And the Band Played On (1993) (TVM)

Is there a name yet for this disease? 1976: by the Ebola River in Zaire. American epidemiologist Don Francis (Matthew Modine) of the World Health Organisation arrives in a village where he finds many of the residents and the doctor working with them have died from a mysterious illness later identified as the Ebola haemorrhagic fever. It’s his first exposure to this kind of epidemic and the images of the dead he helps to cremate haunt him when he later becomes involved with HIV/AIDS research at the CDE (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) in Atlanta. 1981: Francis becomes aware of a growing number of deaths among gay men in Los Angeles, New York city and San Francisco from a rare lung condition – pneumocystis pneumonia. It only afflicts people with weakened immune systems. He moves to Atlanta, Georgia where CDC Administrator Dr. James Curran (Saul Rubinek) asks him to begin an in-depth investigation into this new immune disorder. Due to the Reagan Administration’s clampdown on public spending, Francis is forced to work with little money, limited space and outdated equipment including microscopes. He clashes with members of the medical community, many of whom resent his involvement because of their personal agendas. Francis comes into contact with the gay community after he and his colleagues find strong evidence that the disease is spread through sex. Some gay men support him, such as San Francisco activist and congressional aide Bill Kraus (Ian McKellen) but others such as Bobbi Campbell (Donal Logue) express anger at what they see as unwanted interference in their lives, especially in his attempts to close the local bath houses, read as homophobia. Kraus works with the doctors treating gay patients to try to save the gay community from the virus, to the point that it costs his own relationship with boyfriend Kico Govantes (BD Wong) who moves on with an architect. Francis and other CDC staff are shocked that representatives of the blood industry are unwilling to do anything to try to curb the epidemic because of potential financial losses. While Francis pursues his theory that AIDS is caused by a sexually transmitted virus (based on his own interest in feline leukaemia and Hepatitis B) his efforts are stymied because of competition between French scientists from Paris’ Pasteur Institute led by virologist Luc Montagnier (Patrick Bauchau) and American scientists, particularly Robert Gallo (Alan Alda) of the National Institutes of Health who is enraged when he finds out that Francis collaborated in typically collegiate fashion with the French scientists. The researchers squabble over who should receive credit for discovering the virus and for development of a blood test. Meanwhile the death toll climbs among many different types of people including children who receive infected blood. One day in 1984, while exercising at a local gym, Kraus notices a spot on his ankle and worries that it might be Kaposi’s sarcoma, an AIDS-defining illness … The party’s over. One of the two most essential publications of the 1990s (the other being Crisis in the Hot Zone) was Randy Shilts’ 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. Excellently adapted by the venerable screenwriter Arnold Schulman (who died February 2023 aged 97) and premiered at the Montreal Film Festival before being screened on TV first by HBO and later by NBC, it knits several strands of storytelling together. It of course has the flavour of public service broadcasting as well as that benighted niche, Movie Illness of the Week. But with this cast and talent never mind the source material it still possesses a unique urgency. This could be the first deadly epidemic in history in which nobody officially died. The intricate scaffolding of the screenplay is constructed to bring together the various aspects of the teams working in silos who unwittingly find commonalities but take their time to work out their findings collectively through accident and coincidence until finally they discover the starting point. Almost everyone I know has or wants to. An internationally starry cast including Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Nathalie Baye, Glenne Headly, Anjelica Huston and Tcheky Karyo – with Richard Gere’s cameo as a version of (unnamed) acclaimed choreographer Michael Bennett – finds itself linked to the impossibly handsome Gaetan Dugas aka Patient Zero (Jeffrey Nordlin) that French-Canadian air steward the carrier who is symptom-free until he gets Kaposi’s. It’s like all the plagues in the history of the world got squeezed into one. When it’s not just gay men but African women in Paris and Haitian people in the US and babies in NYC dying from what Prince called the big disease with a little name, the strands of the narrative are united just as the personal issues are pushed to the forefront with a race to find a vaccine. The sparing use of archive, timed to punctuate developments and place them in an historical context, assists the affect of the performances. I want to stop you from turning this holocaust into an international pissing contest. On the political front there are a number of interests – the Reagan administration, the CDC, the doctors whose big pharma investments are at risk, the blood banks, the gay activists resistant to the bath house closures and then there’s the rivalry between Gallo and the Pasteur Institute which the American narcissist insists is a competition between countries. When doctors start acting like businessmen, who do people turn to for doctors? The irony that the man preaching safe sex finds himself infected is wonderfully exposed in McKellen’s subtle performance. Ultimately progress comes down to the same sample leading the competitors to discover the first new human retrovirus. This is where the diseases are. In an impressive ensemble, which doesn’t extol one individual over any other, Modine as Francis is the motor and the conscience, the protagonist whose original findings in Africa trigger his understanding of the spread of the disease creating empathy for a difficult front line that involves the everyday problems besetting the medical profession. The credits rollcall of the dead – from Arthur Ashe to Ryan White – and the movement’s activists, over Elton John’s The Last Song, is sobering indeed. Elegantly directed by Roger Spottiswoode who delivers a coherent, moving and emotive docudrama with a powerful political punch about stigma, prejudice, ignorance and self-interest that still has the capacity to make jaws drop in chronicling an epidemic with lessons for everyone. Will we ever learn? And will anyone ever commit to the fact that the origin of the protein that evolved alternately into HIV/AIDS or Ebola in humans came from Africans eating monkeys? This was known in 1993, when this film was produced, six years after Randy Shilts’ book was published but presumably nobody dared bring it up. We still fear a little reality about the transmission of disease in a world where borders no longer exist in the rush for globalised profit and concomitant unstoppable uncontrolled migration. This didn’t have to happen. We could have stopped it

