The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science fictionthriller film produced and directed by Robert Wise. Based on Michael Crichton's 1969 novel of the same name and adapted by Nelson Gidding, the film stars Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, and David Wayne as a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin. With a few exceptions, the film follows the book closely. The special effects were designed by Douglas Trumbull. The film is notable for its use of split screen in certain scenes.

Plot[edit]

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The story is told in flashback by Dr. Jeremy Stone, testifying to a congressional committee. After a satellite, a U.S. government project code-named Scoop, crashes near the small rural town of Piedmont, New Mexico, almost all of the town's inhabitants die quickly. A military satellite recovery team tries to recover the satellite, but is stopped in mid-sentence. Suspecting that the satellite brought back an alien organism, the military activates an elite scientific team it had previously assembled for this type of emergency.

Wearing sealed protective suits, Dr. Stone, the team leader, and Dr. Mark Hall, the team surgeon, are dropped in Piedmont by helicopter, where they search for the satellite. They find that the town's doctor had opened it in his office and that all of his blood had crystallized into powder. They soon discover almost all of the victims' blood had crystallized like the doctor's. Not all victims had died quickly: Two townspeople had gone insane before committing suicide. Stone and Hall retrieve Scoop and locate two survivors — a 69-year-old alcoholic and a 6-month-old infant.

The team of four core research scientists, who also include Dr. Charles Dutton and Dr. Ruth Leavitt, are summoned from their academic and research appointments to a top-secret underground facility with the code name of Wildfire, located in Nevada. Upon arrival they undergo a full day of decontamination procedures, descending through four disinfection levels to a fifth level, where laboratories are located. If the organism threatens to escape, the Wildfire facility includes an automatic nuclear self-destruct mechanism to incinerate all infectious agents. Dr. Hall is entrusted with the only key that can deactivate the device.

By examining Scoop with powerful cameras, the team discovers the microscopic alien organism responsible for the deaths. The greenish, throbbing life form is assigned the code name 'Andromeda'. Andromeda kills animal life almost instantly and appears to be highly virulent. Members of the team study the organism using animal subjects, an electron microscope, and culturing in various growth media in an attempt to learn how it works. Hall tries to determine why the elderly man and the baby survived.

A military jet crashes near Piedmont after the pilot radios that his plastic oxygen mask is dissolving. Meanwhile, Dr. Stone, the creator of the Wildfire laboratory, is accused by Dutton and Leavitt of designing the laboratory for research into biological warfare. Unbeknownst to other members of the team, Leavitt's research on the germ is impaired by her epilepsy.

Hall realizes that the old drunk, Jackson, didn't die since his blood was acidic from drinking Sterno and the baby survived since his blood was alkaline from crying continuously, suggesting that Andromeda can survive only within a narrow range of blood pH. Just as he has this insight, the organism mutates into a non-lethal form that degrades synthetic rubber and plastics. It escapes the containment room into the room where Dutton is working. Once all the laboratory's seals start decaying from Andromeda's escape, a five-minute countdown to nuclear destruction is initiated.

Hall rescues Leavitt from an epileptic seizure, triggered by the flashing red lights of Wildfire's alarm system. Meanwhile, the team realizes that the alien microbe would thrive on the energy of a nuclear explosion and would consequently be transformed into a supercolony that could destroy all life on Earth. Hall races against the laboratory's automated defenses to reach a station where he can insert his key and disable the nuclear bomb. He endures an attack by automated lasers as he climbs through the laboratory's central core until he finds a working station, disables the bomb, and losing consciousness, collapses.

Hall awakens in a hospital bed. His colleagues reveal that clouds are being seeded over the Pacific Ocean, which will cause rain to sweep Andromeda out of the atmosphere and into alkaline seawater, rendering it harmless. The movie ends with Stone testifying to a senator that, while they were able to defeat an alien pathogen this time, they may not be able to do so in the future. The cliffhanger ending shows 'Andromeda' dissolving in seawater and then forming the number '601'- the Wildfire computer signal of too much information coming in too fast for the computer to analyze.

