devalue the movie as a whole, though, which still stands out as a thoughtful, intelligent piece of speculative fiction that was rare upon its release and has unfortunately once again become rare in the age of CGI bloat-fest blockbuster epics that prefer to numb the mind rather than engage it.
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