Original subtitles

The Covid-19 pandemic came as a surprise to some,

but horror films have sounded the alarm for decades.

What "Contagion" did perfect

was to show us that the deadliest infection is fear.

It was an upsetting movie when there was no pandemic.

And it was even more upsetting during the pandemic.

I remember when we shot "12 Monkeys,"

and you'd use a "What if?"

You won't think I'm crazy when people start dying next month.

You think it can't possibly happen.

No...!

When it comes to an infected people movie,

probably my very favorite is David Cronenberg's "Rabid."

The idea of sexually transmitted diseases

and sex being the thing that destroys you.

"," I think, was genuinely terrifying.

It was just raw and real and felt like,

oh, that could be happening down the street, tomorrow.

That's the pernicious element of a disease.

All the weapons of mankind

are helpless before it, you know, you can't bomb a disease.

Oh, God!

You can't see it, you don't know where it is or when

it's present or how dangerous it is or when it might strike.

But you have to be on guard all of the time.

Horror stories are built around our fear of threats

we know exist, but can't stop...

and the threats we don't know about

until it's too late.

Pathogens inspire both kinds of fear.

At first we don't know what's killing us,

then we realize an invisible monster is on the loose,

and it's coming for everyone.

In horror, these diseases often come wrapped

in a supernatural clothing.

But when COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill,

many people sought out the films that seemed closest to reality.

At the top of the pandemic,

I was seeing so many people online,

purposely watching pandemic and zombie movies.

And that says something about our psyche...

That when we are at our lowest point,

we want to poke that.

"Outbreak," from 1995,

follows the trail of an Ebola-like virus

brought to America by a black market monkey.

Sirs... Mr. Motaba.

Help!

Oh, God!

"Outbreak" is one of the first of what you may call

semi-realistic plague films.

I wouldn't say entirely, because it goes nuts

in the last half hour, but it's essentially kind of

a look at how plague might actually operate

in the modern world.

And I think it was a really underrated film because

that was the first time a lot of moviegoers thought,

"Oh, yeah, this actually could happen."

You had the monkey, you had the sneezing in the theater.

And you had these, these visual expressions that

taught people, like, oh,

, it's actually dangerous

to be a human being and have lungs

that can absorb bacteria

in a way that can destroy our entire system.

Don't tell me when I need sleep, Casey,

I don't tell you when you need sleep.

For every person who gets sick,

how many other people are they likely to infect?

I feel like "Contagion" really brought that to the next level

and included a scientific aspect

of the storytelling that an outbreak was really rudimentary.

"Contagion" is the first movie that made me aware

of how an epidemic spread.

And Scott Z. Burns' script

and the way it's executed by Steven Soderbergh,

it's just right on the money.

"Contagion" begins as a woman, played by Gwyneth Paltrow,

returns home to Minnesota after a business trip to China.

She's been infected with

a highly contagious respiratory virus

that she unknowingly spreads everywhere she goes.

As the number of deaths exponentially rise,

it becomes a race against time to figure out how to stop

the virus before the human race is decimated.

When I started the project,

my hope was that I could write a movie that was,

in some ways, a '70s-era disaster movie

where we had this big, star-studded cast.

But what I wanted to do was sort of Trojan Horse that idea

and fill it with science.

Somewhere in the world

the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat.

Have you ever seen anything like this before?

No.

One of the great things about the all-star cast

is that it made it really

easy for an audience to track the overlapping stories.

You knew when you were with Marion Cotillard,

you were in the World Health Organization story.

You knew that when you were with Kate Winslet,

you were in the CDC epidemiology domestic policy story.

You knew that Laurence Fishburne

represented both the CDC and government

and the intersection of that, you know,

Matt Damon was all of us.

Borrowing a page from Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"...

Honey?

"Contagion" throws its audience off-balance by killing

one of its biggest stars in the first 10 minutes of the film.

Let's get a line in her.

I think one of the best scenes in the movie,

and it's a brilliant piece of acting,

but it's, like, incredibly sad but very plausible,

is when Matt Damon is in hospital

and is informed of his wife's death.

- She failed to respond. - Okay, and?

Her heart stopped and, unfortunately, she did die.

Right.

And he doesn't hear it, he can't process it.

Okay, so can I go talk to her?

Mr. Emhoff, I'm sorry, your wife is dead.

