I’m not sure when I first saw the movie Andromeda Strain but I was young. Early teens? Pre-teens? The movie creeped me out then and it still does today. Unfortunately, it’s on Encore right now which is really slowing down my work on our finances. The music, the cryptic teletype messages, the underground facility, the computerized living environment, the increasingly thorough decontamination procedures as they descend deeper into the Wildfire lab. I’m pretty sure the movie affected my developing brain. I can’t resist a good post-apocalyptic story now, or one with a cool 70′s high-tech backdrop. Omega Man, Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, Westworld, Soylent Green. Even The Black Hole and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (with Donald Sutherland…saw that in the theater. Still scares me when it comes on TV).
Michael Crichton wrote both The Andromeda Strain (book) and Westworld (screenplay, and he was the director). That’s back when he was good. Then he came out with Congo. Sphere had me hooked – I stayed up all night reading it and was totally disappointed by the ending. Jurassic Park, good, Lost World, bad (too mass market). Disclosure, ok. Prey…that’s when I gave up on him. Then he fooled me and wrote Cell under the pen name Stephen King.
Since I’ve got a dental exam tomorrow, and I’m hopefully getting blood drawn for a cholesterol check, perhaps it’s time for bed.
Did you read “State of Fear”, his Global Warming novel? He’s quite anti-global warming, and I mean he’s against the premise that man has caused global warming. I liked it. Next was super spooky.