Space 1979: The other one with a green killer space germ

Title: The Andromeda Strain

What Year?: 1971

Classification: Prototype/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

I have previously mentioned that I grew up on movies from the 1970s more than any other time. On further reflection, I suppose this might give the impression that I’m a lifelong enthusiast for all things psychedelic and/or disco, which is really the wrong idea. Of course, as a kid, I didn’t have a frame of reference to sort out cultural references, so it was easy to accept 1970s culture as just “normal”. Even allowing for that, however, the kind of Seventies movie I watched weren’t the kind of movie that flaunted how Seventies they were. It was less Grease and Happy Days, more Star Wars, Jaws and Dirty Harry. With this installment, I’m getting to the prime example, the one that happens to have introduced Michael Crichton to the big screen.

Our story begins with a pair of expendable crew sent to retrieve a crashed space probe. One might expect either zombies or a terrifying ET ripoff, but instead they see vultures, just before their transmission ends with a scream. In the next few scenes, we are introduced to a hastily gathered band of scientists, a highly secret lab designed to keep the smallest germ contained, and an extraterrestrial plague that wiped out most of a town’s inhabitants within minutes. The emerging leader is a surgeon who is also entrusted with the means to disarm the lab’s nuclear self-destruct mechanism, with helpers including a female researcher who inexplicably isn’t young, attractive or explicitly single. They eventually realize that the probiotic germ, visible in their most powerful microscopes as a green goo, is immune to radiation and may multiply if nuclear weapons are used against it. Of course, soon after, something activates the self-destruct mechanism, setting up a race to stop the detonation in time.

The Andromeda Strain was based on a 1969 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, which Universal optioned for a tidy sum. Veteran Robert Wise signed on to direct, special effects duties went to 2001’s Douglas Trumbull, and TV actors Arthur Hill and Kate Reid were cast in the lead roles. The character of Dr. Leavitt played by Reid is noted to have been male in the original novel. The effects included computer-generated images, mainly projections of the mutation and spread of the disease. The movie was made for $6.5 million, making it one of the most expensive science fiction films up to that time, and earned a US box office of $12.4M. Contemporary posters made a selling point of its 2 hour 11 minute running time. Michael Crichton went on to write and direct 1973’s Westworld (and completely bail on Futureworld), while Wise and Trumbull teamed up again for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. 

I remember seeing Andromeda Strain as a video rental sometime in the early 1990s, then again around 2000. For the viewing that led to this review, I had to wait literally months, or else I probably wouldn’t have considered covering it at all. When I first saw it, I was duly amazed, and readily accepted it as a classic. When I got back to it, I still liked it but noticed speculative science that had gotten either dated or “fringe”, including possible underpinnings of the “aliens brought life to Earth” hypothesis. By the time I got hold of it again, I was going in with a small but discernible bit of dread.

Fortunately, the movie does hold up quite well. The story, production values and acting are all quite good, not that that was in doubt in my mind. The closest thing to a weakness is the long run time, where a more conventional movie then or now would probably have aimed for a much punchier 90-100 minute time. However, this was clearly an honest choice, and the production makes the best of it with a unique balance between speculative exposition, clinical atmosphere and a few action sequences that really try to earn their payoff. More importantly, it’s free of the kind of “cringe” moments that haunt films far more recent than this. The casting of Reid (age 40 at the time of release) in particular is all too forward-thinking even by modern standards. The one thing that is mind-boggling is that the whole thing got a “G” rating, despite prominent and perfectly gruesome scenes of the plague’s victims, the tense finale and even a fair amount of nudity.

Needless to say, time has not been as kind to the science. The idea of life in the depths of space was clearly speculative even for the time. It has in fact been born out that some basic organic compounds do occur in space or on certain moons and asteroids, keeping the spaceborne germ within the realm of minimal plausible. On the other hand, some of the effects assigned to it just seem random, particularly the literal dehydration of its victims (which really ought to reduce their remains to badly contorted mummies). The more central premise that the germ could feed on energy is especially improbable (not to mention suspiciously close to The Green Slime); an organism able to survive in space would be resistant to radiation, but surviving a nuclear blast would be another matter. The more fundamental problem is that there’s no convincing middle ground for the protagonists to work in. In reality, anything this deadly and contagious would either go worldwide within days or simply burn itself out.

What does work then and now, and in many ways feels all the more chilling, is the lab. The most effective and entertaining sequences of the movie are the elaborate sterilization procedures the crew are required to go through, including the incineration of their clothes and the outer layers of their skin. It has the feel of a more lethal version of the opening of Get Smart (something else I can remember watching back in the day), humorous at face value but increasingly disturbing. Everything comes together in the final act, as the chief protagonist runs a gauntlet of the lab’s own defenses to prevent disaster. Exactly why he can’t use one of the multiple stations supposed to  positioned throughout the facility is difficult to follow and clearly beside the point. Watching it with the full benefit of hindsight, I quickly wondered if this was the inspiration for the self-destruct sequence in Galaxy Quest.

But for the “one scene”, my pick is an early sequence of short vignettes where the protagonists are summoned by the authorities. There is a wife who answers the door during a party, to be met by two very persistent visitors who must see her husband. There is Reid/ Leavitt, who initially insists that she must finish an experiment in progress. Then there is a hapless researcher wakened in the presence of his family. In the midst of it, an excited child declares that there are men outside, “And they have guns!” It all serves as a reminder that the level of paranoia shown throughout the following film never required a plague to take root.

By the final verdict, this is another movie that suffers from its ambitions more than its flaws. It sill remains a good movie well worth the expense of a rental, if not a purchase. One more thing to bear in mind is that being available to the masses decades later was much further beyond the imaginations of the film industry than any of the visions of science fiction. Nobody expected to make movies for generations to come, any more than the pulp writers expected to be reprinted decades later. The fact that any of them succeeded should remain an impressive feat worthy of respect.

For links, the image credit goes to Drive In Review. As usual, you can see the series Introduction for an overview of the feature, classifications and rating system.