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Year: 1971 Production: Universal Director: Robert Wise Starring: Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, Kate Reid Screenwriter: Nelson Gidding Based on The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton 130 minutes; Color
This film, whose director had in 1951 made the classic sf film The Day The Earth Stood Still, concerns a miroscopic organism, inadvertently brought to Earth on a returning space probe, which cause the instant death of everyone in the vicinity of the probe's landing (near a small town) with the exception of a baby and the town drunk. These two are isolated in a vast underground laboratory complex, where a group of scientists attempt to establish the nature of the alien organism. The real enemy seems to be not the Andromeda virus but technology itself: it is the mankind's technology that brings the virus to Earth, and the scientists in the laboratory sequences - most of the film - are made to seem puny and fallible compared to the gleaming electronic marvels that surround them; they have, in effect, become unwanted organisms within a superior body. (Wise deliberately avoided using famous actors in order to get the muted performances he wished to juxtapose with the assertive machinery.) The celebration of technology is only apparent - the film, despite its implausible but exciting ending, is coldly ironic, and rather pessimistic. |
| The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |