RECOMMENDED COVID MOVIES
(a.k.a. films to enjoy when in self-isolation.)
We’re going to start with a clutch of films that have explored the idea of contagion and self-isolation, look at a couple of novels that started it all, and finish with a suggested triple-bill of films that gets away from Covid and celebrates instead the rise of a new British movie star.
The first five recommended films were made between 1965 and 2011 and feature a garment that dehumanises the wearer instantly and lets the viewer know bad stuff is going down… the HAZMAT suit.
I’m calling this sub-set of the sci-fi thriller, the Germ Genre.
THE SATAN BUG, THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, THE CRAZIES, OUTBREAK and CONTAGION.
I regard John Sturges 1965 THE SATAN BUG as the father of the genre. The film was based on Alistair MacLean’s best-selling thriller. There was a time when you could find Alistair MacLean books in every home in the UK; the author, however, is barely known now. Biological warfare germs are stolen from a secret lab in the Mojave desert. In the wrong hands, the Satan Bug could kill all life on Earth. (This makes us wonder “whose are the right hands?”) Dana Andrews and Anne Francis are joined by Route 66 television star, George Maharis, and charged with the task of tracking down the missing flasks containing the bug. The Florida Keys are the first to fall foul of the deadly strain before a group of terrorists make a phone call and threaten Los Angeles as their next target city.
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN from 1971 is my personal favourite of the germ genre. It was based on Michael Crichton’s novel and directed by Robert Wise, the director who was versatile enough to direct THE SOUND OF MUSIC and THE HAUNTING. Wise plots the slowly mounting fear induced by the wildfire virus and depicts the cold asepsis of the science establishment beautifully. I think it’s a masterpiece, a child of its time with its split-screen widescreen visuals. The early scenes of the desolated desert town with bodies having fallen in the streets from wildfire, or having committed suicide, combed through by men in hazmat suits, are unequalled in cinema.
George Romero was a master of scrutinising microcosms under pressure in-extremis. His zombie movies are legendary and we should remember that the cause of the undead in his first, 1968’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, was a virus falling to Earth from Venus after a space probe exploded, unloading its deadly cargo into the atmosphere. THE CRAZIES, from 1973, however, tackled a viral outbreak directly and featured an army of men in dehumanising hazmat suits invading a small rural town in Pennsylvania. Romero starts with the symptoms, showing the violence caused by the contagion as a farmer goes crazy and kills his family before setting fire to his home. The virus had been unleashed when a military plane carrying a germ warfare sample crashed near the town. The military suggests it will drop a nuclear warhead on the town if the virus cannot be neutered in time. Chaos ensues. Romero stays close to the town’s inhabitants as they combat the effects of the virus and the military’s treatment of their lives and homes. The cast was all unknowns, and this added to the sense of verité realism and panic. The Crazies was remade with Timothy Olyphant in 2010 and it’s not a bad film, glossier than the original, but not as effective, although its first act is tense and suitably eerie.
OUTBREAK, directed by Wolfgang Peterson in 1995, featured the combined movie star power of Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Rene Russo, Donald Sutherland, Kevin Spacey and Cuba Gooding Jr. At the start of the film, Hoffman, a military colonel, is sent to Africa to investigate a deadly viral outbreak but declares it is far enough away from home not to worry about as there’s little chance it can spread to America. Whoops. Well, maybe it serves him right that a monkey from the deadly faraway region gets smuggled into the US. The monkey infects another monkey in a pet store (via a banana) and away we go.
Steven Soderberg’s CONTAGION from 2011 is prescient in that it depicts a global pandemic starting from China with a single bat, which eats a banana (might there be a mini-trope in this genre featuring infected bananas?) and then drops part of the banana onto a pig. The pig passes its hidden germs to a butcher in the market, and so on, until the virus has spread around the world…
Staying with Hazmat suits for a moment, the first instance of a Hazmat in a movie I can recall is in Stanley Kramer’s ON THE BEACH, 1959, starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, a ponderous but actually rather wonderful adaptation of Nevil Shute’s post-apocalyptic novel. Set in Australia it deals with the last survivors of a nuclear war who have to deal with the deadly consequences of radiation. Gregory Peck is the commander of a submarine, who, having looked for survivors in the US, returns to Australia and falls in love with an alcoholic Ava Gardner… but how much time do they really have before the fall-out bites? One of the most touching things in the film is the Australian government has issued a drug-laced tea to people who want to bring about their demise on their own terms rather than suffer death by radiation. When people suggest they’ll “have that cup of tea now” they are referring to committing suicide.
That’s the Hazmat section dealt with.
