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[tab title="Movie Review"]
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Robert Wise. The name alone should command respect. He was, after all, the man who edited Citizen Kane and directed (in no particular order) West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Body Snatcher (the last film to feature both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi), The Day the Earth Stood Still, Run Silent Run Deep, The Haunting, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He was a director not limited to any particular genre and managed to leave behind a filmography that continues to impress and influence.
While he worked in various genres and was damn-near visionary with what he achieved in some of the effects for Citizen Kane, it could be argued that science fiction was his most articulate endeavor. A modern day viewing of The Andromeda Strain, released this week on blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, will tell you this. Just look at the details in bringing the nightmare situation of toxic extraterrestrial contamination to all lifeforms deep down in an underground bunker. That’s truly what makes The Andromeda Strain unique and so memorable.
Written by Michael Crichton, the film opens during a recovery mission of a downed satellite in the town of Piedmont, New Mexico. As the crew passes over the town, they see dead bodies littered across fields and playgrounds and parking lots. Something unexpected has happened. Fearing that the satellite now in their possession has brought to earth some sort of alien biohazard, they scramble back to the base, report their findings, and die due to their own exposure.
Suddenly, the hazmat suits are brought out and four doctors are summoned - Arthur Hill as Dr. Jeremy Stone, David Wayne as Dr. Charles Dutton, James Olson as Dr. Mark Hall, and Kate Reid as Dr. Ruth Leavitt – to deal with this unidentified threat. Their mission is to discover what it is that has turned the dead in Piedmont’s blood to clot and turn to powder. And to figure out why a baby and an elderly man are the only to survive.
Locked inside a top secret underground facility in Nevada, the doctors work to figure out exactly what has happened. They each have their own responsibilities and discover, as the time ticks by, the pressures of this seclusion and a possible outbreak of the virus only cause their own paranoia to grow. Shot in a way to make it appear like a documentary, The Andromeda Strain is actually a truly remarkable and progressive film. The whole computer aspect – we’re talking some really BIG computers and the dot matrix printers – might date it a bit but nothing detracts from its focus on paranoia and realism.
This is why Robert Wise selected Crichton’s book to bring to the screen. The attention to detail. The way Wise sets up shots is almost clinical in response to what Crichton has written. His style is unmistakable. Finessing that style is his use of split screens and isolated images to create realism as the events unfold simultaneously. It’s perhaps not unique to the era but it works so well here that I wish it were still employed; people can still focus on more than one frame – some even watch television that way. All of this works together to bring an attention to detail that burns throughout as the threat the virus contains to all of humanity grows.
Wise is probably too true to Crichton’s novel which causes only the slightest of hiccups in the pacing. At the time of its release, critics were pretty much split on what worked and what didn’t work with The Andromeda Strain. Time has been kind to the film and, seeing as how it is the first film to use computers for its optical effects, the film is a good time capsule.
It’s remarkable (and very telling of the prowess of Robert Wise) to discover just how much about The Andromeda Strain still feels so very real and relevant.
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[tab title="Film Details"]
MPAA Rating: G for General Audiences.
Runtime: 131 mins
Director: Robert Wise
Writer: Nelson Gidding
Cast: James Olson, Arthur Hill, David Wayne
Genre: Science Fiction
Tagline: The picture runs 130 minutes!... The story covers 96 of the most critical hours in man's history!... The suspense will last through your lifetime!
Memorable Movie Quote: "Most of them died instantly, but a few had time to go quietly nuts."
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Official Site:
Release Date: March 12, 1971
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: February 17, 2015
Synopsis: A group of scientists investigates a deadly new alien virus before it can spread.
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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]
Blu-ray Details:
Available on Blu-ray - July 14, 2015
Screen Formats: 2.40:1
Subtitles: English SDH, French
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Discs: 50GB Blu-ray Disc; Single disc (1 BD)
Region Encoding: A
The MPEG-4 AVC 1080p transfer from Universal Studios Home Entertainment provides a crisp look at this production from 1971. While there are some scenes with noticeable dirt and deficits in its image, the color saturation is strong. Black levels are decent, too. There has been no attempt, however, to clean this transfer. This is the same one from 2001. Too bad. America still doesn’t get the six-track mix when it comes to sound. For whatever reason, that is for Europe and Australia. We get a lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 which is as serviceable as mono can be.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- Unfortunately, there is none.
Special Features:
From the cover art to the print, it appears as though Universal has ported over the same featurettes from the previous 2001 DVD release of The Andromeda Strain, which is good BUT not so good for anyone (like me) hoping to have some new, updated information on the film. What we have is a 30-minute 'making of', with interviews from the Wise and some of the other people involved in bringing the movie to life. The second is an interview with Crichton.
A Portrait of Michael Crichton (12 min)
Theatrical Trailer
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[tab title="Trailer"]
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