Nature’s Way (1970)

We can’t say we weren’t warned.

Click to access GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf

80,000 Suspects (1963)

Have you known many women? On New Year’s Eve in the city of Bath, Dr. Steven Monks (Richard Johnson) calls for a quarantine after diagnosing a case of smallpox following a  party. His attention to the crisis is compromised by his struggling nine-year marriage to Julie (Claire Bloom), a former nurse whom he cheated on, who turns out to be infected herself. Just when the outbreak appears to be under control, it’s discovered that the lone remaining case is that of Ruth Preston (Yolande Donlan), the woman with whom Monks had an affair who has now disappeared. Monks has a crisis of conscience when it comes to telling her husband, his colleague Clifford Preston (Michael Goodliffe). The presence of Catholic priest Father Maguire (Cyril Cusack) who’s attending to the sick and dying forces him into a decision. Meanwhile, the Army are trying to track down the carrier… Dying isn’t a reason for lying or being loved.  With a distinctive soundtrack by Stanley Black and stylish cinematography by Arthur Grant, this adaptation of Elleston Trevor’s Pillars of Midnight by director Val Guest has definite cult value. Aside from the perhaps questionable pinning of the connection between the cases on a highly promiscuous woman, this is a taut production boasting fine performances: Donlan – the director’s wife – is particularly good in a splashy role; while Johnson and Bloom also appeared that year in The Haunting.  It’s a terrific melodrama with one genuinely strange scene of Monks’ mind at work while the crux of the matter is as much marital as medical. Martyrs sometimes follow the wrong cause

120 BPM (2017)

Les membres du groupe de sensibilisation ACT UP Paris demandent au gouvernement et aux sociétés pharmaceutiques de prendre des mesures pour lutter contre l’épidémie de sida au début des années 90. Nathan (Arnaud Valois), nouveau venu dans le groupe, voit son monde bouleversé par Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), militant radical et cofondateur de ACT UP, qui jette ses dernières forces dans la lutte alors qu’il fait face à Le diagnostic de ‘poz’ ayant été infecté par son professeur de maths marié quand il était au lycée lors de sa première rencontre sexuelle … À première vue, ce n’est pas une prémisse attrayante pour un film. Mais ce qui suit est un travail passionnant, impliquant un travail mêlant intimité et conscience sexuelle et action politique, interprété avec un réalisme de type naturalisme et documentaire qui dépeint avec vérité les problèmes de la participation d’activistes et la question de Big Pharma, contrastant tragédies personnelles et action Dans la rue, la poussière disco se mue en images du virus du SIDA dans le sang, réalisme magique rencontrant une honnêteté sans faille. Les réunions du groupe sont entrecoupées de marches, de visites non sollicitées à Melton Pharm, dont les produits sont toxiques et causent la mort, et de danses dans les clubs. Sean et Nathan partagent leurs histoires alors qu’ils s’impliquent dans l’amour et que leurs amis meurent. Le déclin de Nathan est dépeint avec sympathie et la présence sur son corps suscite une révérence et une humanité qui ont rarement été capturées au cinéma: littéralement, il s’agit du corps politique. Passionnant, enthousiasmant, émouvant, c’est une œuvre profonde du cinéma politique et de la réalisation de films de bravoure. Brillamment réalisé par Robin Campillo qui l’a co-écrit avec Philippe Mangeot. La photo aérienne de Paris la nuit divisée par une rivière qui coule du sang (teintée en rouge pour la Journée internationale du sida) n’est pas oubliée. Essentiel.

