Jack-of-all-trades
producer-editor-director Robert Wise excelled at every genre he tried his hand
at. Whether it be film noir such as The Set-Up, musicals such as West Side Story and The Sound of Music, war with The
Sand Pebbles, horror with The
Haunting and last but not least, science fiction with his 1951 seminal
classic The Day the Earth Stood
Still. Never one to be boxed into
one genre, the late and legendary Wise collaborated with visual effects guru
Douglas Trumbull and returned to science fiction twice more in his career with Star Trek: The Motion Picture and in the
recently re-released 4K restored Arrow Video blu-ray of Jurassic Park novelist Michael Crichton’s bestselling killer
space-virus thriller The Andromeda Strain.
The
first of Crichton’s books to be published using his real name and an instant
critical and commercial success, The
Andromeda Strain tells the nerve wracking and still terrifying tale of a
different kind of extraterrestrial invasion that can’t be seen by the naked eye
and can kill you instantly before you realize you’ve inadvertently inhaled
it. Told in flashback, The Andromeda Strain chronicles a
top-secret U.S. government operation code-named Project Scoop involving a crash-landed
military satellite which, upon being cracked open in Piedmont, New Mexico,
unleashes a microscopic alien organism that wipes out all forms of life in the
immediate area. All but two, a 6-month
old wailing infant and a 69-year-old alcoholic, inexplicably survive the
extraterrestrial viral outbreak.
It’s
up to a team of four scientists across the country, Dr. Jeremy Stone (Arthur
Hill), Dr. Mark Hall (James Olson), Dr. Charles Dutton (David Wayne) and Dr.
Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid) to try and collect, quarantine and analyze the
satellite to ascertain how the organism functions and whether or not it can be
stopped. Initially told on the Earth’s
surface, the book and film shift gears upon descent into a deep underground
medical base code-named Wildfire and becomes almost like a space exploration
film where technologically advanced laboratories and electron microscopes work
to isolate and identify the organism.
It
is here where The Andromeda Strain starts
to take on an otherworldly quality with sterilized rooms, intensely probing
decontamination procedures, elaborate robotic arms operated by remote control
and a nuclear self-destruct fail-safe device armed with drug-laced lasers should
the deadly space organism break out of the tight confines of the laboratory. As with the novel, what makes Crichton’s tale
of a microscopic extraterrestrial outbreak so effective is the author’s
background in medicine. For however
far fetched a story like this could and should be, The Andromeda Strain is grounded in plausibility with a systematic
medical approach to trying to address piece-by-piece how the virus, code-named Andromeda, functions and why two human
beings on opposite sides of the age spectrum managed to survive while everyone
around them dropped dead.
Visually,
The Andromeda Strain is at once
controlled and wild, sterile and antiseptic as well as messy. Photographed in panoramic widescreen by Soylent Green and Star Trek: The Motion Picture cinematographer Richard H. Kline, the
film is a cacophony of vast wide shots, tightly enclosed close-ups and a still
experimental variety of split-screen montages with the screen narrowing down to
oblongs as a variety of rectangular shapes displaying key images pop up
throughout the screen. Split-screen has
been a technique both dated and, in the cases of filmmakers like Brian De Palma
and Darren Aronofsky, pioneering and I would be hard pressed to say I’ve ever
seen it used quite like it has been in The
Andromeda Strain.
As
with the cinematography and futuristic set design of the underground
laboratory/space-station of sorts, The
Andromeda Strain wonderfully exploits the visual effects wizardry of Douglas
Trumbull. Fresh off of his still
revolutionary work on Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey, Trumbull employs a variety of innovative as well as
traditional photographic techniques to create some wild imagery of an ever
mutating space microorganism. Between
shots of a glowing green, blob-like organism with some still visually arresting
effects of a crystalline creature of hexagonal shapes, Trumbull also provides
numerous video screens for computer controlled analytical systems within the
deep underground Wildfire base.
Sonically,
The Andromeda Strain is no less extraterrestrial than its sterile and otherworldly vistas, thanks to a
nightmarish avant-garde atonal electronic score by American Jazz musician Gil Mellé. After becoming the first composer to score a
television theme for Night Gallery
comprised entirely of electronic instruments, The Andromeda Strain marked Mellé’s first original score for a
feature film.
Much
like Lalo Schifrin’s largely electronic ambient score for George Lucas’
directorial debut THX 1138, the
robotic, mechanical soundscape of beeps coupled with dissonant, percussive
scratching sounds perfectly compliments the feel of the computerized and
sterile underground laboratory. One
could argue Mellé’s score to a degree informed the film score composition techniques
of John Carpenter as the electronic music never relieves the viewer of the
tension or sense of doom.
Last
but not least, The Andromeda Strain cements
its real-world plausibility thanks to the relatable and compelling ensemble
cast. Arthur Hill’s take on Dr. Jeremy
Stone, for instance, simultaneously exudes confidence as the team leader as
well the anxieties of operating under bureaucratic and military secrecy. Traverse City, Michigan based actor David
Wayne, already a veteran at this stage of his career, brings an aged and
professorial wisdom to Dr. Charles Dutton.
In
one of the more interesting detours from the novel, it was suggested Dr. Peter
Leavitt be made into a female character, much to Wise’s initial objection until
receiving the enthusiastic approval of the character change from fellow
doctors. Re-imagined as the middle-aged
Dr. Ruth Leavitt and played with gusto by character actress Kate Reid, Leavitt
is easily the film’s most colorful and spunky character with a lot of relatable
cantankerous sass peppered in with her keen scientific insight. And last but not least is James Olson as Dr.
Mark Hall as the young single man of the group carrying a heavy responsibility
around his neck that could determine the survival of humankind.
Released
theatrically in 1971, the modestly budgeted thriller sporting key visual
effects and large set pieces ranked as the 16th highest grossing
film of the year and fared well with both critics and audiences. The film also managed to garner two Academy
Award nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Film Editing. In the decades since, the film’s stature in
science-fiction fantasy lore as well as its significance in the medical
procedural thriller has only grown with age.
In
2003, for instance, the Infectious Diseases Society of America called The Andromeda Strain ‘the most
significant, scientifically accurate and prototypic of all films’ of the killer
virus subgenre. Sometime in 2008,
Crichton’s still gripping tale was remade by A&E Network as a two-part
television miniseries with Hard Rain director
Mikael Salomon helming the project under the executive production of Tony and
Ridley Scott though numerous embellishments in the plot tend to weaken the air
of realism so well laid out in the 1971 adaptation.
Seen
now, Robert Wise’s film of Michael Crichton’s novel is at once a product of its
time and yet thematically remains immediate.
With all of the planet Earth’s inhabitants roaming freely in the open
air, there’s no telling where or when infectious diseases floating either in
the far reaches of outer space or buried deep within the Earth will appear and,
for that matter, how humankind will deal with them. Furthermore, are our efforts to quarantine and
contain a fatal viral outbreak, whether it be Earthly or unearthly in origin,
ever truly foolproof? As we continue to
move ahead into the next millennia, The
Andromeda Strain serves as a chilling reminder that the medical war against
invisible and often undetectable deadly microorganisms is far from ever being
over.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki