The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Frighteningly absorbing piece of fiction that's fused with fact.

A satellite from the SCOOP project has crashed into the desert town of Piedmont, the SCOOP project basically entails that the satellite scoops outer space for any alien micro-organisms. After the crash all the residents of Piedmont are killed with the exception of a baby and an old gentleman booze hound. Mankind is on the verge of being destroyed by a leaked alien virus, so a crack team of scientists are gathered in the hope of containing and understanding the virus before the world gets devoid of human life!


Taken from the novel by Michael Crichton, this film is a wonderful lesson in tension building as we follow the scientists through a carefully structured sci-fi plot that will eventually become a race against time thriller. What makes The Andromeda Strain stand out against other genre pieces is the astute and believable approach to the subject matter, we are (in the main) in the presence of proper scientists. There's no super hero tricks forthcoming from these people, these are sensible honest intelligent folk using their combined knowledge to hopefully save the planet? A masterstroke from the makers is that they used largely unknown actors for the film, this gives the story an added grounded believable factor, thus a very useful way of drawing the audience into the drama unfolding. The direction from Robert Wise is very clued in for serio narrative drive, the set design for the underground research facility is top notch, and the actors all give stoic and intelligent performances.


However, it's not without a niggle, for after the excellence of the films first two thirds, it's disappointing to find that the final act reverts to type, which somehow seems misplaced given what the viewer has just been through. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine sequence of events that fuels the dramatic slant, but it comes off as just a bit too glossy in light of the preceding structure. Still, The Andromeda Strain is an intelligent, smart, mature, and knowing film that is standing the test of time for being a great piece of science fiction cinema. 8/10

When most of the population of a New Mexico town are found dead, scientists are quickly on the scene and discover that there appears to be some sort of lethal pathogen on the loose. Is it natural? A virus? From here or from outer space after a satellite recently crashed nearby? Well fortunately, Uncle Sam has a state of the art facility buried deep underground with five levels of sanitized security where “Stone” (Arthur Hill) and his team can get on the case. What is puzzling them is that two people did survive. An elderly itinerant gent and a newborn baby. Were they just luckily uninfected in the first place or are they immune? More by a process of elimination, they begin to piece together a picture of a living organism, but one that defies many of the conventions of earth-bound physics and as they become more exhausted and frustrated, they also appreciate that the usually reliable security protocols they are using might prove less effective against a substance that can evolve and mutate to adapt to it’s surroundings with alarming speed. Is it the end of mankind or can the “Andromeda” be rendered benign or even destroyed using more unconventional methods? The acting here isn’t very much to write home about, and the production is more sterile than Robert Wise could even have made his laboratory, but there is much more interesting substance to the underlying science from Michael Crichton’s original novel and as the story unfolds it asks some fairly fundamental questions about the existence of “life” elsewhere in the universe that may not conform to our carbon/water-based raw materials. Most of our scientific principles are applied based on earth-bound experience and theories, but what of places where conditions are entirely different - might they augment or replace any matrix they find? The ending is a little rushed and perhaps shies too predictably away from what it could have augured, but this is still a provocative piece of sci-fi that is worth a watch.