 

The Reptile (1966)

Half woman – half snake! England in the early twentieth century. Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) inherits his brother Charles’s cottage in Clagmoor Heath following the man’s mysterious death. He moves in with his new wife Valerie (Jennifer Daniel). They are not welcomed by any of the locals save for the publican Tom Bailey (Michael Ripper) who tells him Charles died of the Black Death. The local crazy Mad Peter (John Laurie) may be the only person who knows what’s going on:  a Malayan curse has turned the daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce) of Dr Franklyn (Noel Willman) into a snake woman… You’re like your brother – obstinate! With a screenplay by Anthony Hinds (as John Elder), this was filmed by director John Gilling back-to-back with The Plague of the Zombies for Hammer and it shares its elegance and controlled atmosphere (and some of its major cast and sets) but let’s face it, it’s fairly silly. The actors are splendid – particularly Pearce as Cobra Girl and Laurie as Mad Peter, with Ripper great as ever – and there’s a flavourful score by Don Banks, making this a most enjoyable excursion into mind control with some terrific set pieces. This was cut to avoid an ‘X’ rating and was then passed in full in 1994.  If you take my advice you won’t live there

 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.  An imposing black structure provides a connection between the past and the future. When Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and other astronauts are sent on a mysterious mission to investigate an object hidden beneath the lunar surface their ship’s computer system, HAL, begins to display increasingly strange behavior, leading up to a tense showdown between man and machine that results in a mind-bending trek through space and time… One of the great auteur works that has the courage to make an intellectual (and visual) leap that would elude lesser writers and filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of Arthur C. Clarke’s story The Sentinel (they wrote the novel and screenplay simultaneously in their unique collaboration) has not lost its oddly intimate power and remains the benchmark for everything that followed in science fiction with its take on evolution and man’s relationship to the universe.  The Star Gate sequence, zero gravity scenes and visual effects are transcendent. Kubrick abandoned Alex North’s commissioned score for the existing recordings of classical music which he had used for the guide track. A film of utter audacity.

Elephant Walk (1954)

She is not one of us and her ways are cold and strange. When John Wiley (Peter Finch), an affluent plantation owner, brings his new wife, Ruth (Elizabeth Taylor), to his estate in the jungles of British Ceylon,  she finds she is the only white woman.  She’s overjoyed by the exotic location and luxurious accommodations until it becomes clear her new husband is more interested in palling around with his friends than spending time with her. She is intimidated by houseman Apphuamy (Abraham Sofaer) who is still being bossed by the late Old Man Wiley a rotten individual who has deliberately blocked the elephants from their ancient water source (hence the name). Left alone on the plantation, Ruth strikes up a friendship with American overseer Dick Carver (Dana Andrews), and it isn’t long before a love triangle develops… An old-school colonial romance, the novel by Robert Standish (aka Digby George Gerahty) was adapted by Hollywood vet John Lee Mahin who knew this kind of material from Red Dust two decades earlier. While revelling in the lush jungle landscape and the forbidden desires of Taylor the real story is the haunting of Wiley by his late father whose ghost dominates his life and the plantation. Taylor of course replaced Vivien Leigh who had a nervous breakdown yet whose figure remains in long shots that weren’t repeated and her lover Finch remained in the picture in a role originally intended for Leigh’s husband Laurence Olivier. Andrews might not be our idea of a hot extra-marital affair but in a situation like that … It looks rather beautiful courtesy of the marvellous work by cinematographer Loyal Griggs but you might find yourself wanting to see more of the elephants than Taylor such is their pulchritudinous affect. You choose. Directed by William Dieterle.

