THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: ROBERT WISE / SCREENPLAY: NELSON GIDDING / STARRING: ARTHUR HILL, JAMES OLSON, KATE REID, DAVID WAYNE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Based on the 1969 novel by Michael Crichton but purported in the opening credits to be derived from de-classified US government reports, The Andromeda Strain is a disaster movie with a difference. The 1970s was full of disaster movies; you couldn’t move for towering infernos, Poseidon adventures, earthquakes and airports. At its core, The Andromeda Strain sits firmly in this milieu, but with some key differences.
The titular threat is a biological threat that fell to Earth, presumably from space. When it catches a lift on a military satellite named Scoop 7, which crashes down in the small New Mexico town of Piedmont (population formerly 68), a hastily-assembled team scramble to discover just what the Andromeda strain is, and how to neutralise it.
Leading the government’s crack team is Nobel Prize winner Dr Jeremy Stone, played with studied reserve by Arthur Hill. The cast was picked to be largely unrecognisable from a credits list, with director Robert Wise hoping that this would not take away from the performances on screen, and leave the audience unsure whether the characters would survive. Hill is joined in the main cast by David Wayne, Kate Reid, and James Olson, and they are ably backed by a roster of solid character actors whose faces you’ll recognise, if not their names.
The film takes place mostly in a subterranean government laboratory, the home to Project: Wildfire, a taskforce proposed by Stone two years previously in the wake of the Moon landings, to deal with any subsequent space-born infection. After a rigorous process of decontamination, the team get to breaking down the mysterious pathogen, racing against time before the infection spreads in the outside world.
Where The Andromeda Strain differs from the usual disaster fare is in its intimacy; discounting some unfortunate lab animals, we never see the contagion at work, with all deaths off camera, and there are no big, destructive scenes. Instead, the tension is delivered up close, microscopically in places, with a real feel for the oppression of working to save the world without knowing precisely what you’re saving it from.
The principal quartet are good value, with Hill stoicism matched by Olson’s youthful passion, Wayne’s world-weary curiosity, and Reid’s woman in a man’s world (her character was male in the Crichton novel). Wise, who won Oscars for West Side Story and The Sound of Music (as well as delivering the more STARBURST-friendly The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Haunting) is an experienced hand, letting the screenplay by Nelson Giddings unfold tidily.
The Blu Ray release from Arrow Pictures comes with a host of extras, with a new video essay by Kim Newman joining featurettes on the making of the film from the 2001 DVD release, and a commentary track from critic Bryan Reesman. The film itself is presented in 1080p but real buffs may be more pleased with the 4K scan from an original camera negative.
After the surprising success of both Planet of the Apes and 2001, The Andromeda Strain heralded a golden age for studio-backed sci-fi film, and was soon joined in cinemas by The Omega Man, Silent Running, Soylent Green, and Westworld. Watching almost fifty years later, the taut, claustrophobic threat of an alien threat is not diminished, despite its prescience being dulled by the absence of any real-life equivalent. It’s a little longer than it needed have been but make no mistake, The Andromeda Strain is a treat and well worth, erm, catching.