There’s a sub-genre of films where the zombies or undead are the product of a deadly virus (ie science is to blame, rather than hell or horror). There are two source novels for this sub-genre. The first is Mary Shelley’s prophetic three volume novel THE LAST MAN, written in 1826. The novel was lambasted when published and never achieved the notoriety or literary fame of her FRANKENSTEIN. Still, it can be considered ahead of its time, telling of the last survivor of a plague that has ravaged the Earth. Mary uses her tale of Lionel Verney (loosely based on herself) to detail the failure of the Romantic ideal and the inability of science to cope with the spread of the plague. It’s a remarkable work, unfairly neglected. The second source novel, and one that is much more widely known, is Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND from 1954. Matheson’s book produced three notable film adaptations. The best of them is Ubaldo Ragona’s THE LAST MAN ON EARTH starring Vincent Price, made in 1964. It places its emphasis on the sadness of the lone survivor missing his wife and the sheer routine of having to despatch the vampiric undead and burn their corpses. In one unnerving sequence, the undead taunt the hero at night, calling his name, asking that he comes out to join them. Charlton Heston’s version of the Matheson novel was THE OMEGA MAN in 1973. The film is a time capsule depiction of an empty Los Angeles, and features Heston still in Saviour mode. The end suggests his character may be regarded as a Christ figure by the new generation of undead who have inherited the Earth, an echo of what was intended by Matheson in the book (and hence the title). Will Smith gave us his version in I AM LEGEND, 2007. The movie starts well. A terrific sense of survivalist isolation is established with Will and his dog, Sam, a German Shepherd, sleeping, together, at night, with Will cradling his combat rifle, in a metal bath for protection. However, the film falters, not just with the death of Sam halfway through (I shouted “no!” at the screen) but with the use of CGI undead creatures and a botched happy ending.
Closer to home and another film that can be regarded as a time capsule piece is Val Guest’s 80,000 SUSPECTS, from 1963, set in Bath, featuring a doctor attempting to stem an outbreak of deadly smallpox. Guest places the emphasis of his story on the husband and wife doctors at the centre of the storm and the effect of the outbreak on their marriage. It doesn’t have the snap of his THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE but is a terrific visual record of Bath in the early sixties.
Another favourite viral chaos film is PANIC IN THE STREETS, Elia Kazan’s noiresque thriller from 1950 with Richard Widmark showing fine mettle as a Public Health official. This one is set in New Orleans and Widmark is charged with the task of finding the source of a form of bubonic plague that attacks the lungs. The plague is not transmitted by rats but by coughing, sneezing and touching. There’s an interesting moment when a journalist is placed in jail rather than be allowed to tell the story and spread the panic via the news, the “truth” being another potentially dangerous form of viral contagion. The bad guy plague carrier is played, magnificently, by Jack Palance.
Let’s not get too disheartened… we shouldn’t forget HG Wells had bacteria saving mankind when a strain kills off the Martians in his WAR OF THE WORLDS novel. My recommended adaptation is not the beloved George Pal film of 1953 but rather Steven Spielberg’s 2005 version, which places its emphasis on a father trying desperately to hold his family together during the alien invasion. Spielberg has the battle scenes taking place over a hill or out of sight, keeping the camera firmly on dad attempting to keep his daughter and son safe during the time of war. I think it’s the most moving of all the works based on the book.
Let’s quickly look at self-isolation in film. My favourite depiction of a character undergoing self-induced self-isolation may be Treat Williams in THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU’RE DEAD, a 1995 film written by Scott Rosenberg. Treat locks himself down and holes up from the world. When Andy Garcia and Steve Buscemi finally track him down, they discover him in the combat clothes he has been wearing for months; his small apartment has become his bunker. He is surrounded by bottles full of his own urine. The place reeks. He is hyper-paranoid and has his assault rifle to hand. Before he shoots Buscemi, he hollers “I am Godzilla, you are Japan!”
There’s another film I’d like to mention. It also depicts a form of self-isolation and it’s a rare gem. Hammer’s THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN from 1957, written by Nigel Kneale, the creator of Quatermass. Peter Cushing and Forrest Tucker hunt the fabled Yeti in the Himalayas and discover a group of the creatures but learn they are hiding out in the mountains until mankind has wiped itself out. Once man has gone, the wise creatures intend to come down and reclaim their place on Earth. Those yetis may have had the right idea.
If you want to get away from movies exploring plagues and self-isolation, how about holding a mini home-film-festival celebrating the rise of the UK’s brightest new movie star?
A “Florence Pugh” triple-bill of LADY MACBETH, FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY and MIDSOMMAR (the Director’s Cut) will while away the hours nicely.
Florence’s debut, William Oldroyd’s LADY MACBETH from 2016, details the discovery of warmth and tenderness in a cold, cold house. It is a shocking, austere, powerful, brutal, ruthless and surprising film, directed with panache. Stephen Merchant’s FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY from 2019 is funny, genial and upbeat, pitting Florence as a wrestler winning a contest to go to LA to seek her fortune in the ring. It features great turns from Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn and Dwayne Johnson. MIDSOMMAR, also 2019, positioned its writer-director, Ari Aster, as one of the more interesting creators working in contemporary horror. Pugh is superb as the grief-stricken young woman attempting to escape from herself during a summer pagan ritual in rural Sweden… the director’s cut is not for the squeamish, which is why it can be recommended in these end times.
