The Andromeda Strain (1971)

[Mike Blakesley]

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This movie showed up as a freebie on YouTube. It's one of my old faves that I like to pull out once in a while, because the story is pretty complex and it bears rewatching.

For anyone not familiar, the movie concerns a satellite that crashes back to earth carrying some sort of 'bug' that proceeds to wipe out an entire small town.....well, almost all of it -- the only survivors are a crying baby and an old drunk. The challenge becomes figuring out what killed the rest of the populace, how to keep it from spreading, and how the two survivors were able to survive.

The discovery of the devastated town leads to the activiation of an elite team of scientists plus a doctor who are tasked with getting to the bottom of the situation. They gather in a secret underground compound which is equipped with a nuclear self-destruct device which will be activated in case anything, you know, goes horribly wrong. (The end climax is pretty much telegraphed early in the movie by that revelation.)

Before that, though, the movie details their step-by-step discovery of stranger and stranger aspects of the invading bug, including one big twist at the end of the story that I won't reveal here. Some of the testing involves laboratory animals, which result in a couple of very disturbing scenes if you're an animal lover. (But not to worry, everything was monitored by the ASPCA and no animals were harmed.)

During the proceedings, the bug goes through several mutations, including one that causes rubber gaskets to deteriorate - which leads to a breach in the security of the underground compound and activates a countdown timer for the self-destruct mechanism to go off. This leads to a classic sci-fi movie chase, where the one character entrusted with the only key that cancels the self-destruction has to get to a strategically located keyhole....while doors are closing to keep the contamination from spreading, and while being shot at by lasers that are programmed to keep laboratory test animals from escaping.

The only downside to a movie of this type is, you know the ending. But that doesn't make it any less thrilling. It's one of the better ticking-clock segments in movie history.

There are a few dumb parts, not the least of which is why only one person would be entrusted with the shutdown key. And why, when the bug escapes due to the failing gaskets, the whole compound closes a series of automatic doors that prevent the key guy from reaching one of the all-important keyholes.

Still, it's a fascinating movie and it's one of those films that, unlike today's fantastical crap in which "the universe" or at the very least "all of humanity" is always at stake, seems like it's based on an event that could really happen. This is helped by the fact that the whole cast is made up of people who are mostly unknown, so you weren't distracted by the fact that the main character was really some "movie star." In fact, even though the story is entirely fictional, the movie opens with a title card that makes it look like we're watching a documentary -- and apparently, some people back in '71 were freaked out enough by it to really think it WAS a documentary.

The "computer effects" are pretty simplistic, of course, but were way ahead of their time for 1971. One sequence that shows the 'bug' mutating and reproducing, reportedly cost $250,000 to create.

The cast does a great job with all the techno-jargon, especially Kate Reid, who plays Dr. Ruth Leavitt, the main female character in the story. She has a lot of the best lines and provides some comic relief.

The story is told in three segments -- mostly "right now," some scenes in flashbacks, and some in flash-forwards to a Senate hearing in which the whole thing is being talked over after it ends. It takes at least one re-watching to establish the timeline in your head. I know I enjoy the movie a lot more today than I did when I first saw it. It's hard to believe this was directed by the same guy who made "The Sound of Music," but it was (Robert Wise).

3.5 out of 5 stars from me. A side note: Although it's rated "G," there's no way this movie would get anything less than a PG-13, and possibly even an R, due to the animal scenes I mentioned above, if it was released today.

[Steve Guttag]

They'd probably kick it to PG for the old man doing Stereo hits for his ulcer too. I doubt it would get an "R." Maybe a PG-13 but really, it is a PG, in my book. I'm sure it got a "G" back in the day because there wasn't any naughty scenes or words. Looking around the world...the consensus was that 12ish was the appropriate minimum age with Sweden being more restrictive at 15. For comparison, from that era. The Poseidon Adventure, which depicted people dying/dead, had a PG rating and many countries around the word tended towards 13-17 years...so, likely a PG-13 if available at the time. The same goes for The Towering Inferno. Also showed people dying/falling out of building, burning.

[Mike Blakesley]

All true, but people get way more upset about animals suffering than they do about humans. (Look at the great story leaps they jumped through to save the cat in "Towering Inferno.") In "Andromeda," there is also a scene of a topless female (she's dead, though) and a short clip of two or three of the buttocks of the male scientists during the "decontamination" segment.

I think you're right about the G being due to no cussing, mostly. A movie like the original True Grit would undoubtedly get a PG-13 today due to people getting shot, rattlesnake peril, fingers getting chopped off...but it was rated G back in 1968.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Saw this in 70mm at the Michael Todd theater in Chicago back when I was a Junior in High School. Pretty good flick, and one of the very last 70mm films that played that theater.