What do The Andromeda Strain, Deliverance and Cape Fear have in common?
This question is not for film-freaks only; It’s not “The art directors of these movies all worked in Billy Idol videos later in their careers.”
The real answer: Whatever category you want to put these movies into (“Horror” might not be your first choice), they’re way too good to leave off this list.
The Andromeda Strain’s concept is scary enough, right off. A new disease appears on Earth, its origin somewhere in the vast reaches of space. No drug to stop it, no way to vaccinate against It. Possibly…no way to contain it. A small team of scientists and MD’s are assembled quickly and taken to a state-of-the-art facility. But the facility has problems of its own. Scary enough for me.
Keep this in mind, though. Andromeda’s screenwriter, Nelson Gidding, and its director, Robert Wise were not interested in cheap shocks. They wanted their movie to frighten you
through understatement. The deaths they showed, the micro-organism growing and reproducing, the music, none of these were aimed at slamming its audience over the head.
The late Michael Crichton’s novels, such as Andromeda Strain, were filled with ideas. I think Gidding and Wise wanted to underline these ideas, not to overshadow them. The filmmakers seemed to sense that all they could give was two hours of good plot, good characters, and the best possible special effects.
And, they needed a balance. For example they didn’t want a “US military conspiracy” subplot, any individual characters, or the biology of the micro-organism, to overwhelm the other elements. The interviews with Wise on the DVD clearly show someone without a big ego. Instead, Wise was determined to draw the best from his whole team, not neglect anyone.
Andromeda Strain begins with a quietly terrifying situation. A tiny but otherwise typical town in New Mexico. Absolutely nothing moving.
The next day. A plane flies over the town. Below, bodies scattered on the ground, motionless.
An emergency team is assembled, real fast. Unannounced, soldiers show up at their homes. The first two, Dr. Stone and Dr. Dutton, clearly have been prepared to participate in a disaster like
this. With great composure, they leave their families, saying little. Stone’s wife, a senator’s daughter, someone clearly having political clout, immediately calls her father. Her call to him is abruptly terminated.
The third member, Dr. Leavitt, a biological researcher, is much more her own person, able to speak her mind. She’s in the middle of an experiment, angry at having to walk away. Definitely not an ass-kisser.
The fourth, Dr. Hall, is a brilliant surgeon, but knows as little about these emergencies as Dr.Leavitt. Hall is played with great strength by the under-rated, generally low-key actor James Olson (Rachel Rachel, Ragtime). Here, you see a different side of Olson, one he rarely got to show. Again and again, Hall brings down- to- earth emotions into their workplace, so technologically advanced, but frighteningly isolated from human feelings. Like Leavitt, Hall is not eager to mold himself into a new role. He cares about leaving his patients. They are much more than research rats to him.
First things first. Stone and Hall must go into the ravaged town to get a closer look; fully suited, they hope, against the unknown disease. Again, you sense the balance that Wise and his team aimed for; let the reality create its own tension.
And reality does speak…loud and clear. The vultures throughout the town eating the dead—all are gassed to death immediately. Absolutely necessary; each bird has the capability to spread the disease to the world outside… possibly destroying all life on the planet.
No apparent signs of life
The way the bodies lie sprawled; dead suddenly, several children among them. The small-town doctor seated, mouth wide open.
In the midst of the carnage, Dr. Hall’s mind remains firing on all cylinders. He thinks to check the dead doctor’s buttocks for blood—the butt’s color should be the reddest part of the body.
The dark color is not there. They cut the man’s wrist and get not a drop of blood. It has all turned to powder. Yet over the chopper noise–sounds of human life. Two alive somehow: an infant crying
loudly, nonstop, and an old man, rather quiet, seemingly insane, maybe piss drunk. As the two researchers talk to him, your reaction may be like mine—What if this guy tries to rip open their sterile suits…for Christ’s sakes, don’t get too close to him. Stone and Hall bring the two survivors back in the helicopter.
The military contacts the president for permission to nuke the town…no time to fool around. About this time, Dutton and Leavitt meet an important character. Not a human being but the site at
which they will investigate, hopefully fight this disease. In the middle of empty desert, an ordinary-looking agricultural research station.
But this is only a mask for the most advanced disease-control center ever built. An elevator takes them directly into the bowels of the facility…absolutely astounding for the early ‘70’s. You’re privileged to see it through the eyes of Dr. Leavitt. She’s a brilliant, perceptive scientist, yet someone with everyday human
reactions to the technology surrounding them. She can still joke about it; her continual ironic comments keep you grounded as the facility rushes at you.
Much of the time, Leavitt and Hall feel as though they’re on an alien planet. What gets them through the stress is a combination of determination, intelligence, and intense caring for life. Getting to know them, watching them interact with people, the disease, and the facility is never boring. Both know the desperate need to ‘hit the ground running.’ The facility is designed for maximum efficiency and protection against human error, or a disease that’s stronger than anyone guessed. But that doesn’t mean Leavitt and Hall can get used to working there.
Dr. Leavitt–feeling isolated and insignificant in the facility
Dr. Hall–glad for signs of compassion in the facility–the
nurse cares for the baby he helped find
I’ll talk more about Andromeda’s lack of action later, but I have to say this: if you want an action flick, this movie is not for you. Wise and his team wanted to show you a battle to the death, but show you the thinking needed. The way a scientific mind goes to war.
The scenes where Leavitt and Stone unearth the first of Andromeda Strain’s secrets are key ones. (The scientists give this name to the deadly organism.)
Arguably, they are some of the scariest in movie history, yet understated to the point that some viewers may feel cheated. This understatement is a reason (possibly the main reason) that
Andromeda didn’t make much money. What should have been scarier, wasn’t scary enough. The two scientists struggle to project a microscopic image of one area of the scoop grille. Stone believes they have only found a grain of sand.
Then they notice green specks; not sand. Their reactions radically different. Stone takes it methodically, little emotion, step by step. (Unless, as you might argue, he and the military are in on this already.) Leavitt—more emotional, more imaginative, sifting through possible implications:
Nasty implications: All bets are off. They likely are experiencing the first-ever contact with an alien lifeform. And probably a lifeform with no wish to communicate with them. Only infect them. No desire to reveal its secrets; they must do that work for
themselves. Or die, real soon.
Lab monkey–about to be exposed to Andromeda
Later, Leavitt and Stone watch Andromeda reproduce. Again, many high school kids today have learned to consider this question: How might an alien lifeform reproduce itself without DNA and RNA? But use your imagination and try to picture yourself seeing this in 1971.
They stare at a fragment of Andromeda. It looks more like a crystal than any cell they’ve ever seen Suddenly Leavitt gets a flash of insight as to how Andromeda can grow without amino acids. Any source of energy serves its growth.
Back to that same devastating question. How do you stop a lifeform that does not function like any Earth lifeform? Where do you even start? You ask yourself; is all the science I’ve ever learned, suddenly out the window?
It’s not hopeless. They have found the most common elements in Earth lifeforms: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, in Andromeda. But it’s like graduating law school, then suddenly being dropped into Mongolia to try a murder case, only you don’t speak a word of Mongolian.
A strange insight into the visual point of view in these scenes. Compare them to a very different style of films, the giant bug movies of the’50’s: Them, Tarantula, The Deadly Mantis, Mothra, for example.
Many had one scene in common. The monster walks quietly up to a house, the heroine inside. It approaches a large window. She looks outside, sees the monster up close and screams in terror.
Here, there’s no window– they are deep underground. But you see the crystal pieces of Andromeda reproducing and mutating on a large screen behind Leavitt and Stone. Wise had been a master of subtlety for years, back to his days with Val Lewton in
the ‘40’s. The last thing he wanted to show was Andromeda
smashing through a barrier, and ripping someone’s head off. He probably had no interest in directing Alien, where the creature tearing its way out of a man’s chest gives you another sudden introduction to an otherworld lifeform.
But ironically, those big bug movies, Alien, and Andromeda Strain have at least one thing in common. All start with a similar idea: people messing around in areas best left alone. And the research all focuses on possible weapons. In the big bug movies, scientists test atomic weapons, used to protect their nation in case of war.
In Alien, the alien itself is a potential weapon (listen to Dr. Ash’s gushing description of the creature—a superb killing machine).
The Andromeda Strain raises the question; did the U.S. military actually search outer space for better germ-warfare?
The more serious question: the disease strains that the U.S. military (and plenty of other countries; don’t single out the USA) already have available. The average person prefers not to think about this too much, and switches to Dancing with the Stars, American Idol or maybe William Hung covering She Bangs.
Forget for a minute how the movie ends. Reality is much scarier. Not to give too much away: the answer to stopping Andromeda relates closely to an environmental problem that has endangered life on Earth for years now. Another brilliant idea from Crichton. Not that moviegoers today are too ignorant to follow Andromeda’s story. Far from it.
But many would choose to see dumber movies, without the intensity of the ideas and the science. They’d rather have entertainment to relax their brain, than something to stimulate it. And Hollywood, like a manufacturer of junk food for the mind, sits there happy, saying, “You want more entertainment? Well, we’ve got it for you…in 80 exciting new flavors.”
An unexpected blessing: maybe we will appreciate movies…which make us think, that much more. Movies without obvious good guys and bad guys… you don’t sit there knowing how you want the story to turn out.
Maybe we need to be more thankful for people who give
us those movies.