More Science fact than science fiction, this movie was a huge hit when it was released back in 1971. It was a sample of things to come from author/screenwriter Michael Crichton and another solid success from producer/director Robert Wise.
A great cast featuring Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olsen and Katie Reid take us on a nightmare ride. Back in '71 outer space was still a big deal. We were going to the moon, sending deep space probes and launching satellites like they were bottle rockets. We were also deeply embedded in the Cold War. We were prepared to face a threat from Moscow, but were we ready to face one from somewhere in deep space?
This film shows us just how unprepared we could be.
When a small space probe satellite falls to earth in a remote village of New Mexico, all but two of the town's inhabitants—a squalling infant and an old wino suffering from acidosis—meet death as their blood turns to powder. After two reconnaisance pilots have also perished, mission control declares a national emergency ("Wildfire Alert") and requests that a thermonuclear explosion be set off to sterlize the town. But, due to a breakdown in communication equipment, the message never gets through to the White House.
As the two survivors and the recovered space capsule are transported to a mammoth five-story underground laboratory in Nevada, a team of scientists, biologist Jeremy Stone(Arthur Hill), microbiologist Ruth Leavitt(Katie Reid), blood chemistry authority Mark Hall(James Olsen), and pathologist Charles Dutton (David Wayne), set out to discover the nature of the deadly organism brought by the space probe.
While the team is being subjected to grueling hours of precautionary decontamination measures, they are informed that the laboratory complex is equipped with an automatic self-destruct device that will be triggered should the infection spread; only the red key, which is entrusted to Hall, can disarm the mechanism once it is activated. Through exhaustive tests, the team learns that the minute organism, dubbed the Andromeda Strain, is transmitted by air, that it is crystalline in structure, and that it reproduces at an accelerated rate in an oxygen-free atmosphere—it functions like an atomic reactor.
Because of this characteristic, the team correctly deduces that the child and the wino escaped death by breathing so rapidly that very little oxygen entered their lungs. Consequently, when Dr. Dutton is exposed to contamination, he saves himself by increasing his breathing pace until he creates a respiratory alkalosis in his blood chemistry. But the Andromeda Strain has by now caused a degeneration in the lab's gasket seals, and the atomic self-destruct device is triggered.
With only five minutes to detonation, and a countdown blaring away on the PA system, Hall discovers that he is sealed off from a disconnect substation. Aware that if the bomb goes off the blast could cause a chain reaction in Andromeda mutations that would be impossible to stop, Hall forces his way into a prohibited area, fights off toxic fumes, dodges zaps from a radar-controlled laser gun, climbs a ladder to the top level of the laboratory complex, and, with seconds to spare, inserts his red key in a disconnect lock.
It was all very cutting edge stuff way back then. For those that were'nt around in the '70's it probably looks pretty hokey. But this movie scared the bejeezus out of me when I saw it the first time. It does'nt age particularly well because of the advances in technology, but it's still a great film. It would be a great one to remake.
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