I remember seeing THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN as a child and being terrified by it mainly down to the opening scenes of a USAF unit going into a deserted village to retrieve a crashed satellite and finding .... You'll have to watch the movie to find out what . But after re-seeing the movie again as an adult I can still say the opening sequence is heart stopping in its tension simply down to the fact that the audience is allowed to use its imagination as to what has happened to the villagers and the recovery team . This is one of the most effective openings I have ever seen in a science fiction movie
Unfortunately it's impossible for the production to keep up the tension though I will give credit for everyone involved in trying . It's just that for reasons of plot the story then revolves around a small team of uber scientists sitting in an underground lab researching something they've found from outer space and finding a way of making sure it doesn't wipe out life on Earth . The main problem is that the story then starts getting bogged down in scientific fact which makes it very difficult for the audience , then to appease the audience the last ten minutes involve a literal race against time which wouldn't look out of place in a James Bond movie . I guess a mainstream audience member who disliked the massive amount of techno-babble on display perked up at the exciting countdown at the end while a microbiologist student who understood the technical dialogue wished the movie had ended on a more intelligent note
There are one or two other slight problems . I did find Dr Ruth Leavitt , written and played as some beatnik intellectual very irritating . But I guess if THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN was remade today we'd see Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan as a nobel prize winning scientist so let's not complain about Kate Reid's performance too much . Unless I missed something isn't there a plot hole involving a crashed Phantom jet ? What caused it to crash ? Surely it couldn't have been exposed to the alien visitor unlike say the helicopter that brought back the satellite
But I shouldn't nit pick too much since THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN is a very effective sci-fi chiller though a more modern audience might be put off by a large amount of talky scenes and an absence of special effects
Unfortunately it's impossible for the production to keep up the tension though I will give credit for everyone involved in trying . It's just that for reasons of plot the story then revolves around a small team of uber scientists sitting in an underground lab researching something they've found from outer space and finding a way of making sure it doesn't wipe out life on Earth . The main problem is that the story then starts getting bogged down in scientific fact which makes it very difficult for the audience , then to appease the audience the last ten minutes involve a literal race against time which wouldn't look out of place in a James Bond movie . I guess a mainstream audience member who disliked the massive amount of techno-babble on display perked up at the exciting countdown at the end while a microbiologist student who understood the technical dialogue wished the movie had ended on a more intelligent note
There are one or two other slight problems . I did find Dr Ruth Leavitt , written and played as some beatnik intellectual very irritating . But I guess if THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN was remade today we'd see Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan as a nobel prize winning scientist so let's not complain about Kate Reid's performance too much . Unless I missed something isn't there a plot hole involving a crashed Phantom jet ? What caused it to crash ? Surely it couldn't have been exposed to the alien visitor unlike say the helicopter that brought back the satellite
But I shouldn't nit pick too much since THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN is a very effective sci-fi chiller though a more modern audience might be put off by a large amount of talky scenes and an absence of special effects