(Opening Credits)
Here's another movie which sticks in my mind more for the ad campaign than any thing else. When it first hit my hometown of Dayton, Ohio the promotion of it figured heavily on a flyer which portrayed a man getting fried on an electric fence. Just the sort of thing to grab the attention of an impressionable seven-year-old kid. I never did see the movie on its original release; my parents had no intention of going. So years later, I was able to watch it on TV. And then it turned up on various video releases over the years.
Based on a novel by Alistair MacLean and from a script by James Clavell, this movie is a very good thriller which shows the influence of the times. In an isolated, fool-proof government biological warefare lab, someone breaks in, kills a scientist, and makes off with samples of germs, one of which has the potential to kill every living thing on the planet. Investigator Lee Barrett (George Maharis) is recruited by the government to track-down the missing samples before the theives, who are now threatening to use them, can unleash Armageddon on the world. Who stole the bugs? Religious extremists? The communists? Random nuts?
The look and feel of the movie reflects the year it was made. When one of the lesser toxic agents is used as a demonstration on a Florida Key, the investigators review the horror in silence by a 16mm film projector. All the government agents wear suits, ties and pork pie hats. When Barrett tries to track a suspect down to Palm Springs, California, it's shown to be an isolated desert town. Now, it's part of the urban sprawl.
A lot of thought went into the design of the secret research laboratory. Each room is sealed with automatic doors activated by foot pedals. Even the refrigerator where the samples were stored has to be unlocked with a special key. The lab itself is shown to be in the desert and surrounded by two fences, each electrified and with guard dogs running in between. All of this makes for some interesting discussion at the beginning of the film as to how the thieves break into the lab.
An excellent film from the days of "Bond. James Bond".
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