There's no doubt that "Contagion" is a horror film,

but it's so artfully done,

it's so intelligent, so well-written,

it has such an enormous star cast that I think people

who dislike horror try to steal it and say, oh, it's actually

a drama... it's a horror film.

And the proof is when they peel off

Gwyneth Paltrow's face,

open up the top her skull and look inside

and there's nothing but goop in there.

My wife makes me take off my clothes in the garage

and she leaves out a bucket of warm water and some soap,

and then she douses everything in hand sanitizer after I leave.

I mean, she's overreacting, right?

Not really.

What I was hoping for was to get to a place where reality

was scarier than, than fiction,

and so I was very interested

in what human beings perceive as dangerous.

What's that, fomites?

It refers to transmission from surfaces.

As opposed to what really is.

The average person touches their face

two or three thousand times a day.

Two or three thousand times a day?

Three to five times every waking minute.

It turns out it tends to be our, our, our habits

and our lack of willpower that is probably

a greater existential threat.

What's your temperature?

101.8.

Steven Soderbergh peoples the film with, like,

very famous actors and says,

dead, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive.

I'm sorry I couldn't finish.

Just because Kate Winslet's a big name

doesn't mean she's gonna make it.

It's a brilliant way to look at it because you kind of think,

I'm gonna be okay, my family's gonna be okay...

Oh, wait, my brother's dead?

How is that possible? How can I be immune and him not?

If the film seems prophetic,

it's because writer Scott Burns consulted with virologists

and public policy makers to work out how a novel pathogen

could come into the world,

and what would happen if it did.

It was so prophetic, it was so dead-on,

it didn't miss a single trick.

Everything that it imagined happening happened,

with only a few tiny exceptions.

Right now, our best defense has been social distancing...

No hand shaking, staying home when you're sick,

washing your hands frequently.

It anticipated a lot of the crazy conspiracy theories...

You've got Jude Law selling Forsythia to suckers.

What does Forsythia do?

It's the cure.

It think it's a really brilliant film,

I'm not surprised that a lot of people watched it, like,

either for the first time or, like me, a second time around,

slack-jawed with horror, like, oh, , here we go.

When did we run out of body bags?

Two days ago.

"Contagion" showed us humanity

at the brink of a viral apocalypse.

What if we went over the edge, and into the void?

You've gotta think I'm addicted, haven't you, Cole?

To that dying world?

I just wanna do my part,

to get us back on top, in charge of the planet.

In 1995, a romance about a weaponized virus

wiping out humanity came to the screen...

Five billion people died in 1996 and 1997.

Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys."

Are you going to save us, Mr. Cole?

I can't save you... nobody can.

"12 Monkeys" is based on "La Jetée," by Chris Marker,

who was a French filmmaker, and he took a really unique concept

of using stills... Still images... to convey the arc

of a love story and a man's witnessing his own death.

And "12 Monkeys" took that story

and made a feature film from it.

Bruce Willis plays James Cole,

a convict in the virus-wrecked future.

James Cole, cleared from quarantine.

Cole is sent back in time

to find the source of the contagion.

But he winds up in a mental institution,

where he meets psychiatrist Kathryn Railly,

played by Madeleine Stowe.

What year is this?

What year do you think it is?

1996.

That's the future, James.

Do you think you're living in the future?

I was very familiar with Terry and his sense of displacement

and disorientation that permeated his movies,

and I was dying to work with him.

There were some challenging days,

and part of the challenge, quite frankly,

was he was dealing with a movie star in Bruce...

This is it, James, what you've been working for.

Women will want to get to know you.

I don't want your women! I want to get well!

In the end, he became very surprised with what Bruce

was doing, which was this wonderful sort of pure,

childlike thing.

People can't travel back in time, "Whoop! Whoop!"

Uh-uh. Not here.

He was just very pure, and that's perfect for the movie

because it's actually told from a child's point of view.

The scenes set in the past were shot on location

in Philadelphia, which helps to give the film its unique look.

It was not a great time for cities period,

but Philadelphia, it was really rough.

He went to corners of the city

that filmmakers were not going to.

You know, for him it was just, you know, as an artist,

a great palette for him.

Maybe the human race deserves to be wiped out.

Wiping out the human race?

That's a great idea.

In his first Academy Award-nominated performance,

Brad Pitt plays a mental patient

with mysterious ties to the pandemic.

