What radiation was to the 1950s — a real but poorly understood menace that served as an all-purpose plot device — viruses have become for our era. Viruses explain vampires in Blade, and zombies in I Am Legend and 28 Days Later. But viruses aren’t quarantined to genre flicks. Modern thrillers like Blindness and Contagion aspire to accurate epidemiology. In the era of SARS, reality may be scary enough.
Carl Zimmer, a science writer, and Larry Madoff, an infectious disease public health expert, pick out a few classics of the virus cinema. The 1971 movie The Andromeda Strain spurred Madoff’s interest in epidemiology. He notes that "they had to invent a pathogen that came from outer space” because many scientists believed the conquest of a known infectious disease — through antibiotics and vaccines — was around the corner. “It's interesting to think about that time now because they were so wrong."
The 1954 book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson has birthed generations of films, with stars from Vincent Price to Will Smith. “It has everything,” Zimmer says: “a mysterious outbreak, zombies, a lone hero against the world.” The Last Man on Earth, starring Price, may have been an inspiration to Night of the Living Dead, the grandfather of all zombie movies. Apart from the unlikely phenomenon of the dead coming back to life, that apocalyptic scenario is improbable. "It's not an advantage to the pathogen to wipe out its host,” says Madoff. “If there's no more host, then there's no more place for the pathogen to go."
But Madoff is less sanguine watching Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. "I was struck by how much like my life it really was," he says. "I think that something like Contagion could happen. SARS wasn’t that contagious, and the H1N1 virus wasn’t that lethal, so we dodged a bullet. We’re not always going to be lucky."
→ What are your favorite virus movies? Tell us in comment below.
Track 1
Composer: Gil MelleAlbum: The Andromeda Strain [Soundtrack, Limited Edition]Label: IntradaPurchase: AmazonPrologue
Artist: Paul Sawtell, Bert ShefterAlbum: The Last Man on Earth SoundtrackLabel: Monstrous Movie MusicMain Title
Artist: Paul Sawtell, Bert ShefterAlbum: The Last Man on Earth SoundtrackLabel: Monstrous Movie MusicChrysanthemum Complex
Artist: Cliff MartinezAlbum: Contagion soundtrackLabel: Watertower MusicPurchase: AmazonMove Away From The Table
Artist: Cliff MartinezAlbum: Contagion: Original Motion Picture SoundtrackLabel: Watertower MusicPurchase: AmazonHandshake
Artist: Cliff MartinezAlbum: Contagion: Original Motion Picture SoundtrackLabel: Watertower MusicPurchase: AmazonVulcain
Artist: Claude VasoriAlbum: Energie
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Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen is a co-production of Public Radio International and WNYC Radio, and is funded in part by Ken and Lucy Lehman and the National Endowment for the Arts. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our Science and Creativity series is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Comments [6]
I not only saw the movie "Andromeda Strain" but ran out to buy the book when it first came out. Long time ago however if I remember correctly: not a strain of life from outer space, but one we sent into space in the satellite that came back mutated, therefore we did it to ourselves. In the end, the acid in the rain (also something done by us) was going to "save us" because this virus was going to be rendered harmless
Angela is right-- the Vincent Price movie, also the later Charlton Heston movie, Omega Man, both from Matheson's I Am Legend, feature "vampires" rather than "zombies," as did Matheson's book. True, the vampires (in Omega Man at least -- I saw the earlier film but don't remember it) don't resemble classic vampires like Dracula, since they are more or less brainless and come looking for Neville, the last "human" survivor, in a shambling group; I'm not surprised that the Night of the Living Dead was inspired by their behavior. But previous zombies didn't act like the Omega Man vampires either. And the distinction between vampires and zombies may seem trivial, but it's not: Matheson's novel is prescient of a blood-borne virus like HIV, and this virus was supposed to have been released accidentally from a lab. The vampire connection is important: it echoes Renfield's words in Dracula: THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE.
The Vincent price version of "Last Man on Earth" is NOT about zombies. It is about VAMPIRES...an altogether different species of undead.
The 1986 remake version of "The Fly" in which Jeff Goblum character is turning into a Fly in a stage by stage process like as if have some form disease.
One of my favorite ones is 28 Days Later. It's a virus movie, and no one dies before they become zombie like, yet everyone outside the movie refers to them as zombies. This is also the first movie that I cal recall having the fast movie, really violet zombies. Most people think of the shambling zombies from Night of the Living Dead, and this one really started a new idea of zombies that seems to have caught on big time.
Andromeda Strain is a great movie.
Several books written by Arthur C Clarke featured computer viruses
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