Cast[edit]

• Arthur Hill as Dr. Jeremy Stone
• James Olson as Dr. Mark Hall
• David Wayne as Dr. Charles Dutton
• Kate Reid as Dr. Ruth Leavitt
• Paula Kelly as Karen Anson (nurse, laboratory technician)
• George Mitchell as Mr. Peter Jackson (Piedmont)
• Mark Jenkins as Lt. Shawn (Piedmont Team)
• Peter Helm as Sgt. Crane (Piedmont Team)
• Joe Di Reda as Sgt. Burk (Wildfire Computer Technician)
• Ramon Bieri as Major Arthur Manchek (Scoop Mission Control)
• Carl Reindel as Lt. Comroe (Scoop Mission Control)
• Frances Reid as Clara Dutton
• Peter Hobbs as General Sparks
• Kermit Murdock as Dr. Robertson (White House Science Advisor)
• Richard O'Brien (II) as Grimes
• Eric Christmas as Senator Phillips (Vermont)
• Ken Swofford as Toby (Technician)
• John Carter as Capt. Morton (military police)
• Richard Bull as Air Force Major
• James W. Gavin as Dempsey (helicopter pilot) (uncredited)
• Garry Walberg as a scientist (uncredited)
• Emory Parnell as Pete 'Old Doughboy' Arnold (uncredited)
• Georgia Schmidt as Old Lady (Piedmont) (uncredited)
• Victoria Paige Meyerink as Additional Character
• Don Messick as Alarm Voice
• Michael Crichton makes a cameo appearance in a non-speaking role during the scene where Dr. Hall is told to break scrub, because he has to report to the Wildfire research facility.

Background[edit]

Film rights were bought by Universal for $250,000.^[5] The cast of characters in the novel was modified for the film, including by replacing the male Dr. Peter Leavitt in the novel with the female Dr. Ruth Leavitt. Screenwriter Nelson Gidding suggested the change to Wise, who at first was not enthusiastic, as he initially pictured the female Dr. Leavitt as a largely decorative character reminiscent of Raquel Welch's character in the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage. When Gidding explained his take on Leavitt, Wise resolved the question by asking the opinion of a number of scientists, who were unanimously enthusiastic about the idea. Eventually Wise came to be very happy with the decision to make Leavitt female, feeling that Kate Reid's Dr. Leavitt was 'the most interesting character' in the film.^[6] Another minor change was the character of Burton in the novel, who became Charles Dutton in the film; no reason was given for this name change.^{[citation needed]}

The Andromeda Strain was one of the first films to use advanced computerized photographic visual effects, with work by Douglas Trumbull, who had pioneered effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with James Shourt and Albert Whitlock who worked on The Birds.^[2] Reportedly $250,000 of the film's budget of $6.5 million was used to create the special effects, including Trumbull's simulation of an electron microscope.^[7]

The film contained a faux computer rendering, created with conventional film-making processes, of a mapped 3-D view of the rotating structure of the five-story cylindrical underground laboratory in the Nevada desert named Project Wildfire.^[2] The filming in the fictional town of Piedmont took place in Shafter, Texas.

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

The Andromeda Strain was a moderate box office success. Produced on a relatively high budget of $6.5 million,^[2][8] the film grossed $12,376,563 in North America,^[4] earning $8.2 million in United States theatrical rentals.^[9] It was the 16th highest-grossing film of 1971.^[10]

Critical response[edit]

Spellforce 3 review. The opinion of critics is generally mixed, with some critics enjoying the film for its dedication to the original novel and with others disliking it for its drawn-out plot. At review aggregator Website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 67% approval rating based on 36 reviews, with an average score of 6.24/10.^[11] Roger Greenspun of The New York Times panned the film in the 22 March 1971 issue, calling the novel 'dreadful'.^[12]John Simon called The Andromeda Strain 'a tidy film, yet it completely fades from memory after its 130 minutes are over'.^[13]

Scientific response[edit]

A 2003 publication by the Infectious Diseases Society of America noted that The Andromeda Strain is the 'most significant, scientifically accurate, and prototypic of all films of this [killer virus] genre .. it accurately details the appearance of a deadly agent, its impact, and the efforts at containing it, and, finally, the work-up on its identification and clarification on why certain persons are immune to it.'^[14]

Awards and honors[edit]

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards:

• Best Art Direction (Boris Leven, William H. Tuntke, Ruby R. Levitt); lost to Nicholas and Alexandra
• Best Film Editing (Stuart Gilmore, John W. Holmes); lost to The French Connection

See also[edit]

• Shafter, Texas, where part of the movie was filmed
• The Andromeda Strain, a 2008 television miniseries adaptation of the same novel

