Andromeda Strain, The (1971) (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: May 13, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Robert WiseRelease Date(s)
1971 (May 13, 2025)Studio(s)
Universal Pictures (Arrow Video)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
The Andromeda Strain was hardly the first biological thriller, but in some ways, it still remains the godfather of the entire genre. It may have been preceded by others like the underrated 1965 John Sturges adaptation of Alistair MacLean’s The Satan Bug, but while that film has always been unfairly overlooked, the influence of The Andromeda Strain is still felt to this very day. There was a modernized and updated miniseries remake in 2008 that Ridley Scott produced for A&E, but it was barely a blip on the cultural radar compared to the deeper resonances that Robert Wise’s 1971 version still manages to generate. Even people who have never watched it still have seen many other things that were influenced by it. It set the template for everything that followed, in one way or another.
The publication of Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel had been a watershed moment for his career. On a personal level, it was the first book that he wrote under his own name after having previously used various pseudonyms. More importantly, it introduced a theme to which he would return over and over again until the day he died: man’s inability to control complex systems regardless of the advanced technology involved. Crichton didn’t actually distrust technology itself, but rather the hubris of those who put too much faith in it. On a superficial level, his books may have seemed like anti-technological missives, but it wasn’t so much the use of technology that really bothered him as much as its inevitable misuse, and that misuse was usually driven by human chutzpah. Robert Wise’s adaptation is true to that theme, and so it didn’t just set the template for future biological thrillers; it also set the template for future Crichton adaptations.
The screenplay by Nelson Giddings made some changes both major and minor, but it wisely retained the simulated non-fiction style of the book. Crichton had used fake footnotes and an invented bibliography in order to create a believable façade for the story despite any fantastical elements, so Giddings wrote the film to appear as if it was also a document of real-life events that had already occurred. Giddings ended up adding a large quantity of pseudoscientific gibberish such as the frequent announcements over the PA system, but since he treated all of it so realistically there’s little need for suspension of disbelief. Even the dated technological elements in the story don’t require much effort to accept. That’s a credit to the respectful way that Giddings and Wise treated the material.
Wise’s casting choices also supported the verisimilitude of the film. While there are plenty of recognizable faces, he resisted including any major stars who could have derailed the story with their familiar personas. He shrewdly picked leads who were all middle aged or older: Arthur Hill, David Wayne, Kate Reid, and James Olson. All of them make for convincing scientists, even if their presence denied the studio a hook in order to sell the film to younger mainstream audiences. Giddings had the commendable idea of changing one of the male scientists from the book into a woman, and while he undercut that progressive notion somewhat by making her character into the one who has an Achilles’ heel that very nearly costs mankind dearly, Kate Reid is still wonderfully curmudgeonly in the role. She single-handedly steals nearly every scene in which she appears.
At first glance, James Olson may seem like he was cast to be the youngest member of the crew so that he could plausibly handle the inevitable action sequence during the climax of the film, but in reality, he was the same age as Reid. His character actually serves a different purpose, and it’s a device that Crichton would use frequently in his later work: a stand-in for the audience to in order to justify the use of exposition. The film makes much of its fictional “Odd Man Hypothesis” where Olson was chosen for the team because he was the only unmarried person, but he’s also the odd man out in terms of the narrative since he doesn’t understand how anything works at the Wildfire base. That provided a plausible excuse for the other members of the team to constantly be explaining everything to him, and by extension to the film’s viewers as well. Thankfully, that trope works much better here than it would decades later in the Crichton-scripted Twister, where Jamie Gertz’s character serves no real purpose other than to be an expository sounding board. (Gertz deserved better.)
Fortunately, the exposition in The Andromeda Strain is all fascinating material. Some may consider the film to be slow paced, but all of the screen time spent doing nothing more than analyzing samples and forming hypotheses of how Andromeda works is genuinely riveting stuff. In fact, while the action during the countdown at the end of the film is competently staged by Wise, it’s still a bit of a letdown compared to everything else that preceded it. Fewer lasers and more microscopes would have been just as interesting and no less intense.
All of that time spent in the laboratory is helped enormously by Boris Levin’s fantastic production design and Douglas Trumbull’s inventive photographic effects. Trumbull’s work is still surprisingly convincing considering that it was all achieved through various old-school techniques. The 3D holographic layouts of the base were created by using flat blueprints and a variation of the slit scan machine that he had built for 2001: A Space Odyssey, while the readouts for the microscopes and scanners were created with miniatures and simple animation. Yet his haunting images of Andromeda replicating itself still look incredibly eerie, and they help add to the tension during the laboratory sequences.
Regardless of any outdated elements like the primitive computers on display, The Andromeda Strain as a whole holds up remarkably well more than a half century after it was produced. Some of the technology has passed its expiration date, but the basic theme will always be relevant. And just like the whole Wildfire base is nearly undone by a stray slip of paper, the most advanced technology in the world will always be vulnerable to unforeseen accidents and human error. Recent history has proved that watching government officials fumble around while trying to deal with a virus that they should have been better prepared to handle is something that will always feel timeless. In that respect, The Andromeda Strain ends with a pointed warning that’s as pertinent today as it was in 1971:
“However, with this new knowledge, there is no guarantee that another so-called ’biological crisis’ won’t occur again.”