Island of Terror (1966)

Some peculiar goings on going on on this island!  On the remote Petrie’s Island off the east Irish coast a farmer goes missing and his wife contacts the police. Constable John Harris (Sam Kydd) goes looking for him and finds him dead in a cave without a single bone in his body. Horrified, Harris swiftly fetches the town physician Dr. Reginald Landers (Eddie Byrne) but Dr. Landers is unable to determine what happened to the dead man’s skeleton. Landers journeys to the mainland to seek the help of noted London pathologist Dr. Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing). Like Landers, Stanley is unable to even hypothesize what could have happened to Ian Bellows, so both men seek out Dr. David West (Edward Judd) an expert on bones and bone diseases. Although Stanley and Landers interrupt West’s dinner date with the wealthy jetsetter Toni Merrill, West is intrigued by the problem and so agrees to accompany the two doctors back to Petrie’s Island to examine the corpse. In order for them to reach the island that much faster, Merrill offers the use of her father’s private helicopter in exchange for the three men allowing her to come along on the adventure. Once back at Petrie’s Island, Merrill’s father’s helicopter is forced to return to the mainland so he can use it, leaving the foursome effectively stranded on Petrie until the helicopter can return. West and Stanley learn that a group of cancer researchers led by Dr. Lawrence Phillips (Peter Forbes-Robertson( seeking a cure for cancer, have a secluded castle laboratory on the island. Paying a visit to Phillips’ lab reveals that he and his colleagues are just as dead (and boneless) as Ian Bellows. Reasoning that whatever it is must have begun in that lab, West, Stanley and Landers gather up Phillips’ notes and take them to study them. From them they learn that in his quest to cure cancer, Phillips may have accidentally created a new lifeform from the siliconatom. Thinking the doctors are at the castle, Constable Harris bikes up there looking for them to tell them about the discovery of a dead, boneless horse, only to wander into the laboratory’s test animals room and be attacked and killed by an offscreen tentacled creature, the result of Dr. Phillips’ experiments. The creatures are eventually dubbed silicates by West and Stanley, and kill their victims by injecting a bone-dissolving  enzyme into their bodies. The silicates are also incredibly difficult to kill, as Landers learns when he tries and fails to kill one at the castle with an axe when they first encounter them. After learning all they can from the late Dr. Phillips’ notes, West and Stanley recruit the islanders, led by boss Roger Campbell (Niall McGinnis) and store owner Peter Argyle (James Caffrey, who seems to serve as Campbell’s second-in-command in an unofficial capacity), to attack the silicates with anything they’ve got. Bullets, petrol bombs, and dynamite all fail to even harm the silicates. But when one is found dead, apparently having ingested a rare isotope called Strontium-90 from Phillips’ lab (via Phillips’ accidentally irradiated Great Dane), West and Stanley realise they must find more of the isotope at the castle and figure out how to contaminate the remaining silicates with it before it is too late. They obtain enough isotope to contaminate a herd of cattle – at the cost of Stanley’s left hand, when he’s grabbed by a silicate – and the silicates feed on these and begin to die. The story ends with evacuation and … a twist. Rather unsatisfying outing from Hammer, despite the icky slimy tentacled monster and the expansive cast which also includes several Irish actors – making up for the lack of a location shoot (it was made at Pinewood). The most interesting part of this action-adventure-disaster is the electronic soundtrack by Malcolm Lockyer and the cool helicopters which photograph rather marvellously.

