Customer Reviews

The Alpha Incident

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This is about a mysterious infectious agent, that of course escapes - in Alaska, through which it was being transported on its way to a bio-facility. There is a group quarantined, so it is a kind of character study. Left to themselves, they interact in strange ways, waiting and hoping for a cure, freaking out to put it mildly. It is really scary, at least for me, as I always feared this kind of alien contamination in scifi when I was growing up.

Very much like Andromeda Strain, but much much darker. The actors are a bit amateurish, but not so bad.

Recommended.

A low budget rip-off of the Andromeda Strain, the Alpha Incident is one of the better films to come from 1970s B-movie director Bill Rebane. The film deals with a group of strangers who, after possibly being exposed to an alien virus, are quarantined in a station house. As they struggle to maintain their sanity as they wait to discover whether or not they've been infected, the U.S. military plots to make the quarantine permanent.

The Alpha Incident isn't for everyone. The low budget is obvious, some of the acting is rather wooden (but some of it is surprisingly good as well), and Bill Rebane never quite overcomes the staginess of the material. However, if you're a fan of 70s exploitation cinema, The Alpha Incident is a must see because this film represents everything that we love about those old B-movies. Yes, director Rebane had more ambition than resources but the important thing is that he had the ambition and, even without all the CGI and spectacle that we now take for granted, he still managed to do a fairly good job of fulfilling those ambitions. Add to that, the whole film ends on one of those wonderfully downbeat notes that were so typical of 70s cinema but which few directors have the guts to try today. The Alpha Incident is, in many ways, a relic of a past age and I guess that's why I enjoyed it and recommend it.

A Mars space proble returns to Earth and brings with it a microorganism from the red planet. While transporting the microscopic alien life form by train, there is an accident and the microorganism is unleased. Exposure to the alient virus forces four strangers into quarantine while government scientists rush to find a cure.

I bought this at a book store. I saw that it had Ralph Meeker in it so I figured I would give it a shot. I blame the director for this movie. It actually had a decent plot and on occasion the actors would deliver lines pretty well, but the acting overall was not very good. I think with better acting or better directing of the ones used, this could have been a very good film. The "twist" at the end I saw coming way in advance and was no surprise at all. Ralph Meeker, the only 'name' in the cast barely did anything and really had the smallest part of all the cast. For a while I wondered if his character was even able to speak. As the hero, Stafford Morgan did an okay, 1960ish job. George 'Buck' Flower could have been great. He had a nice part but was just not very good. Carol Newell began the film as the nice lady in the train station then for some reason I could not fathom just went into slut mode. Ralph Meeker, Carol Newell and a couple other minor name stars could have made this one good film to watch. As it was, I enjoyed it but it could have been so much more.