Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

madmonkmcghee So many ingredients for an exciting movie, but most of them get wasted in this one. An extremist pacifist ( apparently that is possible) gets hold of a virus that could kill all mankind. OK, that's one way to attain world peace, i guess. But why would the US government develop a virus that will kill all life on earth, including life in the US of A? In exchange for the virus the rabid peacenik wants the government to close down the research lab that made the virus, or people will get killed in great quantities. (I thought he was a pacifist?) Instead of giving in to this demand, which can so easily be subverted ( just build it somewhere else) government agents start to track down the culprit. The hero of this movie is supposed to be special agent Lee Barrett, but instead of building up his character we get a lot of crosstalk between other officials, none of which helps the plot along. Worse than that, the actor playing Barrett has the stiff-jawed charisma of a showroom dummy, and gets paired up with a female sidekick that has literally nothing of any importance to say or do. Add to that the flat camera-work, the lazy acting of most of the crew and numerous plot twists that make no sense and you're left with a frustrating and confusing would- be thriller. To give an example: two villains start to shoot at Out Hero holding the deadly virus in a flask, just to show they mean business. Yeah, wise move. In another scene two guys pretend to arrest the villain, only they turn out to be his accomplices. Huh? And why does the helicopter pilot get so enraged with the hero that he starts fighting with him in mid-flight, leaving the helicopter to the forces of gravity? I could go on naming such absurdities, but i won't. If you want to see them for yourself, check this movie out. Otherwise, any episode of, say Mission Impossible will make more sense and provide more thrills than this lazy effort.

Koosh_King01 Based off of Alistair MacLean's novel of the same name, The Satan Bug concerns Station 3, a top-secret research facility in the California desert where the US government engineers designer germs. One day, thieves manage to circumvent security and gain access to the main lab, where the murder chief of security Reagan and chief scientist Dr. Baxter and abscond with several specimens in airtight flasks. All but one of the flasks contain botulinus. The other is the one and only existing specimen of a new strain of polio codenamed "Satan Bug." It's so deadly that if it were unleashed, it could wipe out all life on Earth in two months.Eric Cavanaugh of the SDI (a fictional government organization) and Station 3 director Dr. Leonard Michaelson go to the lab's former chief of security, Lee Barrett, for assistance. Barrett is a top-notch detective, but quit his job because he disagreed with the military applications of Station 3's experiments. He now works as a lawyer. But with Reagan dead, there's no one else who knows the facility better and can have any chance of recovering the viruses.Aided by a beautiful female operative named Ann Williams, herself the daughter of Barrett's former employer General Williams, Barrett determines that the thieves were the henchmen of a wealthy sociopath named Charles Reynolds Ainsley. Ainsley, styling himself a modern-day messiah, shares Barrett's disdain for Station 3, and threatens to unleash the Satan Bug unless the lab is closed down for good. But is this really his plan...? Barrett will need to find out and fast; to prove he means business, Ainsley has had his henchmen unleash some of the botulinus in Florida, killing thousands. The Satan Bug could be next if Barrett can't track down Ainsley and the viruses fast!Behind the camera, The Satan Bug has an impressive pedigree. Based off of a novel by Alistair MacLean and directed by John Sturges, and featuring a score by Jerry Goldsmith. In front of the camera is a different story.First and foremost, there's the total change in setting. Although the movie is, beat for beat, a fairly accurate retelling of MacLean's novel, the book was set in England. There wasn't really much reason beyond budgetary constraints to relocate the story's setting to America and make all of the characters American. They also changed (i.e. simplified) the villain's plan. In the novel, his threat to unleash the viruses unless the lab is closed is just a smokescreen so he can achieve something completely different behind the good guys' backs, a la Simon in Die Hard with a Vengeance. That said, despite the relocation to America, I rather slightly prefer the film to the novel.Action-wise it's mostly limited to a couple of brief fistfights and shootouts that are over fairly quickly.The climax aboard the helicopter is just plain silly. Without warning, the pilot stops flying and turns to try to shoot Barrett who is riding in back. This results in the aircraft going into a spin with no one flying it, whilst Barret fights with Ainsley and the pilot, all while the flask containing the Satan Bug perches precariously on the edge of the seat and threatens to roll out the open door. Barrett ultimately manages to overcome the villains, kick them out, grab the flask and regain control of the chopper. Definitely one of the goofier climaxes I've seen in a while.The cast is good, but with the exception of Richard Basehart as Dr. Hoffman (a.k.a. Ainsley), there aren't too many familiar faces in prominent roles. I will say, though, I liked George Maharis as Barrett. In terms of the supporting cast, look for James Doohan (Scotty from Star Trek) as an SDI agent who shows up in a few brief scenes, and Ed Asner as henchman Veretti.

ruffrider I was an usher at the Silver Spring Theater (now restored as the AFI Film Institute) in Silver Spring, MD when "The Satan Bug" came out and so I got to see it more than once. It's a taut thriller with a germ warfare theme that seemed very cutting edge in 1965 and it was the first time I'd seen George Maharis since he played "Buz" on TV's "Route 66." Other veterans of that defunct TV series were Satan Bug players Ann Francis, Ed Asner and Richard Basehart. I got to speak to Asner several times on the phone and we discussed "The Satan Bug." Apparently director John Sturges was busy having meetings for his next film project, so Ed had to rely on his own intuition to add certain things like the gravelly voice he adopted after the chop to the throat he received from Maharis' character Lee Barrett.However absent Sturges may have been during filming, the film doesn't show it and moves briskly along as Barrett races to find the stolen flask containing a deadly virus that threatens all life on Earth. This film still works for me 47 years after I first saw it and seems relevant in the post-9/11 world of terrorist threats. "The Satan Bug" remains an overlooked gem of suspense and cold-war era paranoia and is well worth a look.

lotus07 SYNOPSIS: Insane genius seeks to destroy all life on the planet by developing the ultimate biological weapon....what could possibly go wrong?CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER: Fear. Fear that the overworked and stressed-out brainiacs in Station #3 will loose it, go postal and create the ultimate lethal chemical agent. If exposed to the air, the population of the planet has 2 weeks to live. This is all about men playing God, and what happens when technology overtakes our collective wisdom. This is still going on in society, with stem-cell research, genetic engineers, the human genome project and steroids, but the possible results are much more frightening and terrifying here.PROS AND CONS: This film started out on the slow side and at first appeared somewhat low budget. The sets and dialog seemed sparse and almost empty. As the film went on, it became apparent that this was intentional in order to give an overall feeling of alienation and loneliness. The entire cast of the film is minimal. Anne Francis is the ONLY woman you even see on screen for the whole picture. The stark and empty desert landscapes of Arizona and Southern California almost gave a sense of a world abandoned. There aren't a lot of plot twists in this film, but there is a lot of 'motivational' dialog. Questions regarding man's right to exist and the folly of runaway science. The scenes of death by bacterial toxins in the film are riveting and emotional. There is no blood or gore, just a momentary realization that they are about to die, and then they collapse and are gone.There aren't a lot of cons in this film, because you have to take it for what it is. Stark, minimalist film making on a terrifying subject. It does appear odd that with the fate of the world at stake, all the forces that the US government requires are about 12 men in trench coats that pick up a pastel colored rotary phone to bark orders and have things done. This makes you wonder how ever accomplished anything before cell phones and the internet. We like to see more detail and drama these days, but like I said, this is minimalist film making on a large scale.