“Hmm. What do we do about that?”
“Precisely, Senator. What do we do?”
Cinematographer Richard H. Kline shot The Andromeda Strain on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. (There was at least one 70mm print that played in Sydney, Australia, blown up to full frame 2.20:1). True to the spirit of the novel, Wise wanted to craft a gritty, documentary-style look without resorting to shaky handheld photography, so Kline employed push processing to accentuate the grain structure of the Eastman 5254 stock that he used. The lens was stopped down by two full stops, resulting in an underexposed negative that was pushed two stops during development in order to compensate. (Kline told American Cinematographer that it gave them the “documentary texture we were after without resorting to a sloppy kind of photography,” which was an unintentional shot across the bows at the modern shaky cam school of cinematic “realism.”) One side benefit of that process was greater depth of field, which is something that Wise appreciated. He had worked as an editor on Orson Welles films like Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, and his own early work as a director also employed deep focus cinematography.
Yet small aperture or not, the kind of depth of field that Wise wanted still wasn’t possible using Seventies-era color stocks and anamorphic lenses. So, Kline also employed split diopters over the lenses to allow different planes of focus within the same shots, sometimes even using two different diopters within the same shot to create as many as three different planes of focus. Diopters are difficult to disguise since there’s usually a sharp demarcation between the out-of-focus backgrounds in the foreground elements and the sharper focus of the background elements, but Kline and Wise disguised them as best they could by using vertical lines within the sets or blank walls that smoothed the transition. That said, many of the diopter shots do stand out, but not as many as you might think. In 2016, an obsessive-compulsive film editor named Vashi Nedomansky catalogued all 206 split diopter shots in The Andromeda Strain, and a large percentage of them are virtually seamless. (You can see for yourself on his website.) Kline said that half the scenes in Andromeda Strain were composed as diopter shots, and while there’s obviously more than 412 total shots in the film, he was referring to the individual camera setups on set, not they way that they were cut up during the editorial process.
Kline also utilized other innovative creative techniques like filming real low-intensity laser beams for the climax (no, they weren’t optical effects); using a macro lens to shoot into a real Starlight Scope for the night vision shots; and utilizing panchromatic black-and-white dupes printed over the day-for-night shots in order to desaturate the color. On Douglas Trumbull’s end, he employed even more innovative techniques like utilizing a 2000-line high resolution video system that was created by the Lier-Siegler Company specifically for The Andromeda Strain—essentially, Trumbull was working with 4K video during an era in which 2K wasn’t even a thing. (It was used in the production pipeline for the background plates that were rear-projected onto the video screen inside Wildfire).
All of this means that The Andromeda Strain is a challenging film to bring to life in 4K Ultra HD while maintaining fidelity to the original intentions of the filmmakers. For this version, the original camera negative was scanned at 4K at EFlim in Burbank, with digital cleanup and grading performed at R3Store Studios in London. It appears to be the same 4K scan that Arrow used for their 2019 Blu-ray, but it was done on a Lasergraphics Director, so there doesn’t appear to have been much need for a fresh scan. The disc was authored by David Mackenzie at Fidelity in Motion on a BD-100, so the bitrate remains consistently in the upper 90Mbps range throughout, and there are no compression artifacts whatsoever.
In any event, the image is clean with no real damage visible aside from some small, faint scratches of the single-frame variety that won’t be visible without freeze-framing. There’s some noticeable dirt and other artifacts visible on some of the opticals, but those are inherent to the original production so they’ve been left alone here. Speaking of which, any optical work like the opening credits, day-for-night shots, onscreen titles, and split-screen composites were derived from dupe elements and are grainier and less sharp than the surrounding material, but unlike what Warner Bros. did with their recent Clint Eastwood 4K remasters, Arrow opted to leave them alone. Everything else is a sharp as the vintage Panavision lenses and stocks would allow, with the grain still prominent but never exaggerated—it’s the exact kind of subtle grittiness that Kline was after. The day-for-night shots still look appropriately desaturated, so the colorist resisted the temptation to dial anything up for HDR. The HDR grade as a whole is understated but effective, and the improvements in the contrast range arguably offers as much enhancement to fine detail as the 4K scan itself. The shadows are deeper than on Blu-ray, with less noise, and the highlights look less blown out. The colors all look accurate, neither undersaturated where they shouldn’t be nor oversaturated anywhere else. It’s a wonderful 4K upgrade.
Audio is offered in English 1.0 mono LPCM, with optional English SDH subtitles. (Note that while the 70mm prints had a 6-track mag soundtrack, it likely utilized the same basic mono mix—6-track was just a container that offered a variety of different configurations.) It’s a good quality mono mix, with little hiss, distortion, or other artifacts, and the dialogue is always clear (although there’s some obvious ADR). Only the electronic score by Gil Mellé sounds like it’s pushing the edge of distortion at times, but I think that’s inherent to the original recordings and the equipment that he used. Mellé was instrumental (no pun intended) in the development of an early synthesizer he dubbed the Percussotron, and he also employed electronically distorted natural sound effects and instruments. It’s a distinctive sound, even if it dates the film as much as anything else.
