The Alpha Incident

Take The A Strain

The Alpha Incident
USA 1978 Directed by Bill Rebane
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: An incident or two of spoilers.

Well, I finally saw a Bill Rebane movie that I really liked. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still quite cheaply made but, since not a great deal of large budget stuff happens, it doesn’t matter if we don’t see any of it on screen because this kind of script is perfect for low budget.

The film starts off with a credits sequence over footage of blood cells, cueing you in straight away that this is going to be one of those viral movies like The Andromeda Strain (reviewed here) or The Satan Bug (reviewed here). Indeed, like The Andromeda Strain, this particular type of virus comes from space, specifically brought back from Mars via a Martian probe. A team of scientists are studying it in a lab and trying to figure out what causes it to kill their various rats and mice, in some instances forcing their brains out through their heads. About a fifth of the action takes place here, crosscutting from the main focus of the story and back to these labs every so often but, once again it is man’s folly which brings about the ‘incident’ of the title (although what the heck ‘Alpha’ is supposed to be isn’t really made clear... I couldn’t find mention of it in the movie).

The film even has a real old-school Hollywood star in it, in the form of Ralph Meeker, who you may remember in such parts as Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer in the outstanding Kiss Me Deadly, or as Kolchak’s buddy in the original TV movie of The Night Stalker. He was just recovering from some kind of heart attack when he made this so he doesn’t do much more than sit around, get up and talk a little while using a load of facial expressions for the most part... but that’s fine. That’s pretty much everyone’s role and, that’s part of the beauty of the film.

Anyway, the majority of the martian virus is being transferred by train to another lab for military experimentation, so it’s shunted into a siding by a small town railway station one morning. However, what the government guard on the train didn’t realise is that one of the curious train guards, played by George ‘Buck’ Flower, allowed his curiosity to get the better of him and he snuck a look at the mysterious cargo, accidentally breaking it and absorbing the virus through the broken glass lodged in his hand. Still not knowing what it is, he greets and has contact with the three workers in the station’s office the next morning and then, when the government guard, who may or may not be infected, finds out, he quarantines the place and the government evacuates the town and puts the national guard out. The government guy wounds one of the three, to stop him from leaving and also wounds Flower, who manages to make it into the surrounding forest to die.

And from here on in, the film becomes an intense, claustrophobic study of four people... the old timer (Meeker), the obnoxious one, the sexy lady and the government’s man... as they are forced to be in lockdown together. Later on, as new things are understood about the virus from the scientists working around the clock to find an antidote, it transpires that the thing activates and kills you when you fall asleep (which may or may not be a nice nod to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers). So the army send a helicopter to drop off coffee and amphetamines and, yeah, things get intense with the four people, who happen to find themselves in a Bill Rebane film... and, as I mentioned in my reviews of Rebane’s Monster-A-Go-Go (reviewed here) and Invasion From Inner Earth (reviewed here), Rebane seems to be all about mutual dislike and confrontation.

The film even has some really nice cinematography throughout too (probably from the director or one of his family) and includes some nice frame compositions. Such as a wonderful moment when two scientists are talking halfway up a stairwell. We see them from the side, framed in a kind of artificial diamond shape made from the tops and bottoms of the flights of stairs above and below them. It looks pretty good.

Or another moment when two of the men at the station are having an argument just outside the office. As they verbally spar in the foreground, we can see Ralph Meeker through the glass door quietly observing them from inside, his head perfectly framed in the top panel of the door.

There’s also a wonderful scene in a laboratory in the third part of the film where the colours are all slats of oranges and reds, which really lift the humdrum nature of the scientist sequences at this point.

Somehow, through all of this, the director manages to squeeze in a shot of Jenny, the female member of the station office workers, played by Carol Irene Newell, as she undresses and, believe it or not given the scenario, shoots a sex scene with her in it too. I guess it’s as good as any way to stay awake although, she seems a bit reluctant, to tell the truth.

And if you’ve read this far... here’s where the spoilers reside so, if you’re looking to see this anytime soon, skip the last couple of paragraphs. Fair warning.

Unlike some of Bill Rebane’s earlier movies, which often had a small but positive silver lining behind the ending... this movie is unflinchingly pessimistic and bleak in its outlook. Meeker is the first to go and suddenly throws a fit after he doses off, followed by a nice practical effects shot of his rubberised head with its eyeballs popping out and his brain making its way out the back of his skull (this is the most graphic I’ve seen Bill Rebane get, thus far). This is followed by the sad and lonely Jenny blowing her brains out in her car and then, when the government man and one deliberately obnoxious character are the only two left, the audience gets the news that the government is giving up on them as no cure has been found. So they helicopter drop off an ‘antidote’ for the people, not realising they’d not all take it at once. The obnoxious fellow does and they find out, to their dismay via his death, that the antidote was a cyanide capsule. Then the government man falls asleep but then, the next morning, he wakes up unscathed and he realises he was never infected by the virus himself... which is a bit of a waste because, well, lets just say that fans of George R, Romero’s classic Night Of The Living Dead will recognise that this has pretty much the same ending and leave it at that. So, yeah, pretty bleak.

All in all though, I have to say I really enjoyed this one. The film even has an original score this time around by Richard A. Girvin. He puts one foot wrong early on with some overly comic music for when Flowers goes to investigate the cargo in the train but, mostly it’s very cool, understated work which goes well with the chilling tone of the movie.

As I write these words (probably at least six months* before this review gets up on the site... I have a bit of a backlog of reviews to publish) I’m still in the newly extended coronavirus half-lockdown shilly shally which the government have lengthened rather than put us in proper lookdown and closing the borders. So The Alpha Incident was kind of a comforting watch in terms of having a situation I could directly relate to. Ralph Meeker’s character sums it up nicely when he’s talking to the government man... “I sure never expected anything like this’d happen in my life.” Yep, I think that goes for all of us in the world at the moment, to be honest. The Alpha Incident is a really cool movie and I’m happy to have been acquainted with it, thanks to Arrow’s Weird Wisconsin - The Bill Rebane Collection. I hope some of the others I haven’t watched yet are as good as this one.

*More like 18 months, it turns out