The Andromeda Strain

Great production design + Robert Wise and Michael Crichton = Biomedical Terror

One of the more retrograde tendencies of horror films is the vilification of science and the elevation of the supernatural. A major exception to that rule is The Andromeda Strain (1971), a fine piece of science fiction/horror directed by Robert Wise from a screenplay by Nelson Gidding that closely follows Michael Crichton’s novel.

Working frantically in the depths of a top-secret underground laboratory, an elite team of scientists investigate a space probe that came back to Earth carrying a deadly alien virus. Real-life Biosafety Level 4 labs don’t look this cool (I’ve filmed in three, and they’re more like bunkers than James Bond sets), and to the best of my knowledge they are not equipped with nuclear bombs that detonate if a pathogen escapes containment. Otherwise, the story of how the team gradually solves the mystery of what the pathogen is and how it mutates was the most accurate depiction of virology on film until 2011’s Contagion. That verisimilitude can be traced back to Cric…