...when it comes to a believable story. It could actually happen. And what about the set? Whilel the computers look archane, much of the film's content holds up well. It's a great book and a really good movie. Andromeda Strain should be among the best Sci-fi films of all time, at least in the top 10.

A STRAIN TO DIE FOR
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN





In this movie a project called SCOOP is sending out probes to find space germs. The probe lands in a small town in Arizona called Piedmont. When all but two inhabitants of piedmont are found dead, a team is sent to investigate. They find corpses lining the street and when they slit a man's wrist for a blood test all they find is a red sandy powder. Once the space probe and the two survivors (Mr. Jackson and the baby) are brought back to the wildfire facility (a government funded facility that is made to examine foreign bacterial crisis) the testing begins. After going through several sever decontamination procedures the scientists are astonished at what they find: an organism that wastes nothing and eats just about everything. It is one that coagulates a whole organism's blood stream in under sic seconds. However, the wildfire lab is armed with an atomic bomb for self-destruct in case of disease spread. This bomb gets accidentally turned on and the run is on up the central core to stop the device that could from beginning a possible disease that could wipe out the planet.


One difference between the book and the movie was the conversation in the car between the two doctors on the way into the facility in the movie. In the book it merely describes the road. Another difference between the book and the movie was when they showed the map of the facility in the beginning and when they asked if the survivors were still alive. Also, in the book it took a lot longer to desterilize the scientists; in the movie it seems a lot shorter. One of the biggest things that I noticed was that he turned off the bomb in the end with eight seconds left. In the book it was closer to thirty.


One similarity between the book and the movie was that nearly all of the dialogue is identical. Another similarity is that the female doctor passes out when she sees the red lights flashing. What I think is the most crucial similarity is that eh old man had to escape through the central core. My favorite similarity is how while climbing up the central core to deactivate the bomb he gets hit by a barrage of lasers!

I liked this movie because it reminded me a lot of the book and for the time period it was made in the special effects were fantastic and the acting superb.

I have seen reviews where the reviewer didn't like this film because it wasn't true to the book. Having read the book, I'm glad that this film turned out to be so much better than the book ever was.

After watching the movie on DVD, I watched the bonus feature about the making of the Andromeda Strain, saw the interview with the book's author, Michael Crichton, who himself was very pleased with the way the movie expanded upon what he had written. It was also a chance to see how much extraordinary effort that went into the movie, and seeing the groundbreaking techniques in photography needed to visualize the Andromeda virus itself as well as the "three dimensional" diagrams of the Wildfire installation. Too many people onsider the movie hoaky by today's standards, but the then new technologies that went into the Andromeda Strain made it possible to have the special effects of today.

I had a copy of the Andromeda Strain on VHS, commercials included since it was recorded from a "Sunday Afternoon" movie show many years ago. That tape is now somewhat lost in my huge video collection and I don't get the chance to see it too often. But even if I see this movie only once in every three or four years, the movie still has an impact on me today and every time I watch it. Robert Wise created such a sense of urgency that was never truly present in the book, which to me, read more like a
congressional report on C-Span rather than a good sci-fi book. Watching James Olson trying to dodge the lasers in the core but not succeeding too well, then reaching the place he needed to be only to find some hysterical technician run away in fear from him-- that is an unforgettable moment. Eighteen seconds to nuclear self-destruction; can he get the key in the slot before the big boom that not only will kill him and his colleagues, but will also spread Andromeda around the world in a vast super-colony. We know our hero will save the day, but that's the kind of suspenseful moment I always find myself holding my breath no matter how many times I see the film.

I wholeheartedly recommend this film to any science fiction fan because there has never been anything like this since; not even the newer films like Outbreak or other virus/plague movies.

"The Andromeda Strain" concerns a sattelite that falls to earth at a small New Mexican town carrying a microbe that wipes out virtually the whole town's populace. A team of super-scientists and a surgeon are summoned to a high-tech lab in the Nevada desert to isolate it before it wreaks more havock. This is an intelligently told thriller whose lone fault would be the deliberate pace of the story. It kind of plays like an episode of "ER" with global implications. The cast(Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, and Kate Reid) are uniformly excellent. The art direction and set direction are probably the most impressive element of the film. I still find the use of split-screen that was fashionable at the time to be annoying.