Andromeda Strain ~ 1971 ... A strain to watch.

 

Everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, is dead. A secret military satellite called “scoop” has fallen to Earth, and like your typical red-neck town, they opened it.  The military calls in Dr. Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill), Dr. Charles Dutton (David Wayne), Dr. Mark Hall (James Olson), and Dr. Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid), or “Wildfire,” the government-sponsored team that counters extraterrestrial biological infestation. As if it happens nearly monthly.

The whole premise of the movie is that the government launched “scoop” to essentially scoop particles out of space to see if they may be used as a weapon against the United States’ enemies. In order to find one, a very elaborate underground testing facility was built with a nuclear reactor at its core. If something goes wrong with the test….. "BOOM!”

The Wildfire team studies what killed the town, and why the two survivors (a baby and the town crazy) of the town lived. Dr. Hall is the "odd man", since he is the only one without a spouse, and is given a red key, the only thing that can stop the nuke from blowing up. (The "odd man hypothesis" states that unmarried men are capable of carrying out the best, most dispassionate decisions during crisis).

Back in the 70’s, I’m sure this movie was considered high-tech, but post Star Wars, not so much. It takes 15 hours to descend the 5 floors of the testing facility and the four scientists go through a rigorous and mildly amusing sanitation process to get there to actually start to study the “Andromeda Strain” as it becomes entitled.

The Andromeda strain causes death buy causing blood to clot and dry to sand instantaneously. As it turns out, it’s not a virus, but a crystal-like, extraterrestrial microbe on a meteor that crashed into the satellite, knocking it from orbit. Not only does the microbe cause instant clotting, but it also mutates to eat plastic and skin. As you can imagine, Andromeda eventually mutates to corrode the seals of the secret base and begins contaminating it, and get this, nuclear energy causes it to grow. Of course, all the alarms go off, the base goes into “blow up mode” and there’s a dramatic attempt to stop the bomb from causing Andromeda to multiply and destroy the world. The world is saved when Andromeda eventually mutates to a harmless form and floats out into the atmosphere.

I reviewed this movie when I was told that movies like Contagion and Outbreak were sired from this “breakthrough” movie. Well…. Not so much, but you can see where they got the idea from it. This movie is basically the four scientists meandering around the secret lab, old monochrome computer monitors, binary code, bad TV angles, with echoed voices, and very dramatic animal death scenes. (I did not see a warning saying animals were not harmed… hmmmm?)

If you’re into classic old films, you may like it, but if you’re expecting dramatic special effects and good acting, you may want to leave this movie in the past. I can at least say I’ve seen it. It was also made into a TV series in 2008. I’ll let you know if it got any better.