References[edit]

1. ^'THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (AA)'. British Board of Film Classification. March 12, 1971. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
2. ^ ^abcdGreatest Visual and Special Effects — Milestones in Film.AMC's FilmSite. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
3. ^Browning, Norma Lee (August 30, 1970). 'Hollywood Today: Mike Crichton, a Skyscraper in Any Form'. Chicago Tribune. p. 10-2 – via Newspapers.com. The picture, budgeted at $6 million..
4. ^ ^abBox Office Information for The Andromeda Strain.The Numbers. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
5. ^Shenker, Israel (June 8, 1969). 'Michael Crichton (rhymes with frighten)'. The New York Times. p. BR5.
6. ^The Making of The Andromeda Strain, DVD documentary.
7. ^DOUGLAS TRUMBULL, VES: Advancing New Technologies for the Future of Film VFXVoice.com. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
8. ^'The Andromeda Strain, Overview'. Science Fiction Movies. National Taiwan University. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015.
9. ^Box Office Information for The Andromeda Strain.IMDb. Retrieved May 17, 2014.
10. ^Top Grossing Films of 1971. Listal.com
11. ^The Andromeda Strain at Rotten Tomatoes
12. ^Greenspun, Roger (March 22, 1971). 'Screen: Wise's 'Andromeda Strain''. The New York Times. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
13. ^Simon, John (1982). Reverse Angle: A Decade of American Films. Crown Publishers Inc. p. 35. ISBN9780517544716.
14. ^Pappas, G.; Seitaridis, S.; Akritidis, N.; Tsianos, E. (2003). 'Infectious Diseases in Cinema: Virus Hunters and Killer Microbes'. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 37 (7): 939–942. doi:10.1086/377740.

External links[edit]

• The Andromeda Strain on IMDb
• The Andromeda Strain at the TCM Movie Database
• The Andromeda Strain at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Andromeda Strain film trailer on YouTube

Griffith's experiment discovering the 'transforming principle' in bacteria.Griffith's experiment, reported in 1928 by, was the first experiment suggesting that bacteria are capable of transferring genetic information through a process known as. Griffith's findings were followed by that isolated as the material that communicated this genetic information.was a serious cause of death in the wake of the, and Griffith was studying the possibility of creating a vaccine. Griffith used two of pneumococcus ( ) bacteria which infect – a type III-S (smooth) which was, and a type II-R (rough) strain which was nonvirulent.

The III-S strain synthesized a capsule that protected itself from the host's, resulting in the death of the host, while the II-R strain did not have that protective capsule and was defeated by the host's immune system. A German bacteriologist, had discovered the three pneumococcal types (Types I, II, and III) and discovered the to identify them in vitro. Until Griffith's experiment, bacteriologists believed that the types were fixed and unchangeable, from one generation to another.In this experiment, from the III-S strain were killed by heat, and their remains were added to II-R strain bacteria. While neither alone harmed the mice, the combination was able to kill its host. Griffith was also able to isolate both live II-R and live III-S strains of pneumococcus from the blood of these dead mice. Griffith concluded that the type II-R had been 'transformed' into the lethal III-S strain by a 'transforming principle' that was somehow part of the dead III-S strain bacteria.Today, we know that the 'transforming principle' Griffith observed was the of the III-s strain bacteria. While the bacteria had been killed, the DNA had survived the heating process and was taken up by the II-R strain bacteria.

The III-S strain DNA contains the genes that form the smooth protective polysaccharide capsule. Equipped with this gene, the former II-R strain bacteria were now protected from the host's immune system and could kill the host. The exact nature of the transforming principle (DNA) was verified in the experiments done by and by.Notes. (January 1928).

Journal of Hygiene. Cambridge University Press. 27 (2): 113–159. Lorenz, M. G.; Wackernagel, W.

58 (3): 563–602. Downie, A. 73 (1): 1–11.

Retrieved 2011-11-30.References. Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty (1944). Journal of Experimental Medicine. 79 (1): 137–158.

CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (References the original experiment by Griffith. And available. ) Further reading. Daniel Hartl; Elizabeth Jones (2005). Genetics: Analysis of Genes and Genomes, 6th edition. Jones & Bartlett. 854 pages.

Lehrer, Steven (2006). United States: iUniverse, Inc.