- Jeffrey? - Mm-hmm.

You're completely insane.

He seems to be the engineer of the apocalypse...

No, I'm not.

But that's deliberate misdirection.

The real threat is a rogue scientist

played by David Morse.

He plans to release a highly infectious airborne pathogen

across the world.

He was talking to me about

that scene, you know, in the airport in "12 Monkeys."

Do you mind letting me have a look

at the contents of your bag, please?

Please.

Probably my favorite part of it was the moment

going through security and didn't want to open the vial,

I guess, or the bottle.

It doesn't... even... have an odor.

That's not necessary, sir.

And just the realization of what's going to happen

if they do that.

Cole tries to stop him and change history.

No...!

But the past can't be changed.

The story of the film is that time is a circle,

and that things fold in on themself and then

Bruce Willis' character is haunted by a traumatic event

that he witnessed as a child,

and then at the end of the movie we realize

that the traumatic event was caused by him as an adult.

It's a very smartly told narrative because at the center

of it, you think, oh, that's just the romance and you need

a romance in this type of story, but really, that's what

the movie is about, is these two human beings being human

and that is coming to an end and that's worth saving.

Without that love story,

how much does Coles' journey really matter?

How much does the end of the world really matter?

Right, you know, I mean, we're here for a reason, you know?

I like to think it's to love each other, so...

Infections based in reality are frightening.

When you add a touch of the supernatural,

they can be absolutely terrifying.

- Who's chasing you? - My mom.

My dad.

They're trying to kill me. Amen.

Zombie infection films take our fears of contagion

and give them teeth.

Two of the most original and unforgettable twists

on the genre are "Pontypool," from Canada.

And "" from Spain.

"" Is a masterpiece.

It really was the first docu-style film

since "Blair Witch" that I thought was, like,

legitimately terrifying.

"" Is all found footage

through the lens of this journalist

following just a regular, good, old night at the job

with these firefighters.

Until they get this call at this building.

But there's a woman that's in a little bit of trouble...

Maybe she's sick... And the moment

that the firefighter team gets there, to this building,

everybody's already in panic.

And then suddenly, once the firefighters

and this journalist go all the way in, man,

that's when all hell breaks loose, that there's an infection

spreading really fast in the building.

"" Scared the out of me.

I was just completely shocked, captivated, appalled,

the moment when they walk into that apartment and that

old woman in a nightgown comes running at the camera.

It was just so shocking, and we'd seen

a lot of found footage films up to this point,

but this did something different with it.

It had looked like we were following real people.

No known actors or added score or anything like that,

it was all use of diegetic sounds, all of it.

It's an incredible use of what's actually on the frame

and enhancing those sounds... The echo in the building,

when you hear at the top story, "Whaaaap."

And a firefighter had just got thrown

off the top floor, all the way down.

That echo and that use of sound design

really makes an audience feel like we're there.

Found footage became part of the horror,

it became part of really using the camera

to show the isolation.

It uses it so well in the final scene where we're hurting

for light, and so then we get this limited view where she goes

into night vision and we are experiencing the exact same

limited periphery that the character is.

That last scene,

when she's in that room and there's something

in there with her and you realize this is patient zero.

This is the thing that started it,

whatever experiment led to this person being infected,

that they've had it longer than anyone

and that's what's spreading it to everybody.

And it's just the scariest, most awful looking thing,

it's just everyone's worst nightmare.

"" May be the most terrifying zombie infection film

of recent times...

but "Pontypool" is the most unusual.

Grant, Grant, Grant...

Stephen McHattie plays a talk radio personality

in a small Canadian town...

Pontypool, good morning.

You know, I want to talk to you about something

that has been buggin' me.

Who slowly begins to realize he's broadcasting

from the epicenter of a rage zombie outbreak.

Pontypool's under quarantine.

Everybody has to stay inside at all times.

"Pontypool" is a really fascinating and different

kind of infection because it's not airborne,

there's no real way of understanding the transmission

because it's just through the spoken language.

I'm going to go see if Mr. Mazzy's missing...

missing, missing.

Where you say a word and then they keep saying that word

over and over and over again and then it starts spreading

from person to person.

Prah, prah, prah, prah, prah...

You say something, you're unknowingly infecting them

with this virus that's making them insane.

It is the ultimate low-budget movie

in that you never leave this radio studio.

