Before cementing his name as a director of many Lucasfilm
related videogame projects including but not limited to Star Wars: Rebel
Assault II: The Hidden Empire and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine,
filmworker-producer-screenwriter Hal Barwood first began in Hollywood working
as a screenwriter for Steven Spielberg’s theatrical film debut The Sugarland
Express before moving on provide uncredited rewrites to Jaws and Close
Encounters of the Third Kind as well as writing and producing the medieval
fantasy epic Dragonslayer.Having
spent a lot of time and effort into the film industry for almost fifteen years,
the filmworker decided it was time to mount his own film production in what
became his debut, the 1985 manmade viral outbreak thriller Warning Sign.
Predating the likes of Resident Evil or 28 Days Later
by decades, the star-studded Warning Sign catches fire almost immediately
by opening in a secret military lab under the faux moniker of being a pesticide
developer when a biological weapon being developed there is inadvertently set
loose.Joanie Morse (Kathleen Quinlan),
alerted to the outbreak, activates “Protocol One” and proceeds to seal the
doctors and lab technicians inside the underground military base in an effort
to contain the spread of the virus.Soon
the government gets involved with Major Connolly (Yaphet Kotto) overseeing the
containment program but when local sheriff Cal Morse (Sam Waterston) learns of
his wife’s entrapment in the infected lab, he enlists the help of disgraced
drunken Dr. Dan Fairchild (Jeffrey DeMunn) to try and rescue his wife while
putting an end to the outbreak. Co-written by Dragonslayer director Matthew Robbins
and co-starring John Carpenter’s The Thing actor Richard Dysart as the
doctor who inadvertently unleashes the bioweapon, the film as it turns out was
originally entitled Biohazard before poor test screenings prompted a
title change.Though being released to
meager critical reception, the film like Kinji Fukusaku’s Virus is among
the first of what would soon become a tsunami of like-minded viral outbreak
science-fiction thrillers.The concept
of a manmade virus in a lab with no other purpose but to transform the hosts
into frothing homicidal maniacs with no control over their insane rages was
relatively new and arguably ahead of its time.A film of this sort debatably may have played better to modern audiences
than it did in 1985.
Sonically the film has a perfectly appropriate electronic
score that helps to enhance the film’s futuristic science-fiction connotations
thanks to The Last Starfighter composer Craig Safan, helping to augment
the film’s mechanized cacophony of computer screens and flashing alarm lights.Stronger still is the film’s cinematography
by legendary John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg director of photography Dean
Cundey who is a man who needs no introduction.One of the greatest cinematographers working today, his contribution to
Hal Barwood’s one and only feature film directing effort is indelible and if anything
elevates the overall quality of the production as a whole. The cast of characters across the board is great though
special attention should go to a very young Jeffrey DeMunn, an eventual
mainstay of Frank Darabont pictures including but not limited to The Green
Mile and The Mist.A veteran
character actor, he gets to really shine here as an alcoholic paranoid doctor
who knows the terrain but doesn’t want to touch the outbreak with a ten-foot
cattle prod.Sam Waterston, Kathleen
Quinlan and Yaphet Kotto all give solid performances as strong-minded characters
trying to think their way out of this dilemma.Richard Dysart, the doctor in The Thing, feels right at home in
the role of a skilled doctor who accidentally unleashes something liable to
turn everyone exposed to it into murderers.
Despite the pedigree of the cast, the 20th
Century Fox production came and went without much noise, panned by critics and
largely ignored by filmgoers. One must
take into account the timeframe it was released in when darker edgier thrillers
didn’t always go over as well with audiences.
Seen now, it’s kind of a blueprint for the many, many viral or zombified
outbreak science-fiction horror thrillers that would come years later. Incidentally too, the aforementioned Jeffrey
DeMunn himself would later prominently star in the hit AMC television series The
Walking Dead, making this something of a full circle crossover for the
actor. Ostensibly a B-movie that’s a lot
better than most gave it credit for, Warning Sign is a classy good
old-fashioned thriller sporting a terrific cast and paving the way for
countless cinematic inspirations in the years since.
