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
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. 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. 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
film, 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.
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 400 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.