Arrow’s 4K Ultra HD Limited Edition release of The Andromeda Strain is UHD only—there’s no Blu-ray included in the package. The insert is reversible, featuring new artwork by Corey Brickley on one side and original theatrical artwork on the other (the latter is essentially the same design as their previous Blu-ray edition). There’s also a slipcover featuring the Brickley artwork, as well as a 32-page booklet featuring an essay by Peter Tonguette and the original 1971 study guide by Tom Andrews that was distributed to high schools in 1971. The following extras are included:
- Audio Commentary by Bryan Reesman
- A New Strain of Science Fiction (HD – 28:02)
- The Andromeda Strain: Making the Film (Upscaled SD – 30:08)
- A Portrait of Michael Crichton (Upscaled SD – 12:33)
- Cinescript Gallery:
- Title Page and Preface (HD, 5 in all)
- Shooting Script (HD, 520 in all)
- Appendix (HD, 39 in all)
- Theatrical Trailer (Upscaled SD – 3:18)
- TV Spots (Upscaled SD – 1:50, 3 in all)
- Radio Spots (HD – 1:49, 2 in all)
- Image Galleries:
- Production Stills (HD, 117 in all)
- Poster and Video Art (HD, 55 in all)
The first two extras were recorded for Arrow’s 2019 Blu-ray release The commentary is with author and journalist Bryan Reesman, who provides a brief overview of Crichton’s career prior to the publication of The Andromeda Strain, as well as the cinematic history of contagion thrillers. While for some reason he omits The Satan Bug, he does give a nod to Godzilla vs Hedorah, so honor is due for that one. He mentions real-life virus scares like SARS and Ebola (although he doesn’t mention COVID-19 since he recorded the commentary prior to the pandemic). Reesman also breaks down the cast and crew of The Andromeda Strain; discusses the development of the script; tells plenty of stories about the production; and analyzes the film itself. It’s a generally lively track that’s worth a listen.
A New Strain of Science Fiction is an appreciation/visual essay by author and critic Kim Newman. Newman discusses the contagion subgenre in general and The Andromeda in particular (he calls them “decontamination suit movies”). That means he covers some of the same films that Reesman did, but in a bit more detail and with his usual enthusiastic flair. Eventually, he gets around to analyzing Crichton’s novel and the Robert Wise adaptation. Newman describes Wise as one of the great anonymous filmmaker who always brought a certain professionalism to everything that he did, but who melted into the background and let the films speak for themselves.
The next two extras were produced by Laurent Bouzereau for Universal’s 2001 DVD release. The Andromeda Strain: Making the Film is a documentary featuring interviews with Robert Wise, Nelson Gidding, Michael Crichton, and Douglas Trumbull, as well as archival footage from a vintage newsreel (which unfortunately has never been included in full on any home video release). It’s a wonderful look at how the novel was adapted for the screen, and a priceless collection of stories from the people who made the film, all of whom are no longer with us (Gidding died just three years later, followed by Wise, then Crichton, and we just lost Trumbull a few years ago). A Portrait of Michael Crichton was derived from the same interview sessions, focusing more narrowly on the author and filmmaker’s career and his inspirations for The Andromeda Strain.
Finally, in addition to a collection of Trailers and Image Galleries, there’s the Cinescript Gallery. It’s a reproduction of Robert Wise’s 1969 copy of the script for The Andromeda Strain, which he described as “an amplified screenplay which uses the written page in a cinematic form to convey the total ‘look’ of a film. The method, incorporating illustrations, diagrams, ‘schema’ technique, computerized animations, multi-screen effects, and printouts, was suggested by the unique style of Mr. Crichton’s novel, and retains it in translation to the screen.” Wise wasn’t kidding, because some of the illustrations were indeed taken directly from the book. It’s easy to see how that influenced the feel of the film, if not necessarily its actual look. (Note that the entire gallery is also available on the disc in PDF format for those who have a computer with a working UHD drive, but I don’t so I wasn’t able to test it out.)
For hardcore fans of the film with money to burn, it looks like The Prop Gallery in the U.K. is selling Wise’s actual 1969 “Cinescript” hard copy for £1,295.00. That’s a bit steep for me, so I’ll have to be content with my machined aluminum replica Wildfire keys that I purchased from an Etsy store a few years ago. While they’re unlicensed, they’re as prized as any other “official” prop replica in my collection. What I don’t have to settle for anymore is anything less than the best possible presentation of The Andromeda Strain, which looks better here than fourth-generation theatrical prints would have back in 1971. Arrow’s set has all of the previously available extras as well, so it’s a no-brainer for fans of The Andromeda Strain, hardcore or otherwise—and it’s a damned sight cheaper than £1,295.00, too!
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).