i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Crappy film

An absolute waste of money

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

So many ingredients for an exciting movie, but most of them get wasted in this one. An extremist pacifist ( apparently that is possible) gets hold of a virus that could kill all mankind. OK, that's one way to attain world peace, i guess. But why would the US government develop a virus that will kill all life on earth, including life in the US of A? In exchange for the virus the rabid peacenik wants the government to close down the research lab that made the virus, or people will get killed in great quantities. (I thought he was a pacifist?) Instead of giving in to this demand, which can so easily be subverted ( just build it somewhere else) government agents start to track down the culprit. The hero of this movie is supposed to be special agent Lee Barrett, but instead of building up his character we get a lot of crosstalk between other officials, none of which helps the plot along. Worse than that, the actor playing Barrett has the stiff-jawed charisma of a showroom dummy, and gets paired up with a female sidekick that has literally nothing of any importance to say or do. Add to that the flat camera-work, the lazy acting of most of the crew and numerous plot twists that make no sense and you're left with a frustrating and confusing would- be thriller. To give an example: two villains start to shoot at Out Hero holding the deadly virus in a flask, just to show they mean business. Yeah, wise move. In another scene two guys pretend to arrest the villain, only they turn out to be his accomplices. Huh? And why does the helicopter pilot get so enraged with the hero that he starts fighting with him in mid-flight, leaving the helicopter to the forces of gravity? I could go on naming such absurdities, but i won't. If you want to see them for yourself, check this movie out. Otherwise, any episode of, say Mission Impossible will make more sense and provide more thrills than this lazy effort.

This is a kind of doomsday thriller about a "bug" that will kill all life on earth, developed by a group of scientists at a secret government station in the midst of the Mojave Desert. One of the scientists turns out to be a maniac who escapes with a supply of the stuff and threatens to destroy the world. Can he be stopped? It seems to have a lot going for it. Written by Alistair MacLean and James Clavell; directed by John Sturgis; a plot of considerable topical interest; performances by a lot of respectable folks like Richard Basehart, Dana Andrews, Ann Francis, Simon Oakland; score by the perceptive Jerry Goldsmith; beautiful locations.So why doesn't it work? Probably a combination of bad luck and budget. The bad luck was that practically everyone involved seemed to be taking the day off. This is known as sampling error in statistics. The low budget casts this effort indelibly in the configuration of a made-for-TV movie. There's a lot of talk and little action or suspense. I don't mind talk per se. "The Andromeda Strain" was filled with it, but it was necessary. Here, it's unfocused and sometimes confusing. Actually, I lost track of some of the vials at times. There are stray vials of the Satan bug, of botulis, and of botulis anti-toxin. (Or are there?) I didn't mind the absence of lots of action either. Nothing was more dreary than the frenetic pace and elaborate effects of "Doomsday." But, Jeez, it would be nice to be able to follow the plot. And to have more to the story than just a lot of guys standing around pointing guns at one another.It's also the writers' responsibility to see to it that characters are differentiated, and they stumbled here. James Hong is distinctive because he's Chinese. But how about the rest? Look at their names: Hoffman, Barrett, Williams, Michaelson, Cavanaugh, Donald, Tasserly, Reagan, Raskin, Johnson, Baxter, Mason. What is this, a fraternity reunion at some diploma factory for the WASP elite? Not a Greek or Ginzo among them. Two suspenseful and thrilling incidents. A flask of one of the toxins is discovered in the soft drink ice box at a baseball stadium and the detective who discovers it must hold still while another disarms the explosive device attached to it. Well, this is already a cliché. The reason we run into this situation so often in films is that it's a sure fire tension generator. It works every time. And yet here, Sturgis gives it no more than perfunctory treatment. The formula calls for a close up of the fulminate of mercury, the dreadful question of which wire to cut -- the red or the white -- and a close up of the sweating face of the poor slob who must stand motionless and hold the thing. But no. It's all done in medium shot with only a few cuts. The endangered actor looks concerned but not terrified, as if worried about a loose tooth. And no one releases the tension at the end with a wisecrack. The writers either didn't have time to deal with this situation properly or weren't being paid enough, and the director's mind must have been elsewhere.Second suspenseful incident. George Maharis, a wooden actor from television, is holding a gun on Richard Basehart, who is holding one of the demonic flasks in his hand. "Put the flask on the ground and step away from it," Maharis orders him, and Basehart simply smiles and flips the flask in the air, catching it again. It's all over in a second and it's the best scene in the movie.The movie holds the interest, but just barely.

This is a good Sci-Fi Thriller about a secret laboratory that is studying Biochemical Weapons Research out in a remote desert area of Arizona. This secret plant is invaded by people who want to obtain this certain chemical which is called the "Satan Bug" in order to have complete control over the entire world which can cause complete destruction of the entire world. George Maharis, (Lee Barrett) sets out to find out who has been able to break into their labs along with Dana Andrews,(General Williams) who also has a daughter Ann Williams,(Anne Francis) who gets into the middle of this story about germ warfare. Edward Asner,(Veretti) plays one of the bad guys in this film and gives a great supporting role. This film was a head of its times and it fits in greatly with the year 2007 and all the talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Despite all its obvious flaws I've always really liked this film and having seen it again recently (and having still enjoyed it) I wondered why it still held its appeal.Yes, the plot groans a bit (for instance, the Anne Francis character, though well-played, seems to serve no purpose - except as a poorly explained romantic interest), the characters are one dimensional (well it is a suspense film and you can always use your imagination), and some of the motivation is a bit suspect; but this film still generates a real tension and sense of terror. It's a well-imagined, claustrophobic world of neurotic scientists, a secret state, disillusioned spooks, and isolated top-secret labs. There are good performances (especially Jon Anderson, Ed Asner, Frank Sutton, Richard Basehart - despite dodgy Austrian accent - and George Maharis) and a superb, tense score by Jerry Goldsmith that keeps the fear and suspense palpable. The action too remains tight but down-played; it does move forward at a reasonable pace but the emphasis generally remains on the realistic and the prosaic. This lack of the spectacular may be more due to the small scale of the production but for me it fits perfectly to the claustrophobic style of the film and doesn't detract from the plausability of doomsday-virus-goes-missing plot line; this is key to why the films' appeal has remained strong - the story seems all too possible (and hence frightening), and it certainly is as possible today as it was 40 years ago.There are two other stars of this film that deserve special mention. One is the desert - I think much of the the filming was done around Palm Springs in the Colorado Desert. It looks truly beautiful and other-worldly (well if you're from London it does) but also desolate and lonely. Its emptiness intensifies the sense of paranoia and isolation and serves as a subconscious reminder to the watcher of the apocalypse that the Satan Bug could unleash upon mankind... the other star is a small flask with a red seal that requires just 4 lbs of pressure to break it... if I had to compile a list of the scariest things in cinema I think I'd place that little flask pretty near the top.