The Andromeda Strain 4K UHD Review

Arrow Video

Blu-ray Release: May 13, 2025

Video: 2.35:1/2160p (HDR10/Dolby Vision)/Color

Audio: English LPCM 1.0 mono

Subtitles: English SDH

Run Time: 130:36

Director: Robert Wise

A government satellite crashes outside a small town in New Mexico and, within minutes, every inhabitant of the town is dead, except for a crying baby and an elderly derelict. The satellite and the two survivors are sent to Wildfire, a top-secret underground laboratory equipped with a nuclear self-destruct mechanism to prevent the spread of infection in case of an outbreak. Realizing that the satellite brought back a lethal organism from another world, a team of government scientists race against the clock to understand the extraterrestrial virus – codenamed 'Andromeda' – before it can wipe out all life on the planet. (From Arrow’s official synopsis)

Watching and writing about pandemic movies certainly feels different in the years following an massive real-world outbreak. The horror loses the safety of make-believe and the missteps of fictional authorities trigger unrealistic anxiety of pandemics to come. Or, worse, the fictional authorities are more competent than their real-world counterparts. For the sake of everyone’s sanity, let’s put that aside while we look back at the greatest pandemic/outbreak film of its era and the Gold Standard for substitute teachers during the early days of home video.

Pandemic movies are, at heart, natural disaster movies and developed in the mainstream alongside the likes of Ronald Neame & Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure (1972), John Guillermin & Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno (1974), and Mark Robson’s Earthquake (1974) during the disaster boom of ‘70s. By and large, the genre turned more fantastical as zombie fiction gained popularity*, but there was a brief period where crumbling buildings and capsized cruise ships existed in the same genre space as world-ending pathogens.  

Among low-budget thrillers, like George A. Romero’s The Crazies (aka: Code Name: Trixie, 1973), nihilistic apocalypse movies, like Cornel Wilde’s No Blade of Grass (1970), and ensemble blockbusters, like George P. Cosmatos’ The Cassandra Crossing (1976), Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain (1971) is sort of the 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) of outbreak movies – formally crafted, scientifically focused, and made to compete with award contenders. It was based on a popular 1969 book by the future king of airport speculative fiction, Michael Crichton, the first of a veritable franchise of adaptations and arguably still the best, at least from a pure procedural thriller standpoint.

Wise, who cut his teeth editing for Orson Welles, William Dieterle, and Richard Wallace, is one of those filmmakers that you might not realize is one of your favorites, because he worked in and perfected such a wide swath of genres – horror (The Body Snatcher [1945], The Haunting [1963]), noir (The Set-Up [1949], House of Telegraph Hill [1951]), westerns (Blood on the Moon [1948]), war movies (Run Silent, Run Deep [1958], The Sand Pebbles [1966]), and so on. He had made one of the defining works of science fiction, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and was coming off of two Best Picture/Best Director Oscar wins for West Side Story (co-directed with Jerome Robbins, 1961) and The Sound of Music (1965) at the time. The Andromeda Strain isn’t his flashiest effort, but exhibits his blocking/framing skills and takes some playful risks with split-diopters and pictures-within-pictures. It’s also a rare case of retrofuturist production design appearing pragmatic and functional.

The cast is fantastic and is somewhat unique for the disaster ensemble era, because it doesn’t include any marquee stars. The faces are familiar, but the names aren’t of a Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, or Charlton Heston level. The standout is Kate Reid as Dr. Ruth Leavitt, whose understated performance is often overlooked in discussions of the film. A London-born, Canadian-based actress, Reid made her name on stage and never really had major a breakthrough on the big screen, though Andromeda Strain did get her some genre roles, including one in the 1979 Canadian outbreak movie, Plague, released stateside as The Gemini Strain to cash in on Wise’s film, and Alvin Rakoff’s Nazi horror film Death Ship (1980).

* It’s typically ignored, but, in the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), it is implied that a crashed satellite has caused the zombie outbreak, which is exactly the cause of the Andromeda outbreak. Crichton has claimed that his 1969 novel was inspired by Len Deighton’s The IPCRESS File (pub. 1962) and that it took him three years to write it, but it’s still a notable coincidence.

Video

The Andromeda Strain has been a television and home video mainstay for decades. As mentioned in my review, the VHS tape was in regular rotation at public school in the 1980s and ‘90s. Universal kept it in rotation on digital streaming and Blu-ray, but this is the film’s 4K debut. Arrow’s UHD features a new 2160p, Dolby Vision/HDR10 compatible version of the 4K restoration of the original 35mm camera negative that initially appeared on their 2019 Blu-ray (the film was blown up for 70mm during its initial release, but was shot on 35mm). The images on this page are taken from a streaming version and only here for editorial purposes (though the color timing is similar).

Cinematographer Richard H. Kline’s sterile, yet moody photography is a great canvas to illustrate the capabilities of a 4K restoration. Details are tight with only occasional haloing (these all appear to be chemical effects, rather than over-sharpening on the digital side of things) and there’s plenty of natural texture, including consistent fine film grain. The Technicolor hues have a familiar vivid quality that leans a bit cooler than other releases. Some of the exterior dawn-lit and/or day-for-night scenes are perhaps a hair too dark, lacking the bouncy highlights of the more stylishly dark interiors. In turn, the Dolby Vision/HDR10 upgrade makes the biggest difference in brighter conditions. Exterior scenes and picture-in-picture composites tend to have more dirt and grit, though there aren’t any major print damage artifacts to speak of.

Audio

The Andromeda Strain is presented in its original mono and uncompressed 1.0 LPCM sound. There are obvious limitations to the single channel mix and the film is mixed to sound quite stark for long periods of the runtime, but the overall effect is still neatly layered when necessary. Dialogue tracks feature almost zero distortion, even at higher volumes. Composer Gil Mellé’s largely avant garde synth score often blends into the sci-fi sound effects of the underground station and is the showiest aural element. It isn’t the first of its kind, but definitely a progenitor of electronic film music. 

Extras

• Commentary with Bryan Reesman – The critic, journalist, and author of Bon Jovi: The Story (Union Square & Co., 2016) explores Crichton’s book and career, the facts & fictions of the story, the careers of the cast & crew, technical aspects of filmmaking, and changes in technology since the early ‘70s.

• A New Strain of Science Fiction (28:02, HD) – Critic and author of Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s (Bloomsbury, 2011 [expanded edition]) Kim Newman offers a substantial look at the outbreak/pandemic genre on film, its literal and historical roots, its ties to fears of immigrants as much as disease, and common themes and images shared across these films. It’s too bad that Arrow didn’t record a post COVID-19 update, because its absence in the discussion (as well as the commentary) feels odd for what is otherwise a 2025 re-release.

• The Andromeda Strain: Making the Film (30:08, HD) – Laurent Bouzereau’s 2001 documentary, which I believe debuted on the Universal DVD. It includes interviews with Wise, Crichton, and screenwriter Nelson Gidding. 

• A Portrait of Michael Crichton (12:33, HD) – A second Universal DVD holdover from Bouzereau.

• Cinescript gallery – Pages from the annotated and illustrated shooting script by Nelson Gidding:

  • Title pages and preface

  • Shooting script

  • Appendix

• Production stills and poster & video art galleries

• Theatrical trailer, three TV spots, and two radio spots 

The images on this page are taken from a streaming version of the film – NOT the new 4K UHD – and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.