And there's a massive infection

taking place outside the studio, in the real world,

and other than a handful of the infected,

you never really see them.

It's a movie as a radio play.

People need to know, we have to get this out.

Well, it's your call, Mr. Mazzy.

Let's just hope what you're getting out there

isn't going to destroy your world.

When it came out it seemed something very alien,

like how can a word or a phrase be something

that could actually hurt you?

And now social media, of course, has come such a long way since

that movie came out, it's all about words,

it's so violent right now that if you just say

the wrong thing to someone, like, boom,

you know, all you do is say one sentence and suddenly

you've got people rioting in the capitol building.

So that's, I think "Pontypool," in that way,

is very ahead of its time.

I am trying to piss a few people off

because that's how it's done, simple as that.

Infections take many forms...

None more unnerving than the sexual parasites

infesting the early films of David Cronenberg.

Of all the infections human beings can endure...

sexually transmitted diseases

induce the most squirms.

One trailblazing filmmaker, David Cronenberg,

brought venereal horror to the screen.

At the beginning of his long career

he made two influential films that traumatized a generation.

The first was "Shivers."

Ew!

"Shivers"... Initially released in America

as "They Came From Within"... Chronicles the spread

of genetically engineered parasites

inside a high-rise apartment building.

- Ooh! - Oh!

Ooh, good heavens.

The parasites turn mild-mannered Canadians

into crazed sex fiends.

I'm hungry for love!

A combination of aphrodisiac

and venereal disease, it will hopefully turn the world

into one beautiful, mindless orgy.

Well, I think it sounds a little crazy to me.

Roger, I had a very disturbing dream last night.

In this dream, I found myself making love to a strange man.

"Shivers" or "They Came From Within"

is one of the absolute perfect films from David Cronenberg,

and it's one of his first.

It's psychosexual, it's twisted,

it brings in all of these elements of body horror,

and it is beautifully post-1960s.

That was a plague film of its time

because that was the sexual revolution,

that was when Baby Boomers were suddenly waking up to the idea

that you can boink someone that you weren't married to.

And that was a very big deal to that generation,

so you had to have a plague that could make you do something

as crazy as have sex out of wedlock.

It culminates in this completely abhorrent

orgy pool scene.

Somehow even though you don't really see much,

it feels like you are seeing everything.

I think the end of "Shivers" is really terrifying,

when they had that slow motion shot of them in the pool

and her kissing him...

The music and everything... Really disturbing.

Are these people victims?

Or have they been liberated from the straightjacket

of their lonely middle-class lives?

Cronenberg's subversive mission is to make us question

our assumptions about our true natures.

His next film, "Rabid,"

was a kind of sequel to "Shivers."

Instead of confining the action to one building,

he follows the spread of a nasty new form

of rabies across Quebec.

The source of the contagion is Rose,

played by Marilyn Chambers.

After an accident, Rose receives experimental skin grafts

from a pioneering plastic surgeon.

All right, you hold it right there.

The procedure restores her body,

but gives her a little something extra...

A blood-sucking stinger under her armpit.

Anyone she feeds on will become a bloodthirsty cannibal.

I remember watching it and like, oh,

this is pretty good, going along with it.

Like, wow, this is getting a little rougher

than I was expecting.

But when the operation scene happens

and the doctor takes the nurse's finger

and cuts it off with the scissors.

Oh, my God! What am I watching?

In "Rabid," what was scary about it

was to see how quickly infections spread.

Even if you set off a nuke on a city,

if you live outside the city, you're gonna be okay.

But imagine setting off a nuke that then makes more nukes.

I'm in terrible trouble, you gotta help me.

Marilyn Chambers didn't even know that she was Typhoid Mary

until it was too late...

That's what's so scary about being a spreader... you don't

even know you're a spreader until you've already spread.

I'm afraid!

As the pandemic rages,

Rose falls victim to one of the infected.

She becomes just another corpse to be disposed of.

Plagues have ravaged mankind for centuries.

Pull!

But there have always been those who think

it could never happen to them.

In the early 1960s, director/producer Roger Corman

made the jump from low-budget black-and-white films

to the slightly-bigger-budgeted color films

based on the gothic horror of Edgar Allan Poe.

To help sell the pictures,

Corman brought in veteran actor Vincent Price.

The Poe films made Price a horror icon.

Vincent Price was wonderful to work with...

