Warning Sign (1985)

Warning Sign is one of my favorite movies of all time. It is extremely underrated but it's a beautiful movie. The beginning has stunning shots of Utah mountains, farmland, crop dusters spraying pesticides, all with Craig Safan's spectacular soundtrack that compliments the entire film.Joannie Morse works for a huge agronomics facility called BioTek. Unknown to her and most employees, BioTek is really a biological weapons station, researching viruses in the event of the Cold War and attacks from the Soviet Union. A cheerful and unknowing employee, Mr. Shmidt, accidentally steps on a vial of the virus and it spreads through the factory, and everyone is locked inside. Joannie is the only one who doesn't begin to get sick, and she tries to rescue Shmidt and escape with him, along with the help of her husband Cal and an ex-BioTek employee from the outskirts of town, Fairchild. Unknown to any of the four, the virus causes the infected to become killers, bent on sociopath manipulation and using kindness to lure their victims. Visually, the lab sequences are very terrifying and well acted. Typically most sci-fi films featuring corrupt corporations (Resident Evil, Hell of the Living Dead) portray scientists as evil rats in white lab coats who tower over a mix of hazardous chemicals, but this movie is not that way. In the end, as a parting and rather depressing scene, the government shuts down Biotek and abandons it in an open but lonely field, leaving behind the dreadful events. Rather than a snobby group of suburban teens, Warning Sign is about smart and capable adults who just make a couple of simple mistakes and create an inferno of danger.Kathleen Quinlan, who played the role of Joannie, was in a similar role in the film the Missing Are Deadly, which was like Warning Sign but on a much smaller scale. It's up to Joanie's take-charge and rescue her co-workers, including her best friend Tom Shmidt, who is unknowingly spreading the virus. Sheriff husband Cal Morse and his drunk friend Doctor Dan Fairchild are out to rescue Joanie and her co-workers before it's too late. Historically, many may not remember but this film was released at the time of Chernobyl nuclear accident in Russia. The acting of all the characters, especially Fairchild and Shmidt, was amazing. I'm honestly very surprised the film doesn't have higher ratings. The plot is suspenseful, yet not too far-fetched like Resident Evil or Death Factory. If you want an amazing and eerie horror film, you'll certainly enjoy this. Despite the budget, the actors did a great job and the film was made to look as real as possible. The mysterious Biotek building and its surroundings were excellently designed, and the plot was realistic. Unlike the completely unrealistic idea of cannibal living dead in Resident Evil and Hell of the Living Dead, Warning Sign showed something of a different sort, not zombies, just innocent people who were contaminated and then lost their minds to murder people. Warning Sign is one of my favorite films of all time, I'd love a movie novelization of it. I just hope it's never remade, the CGI of the 21st century, cellular devices, bad music and even worse acting would ruin this wonderful classic.

A small community in Utah stands by in disbelief and fear. There is a leak at Biotek, supposedly an agriculture research lab. These germs, exposed to the air, forces the ultra secretive building to be sealed off. Citizens want their loved ones rescued; not knowing that some are infected and are dropping dead. But, lo and behold, the dead are rising as berserk zombies. They become just as lethal as the germs slowly filling the building. The local sheriff(Sam Waterston) really has a hard task at hand, because his girlfriend(Kathleen Quinlan)is in there with the infected. Not necessarily suspenseful, the horror is minor; but the Sci-Fi flourishes. No great shakes. Others in the cast: Yaphet Kotto, Jeffrey De Munn, Richard Dysart and G.W.Bailey.

This oldie but goodie focuses on an apparent agriculture development lad in middle America. What the residents don't know is that it actually the front for a bio warfare lab. When one of the weapons is accidentally released the survivors who are uncontaminated have to survive, while the sheriffs wife is trapped inside as the security guard - has to be rescued by sam waterson - with the reluctant help of a former scientist. While this is happening the locals decide that the army keeping them from their loved ones are not working in their interest and so decide to break the quarantine and release not only their loved ones but unbeknowst to them the bio weapon. Will a cure be found before the locals get in? will the survivors trapped within not yet infected get out? who will survive? for a movie made in the 80's it gives a idea of how people react to a biological agent which in its self is a scary thought. Thought the ending is a bit pat it is a realistic depictions of an event that could occur. an excellent treatment of a very real possibility in the past and still current today especially in the light of sars and the bird flu

I recently saw a preview for Resident Evil, the latest sci-fi/gore opus from Event Horizon director Paul Anderson. (Not to be confused with Paul Thomas Anderson). It looks like a big budget, explosive version of Warning Sign, a strange little horror movie I remember watching in the '80s. The plot of the 1985 film involves a deadly serum leaking inside a bio-chemical plant in rural Utah. The plant is sealed off--no one can get in or get out. What happens inside is best described as Night of the Living Dead meets the Andromeda Strain. All in all, not a bad horror film, and the actors (Sam Waterston, Kathleen Quinlan--both Oscar nominees, but alas, not for Warning Sign) manage to keep straight faces. The film has an "Alien" feel to it, and is quite stylish to boot. More than anything, the film has a good, somewhat believable premise for a horror story. But the execution is just so odd. Scientists becoming zombies or monsters has been done before, and the atmospheric first half of the movie is somewhat ruined by the over-the-top, borderline campy second half. We'll see soon enough whether Anderson's version of the idea is successful, although judging from the ads, I seriously doubt it.