The Andromeda Strain (1971; Dir. Robert Wise)

Quick Synopsis—A U.S. satellite crashes the desert outside a small town in New Mexico. When a recovery team sent to retrieve the device abruptly stops transmitting, concerned government officials activate “Wildfire,”

a secretive program manned by doctors, psychologists, biologists, epidemiologists, etc., and charged with heading off biological threats the to the US of A both terrestrial and extraterrestrial.

A Wildfire team is sent into the town, this one more appropriately dressed (hazmat gear, respirators, etc.). What they find is shocking: everyone in the town has either dropped dead in their tracks, their blood turned to powder, or gone insane and committed suicide. That is, except for the town’s resident alcoholic and a colicky baby.

The Wildfire team assembles with the two survivors in a high-tech underground research lab somewhere in the desert far from civilization. Their mission? Determine why the rummy and the baby survived, what nightmare piggybacked on that crashed satellite (a virulent, microscopic alien organism, it’s soon revealed) and, most importantly, how to stop it from wiping out the world’s population.

CFS $0.02—In the tradition of the best Michael Crichton (he wrote the novel on which the film was based), the scenario presented is plausible and therefore bone-chilling. Director Wise, he of West Side Story and The Sound of Music, trades in his metronome for electron microscopes, multiplying alien organisms, malfunctioning telexes, deadly lasers, containment room door gasket failures, an unexpected epileptic seizure and a race against the clock to disarm a nuclear weapon. For those used to today’s technology and pacing, it may come across a little dated and glacial. And Crichton never shies away from medical vernacular so have a dictionary nearby. But, all that said, this is a good flick. Rent it.

Here’s the trailer:

Coming tomorrow: SST: Death Flight!