The Invasion (2007)

Civilisation crumbles whenever we need it most. In the right situation, we are all capable of the most terrible crimes. To imagine a world where this was not so, where every crisis did not result in new atrocities, where every newspaper is not full of war and violence. Well, this is to imagine a world where human beings cease to be human.  In Washington, D.C. psychologist Dr. Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) and her colleague Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) are the only two people who are aware of an epidemic running rampant through the city. They discover an alien virus aboard a space shuttle that crashed during an unscheduled landing attempt that transforms anyone who comes into contact with it into unfeeling drones while they sleep. The government is calling it a flu virus. Carol realises her son Oliver’s (Jackson Bond) immune system holds the key to stopping the spread of the plague and she races to find him before it is too late but his father, politician ex-husband Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam) has taken him out of state … The late great Jack Finney wrote some indelible sci fi that could be used to anatomise and exemplify social forces – so The Body Snatchers has had meaning for generation after generation, commencing with its first (quite brilliant) movie adaptation Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This is the fourth effort and its muddled birth in some ways tarnished its critical reputation.  Written variously by David Kajganich and the uncredited Wachowski brothers/sisters and directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel with uncredited reshoots by James McTeigue, the original story’s clarity is both lost and highlighted in its city setting:  the quick slide into conformity is more obvious than in the 1956 classic simply because there are so many more people whose transformation is visible on the streets.  The central irony – that a woman controlling her patients’ minds and feelings with pharmaceuticals is now objecting to a world in which by the icky expedient of vomiting on someone’s face or into their coffee (nice) everyone can live in peace minus their individuality or expressivity – is straightforwardly verbalised by Carol’s ex. But the quick running time and the conclusion – collective amnesia, luckily administered Governmentally with yet another vaccine – means the bigger picture of mind control by Big Pharma and Bigger Government (a nasty coinciding of socio-financial interests since, oh, the 1990s?) is sort of lost in a mish-mash of action with awkward acting compounding the stiff plotting. There is one really silly flash forward. Metaphor? Metonymy? How would I know? I am on Day 30 of Aussie flu and can’t get a shot to save my sniffles. But if I said I was depressed they’d be racing to inoculate, n’est-ce pas???…!!! Uneven, but relevant.

 

Panic in the Streets (1950)

Methuselah is younger than I am tonight.  A US Health Service physician Dr. Clint Reed (Richard Widmark) is called to supervise the autopsy of an unknown man and realises the John Doe (actually Kochak and played by Lewis Charles) died of pneumonic plague, the pulmonary iteration of bubonic plague. We have already seen the man chased and shot by the flunkies of gangster Blackie (Walter Jack Palance), Poldi (Guy Thomajan) and Fitch (Zero Mostel) on the dockside. Revealing his discovery to the mayor and city officials, Reed is informed that he has 48 hours before the public will be told about a potential outbreak. Joined by Captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas), Reed must race against time to find out where the unknown man came from and stop journalists from printing the story so that they can prevent an epidemic. They begin their search among Slav and Armenian immigrants as the man’s body is cremated … From the low level and unwittingly infected crims racing to find the booty they believe the dead man Kochak was protecting, to the warehouses unloading produce on the New Orleans wharves, this paints a great portrait of a city that no longer resembles what we see in this post-war crime thriller. The lurid title only tells you part of the story which director Elia Kazan insisted be shot entirely on location, using the smarts he picked up on Boomerang to create episodes of masterly tension from Bourbon Street in the French Quarter (spot Brennans!) to the banks of the Mississippi, with Reed’s marital and parenting issues nicely etched – there are bills to pay and he should spend more time with his son instead of trying to be more ambitious, according to his wife Nancy, played by Barbara Bel Geddes – providing the day to day humdrum issues against which the bigger melodrama takes place in a race against time. The contrast in performing styles is gripping – from Widmark’s Method-like approach to Palance’s conventional and scary villain, Mostel’s semi-comic goon and Douglas’ usual rambunctious affect to Bel Geddes classical mode, this is a terrific demonstration of American theatre and film acting styles bumping up against each other. It’s beautifully shot by Joseph MacDonald and edited by Harmon Jones. Edna and Edward Anhalt’s story was adapted by Daniel Fuchs and the screenplay is by Richard Murphy but Kazan stated that it was rewritten every day while they were shooting. He would use what he learned of The Big Easy for his next (studio-bound) film, A Streetcar Named Desire. He believed this was the only perfect film he made “because it’s essentially a piece of mechanism and it doesn’t deal in any ambivalences at all, really. It just fits together in the sequence of storytelling rather perfectly. But that’s really why I did it, and I got a hell of a lot out of it for future films.”  Very impressive, cher!