He was a highly intelligent, educated man,

he'd graduated from Yale.

The razor edge of death.

Thus the condition of man.

Bound on an island from which he can never hope to escape.

So he came with great intelligence

and a classical training as an actor.

What is the meaning of this?

Probably the very first of the films,

"The Fall of the House of Usher."

How dare you admit anyone into this house?

I think it was one of his best performances.

Be done!

That and the first film we shot in England,

which was "Masque of the Red Death."

The village is full of the Red Death.

The Red Death?

Prince Prospero, I beg you, allow us haven!

I beg sanctuary!

This is no church.

"The Masque of the Red Death" is, you know,

a terrific movie, I think, it seems to be the pinnacle

of the Edgar Allan Poe series that Roger Corman did

because he was in England and he had access to more time

and a bit more money.

He'd been very influenced, shall we say,

by "The Seventh Seal," which was a huge art house hit at the time

which, you know, Ingmar Bergman film,

where you had Death in a black cloak.

Very symbolic, all about the Plague, you know,

during the medieval era.

And so he kind of found a way to filter that

into the Edgar Allan Poe story.

Prince Prospero, who's this very cruel nobleman who invites

his friends up to his castle because there's the Red Death,

this plague that's ravaging the countryside and so they figure,

oh, we'll just cloister ourselves away and party down

and, you know, when it's all done and the smoke clears

we'll go out and live our lives.

But because of me, through my mediation with my master,

the Lord of Flies,

you... all of you... Unworthy though you may be,

will be safe from the Red Death.

He shot in beautiful Technicolor, and that's one of

the most amazing aspects of the movie, actually,

the cinematography by Nicolas Roeg... it's just stunning.

The camera's constantly moving one way or another.

There's a lot of very wide shots

because those sets allow a lot of scope.

It's just... it's stunning,

it's a really, really beautiful movie.

And then, of course, there's Vincent Price, who was,

you know, giving 100 percent as Prince Prospero

and delightfully cruel and delightfully hate-able.

You're a madman!

And yet I will live and you will die.

He played a man of evil, but there were shadings

of tenderness within him towards a young girl that he had

taken from the plague-stricken countryside.

I do not want to hurt you, my dear.

Can't you understand?

I want to help save your soul so you can join me

in the glories of Hell.

No! Never!

While the outside world is ravaged by a plague of the body,

Prospero's castle is infected by a plague of the spirit.

Demon lover, of all those

who wish to live in your eternal light,

transcribe the final mark.

This infection isn't inflicted on its victims...

It's chosen by them.

The orgy of corruption, cruelty, and depravity

reaches its zenith at Prospero's masquerade ball,

where everything is permitted, except wearing the color red.

The one percent locks themselves up

in the castle and parties, thinking that, you know,

they're never gonna let anybody infected in.

And then, of course, the Grim Reaper gets in.

There's no escape, is what I got out of that.

I would like to see your face.

There is no face of death

until the moment of your own death.

Death is the great leveler.

You can be famous, you can be rich, you could be powerful...

But one thing you're not going to escape,

and it's an experience that's common to everybody

who has ever lived and who ever will live.

Let me see your face.

Your hell, Prince Prospero,

and the moment of your death.

It's the one common nod of humanity.

The human race is barely able to cope with disease on Earth.

Would we stand a chance against something not of this Earth?

When you think of alien invaders,

you might think of this.

But what if the invader was a virus from space,

something we have no immunity against?

That's the premise of "The Andromeda Strain."

Based on the novel by Michael Crichton,

it's the story of a space probe that crash lands

in a small town, bringing back a pathogen that rapidly kills

99.9 percent of the population,

turning their blood to dust.

Powder.

I'll be damned.

Now an elite team of scientists must find a cure

before the alien virus spreads across the Earth.

Never believed this could really happen.

Well, it has happened.

The classic of that genre, I think, the Big Mamou,

the one that everyone... They're all judged by

is probably "The Andromeda Strain."

Uh, yeah, yes.

If you're not talking about just some weird zombie breakout

happening... you're talking about, like, oh, a genuine

disease that it could happen and you're trying to clamp it down,

that's the one that they all get judged by, I think.

I mean, I love "The Androm..."

What do you think... What is it about?

It's such a simple movie and it's so well done, and it just,

it's just the pace of that movie just moves and moves.

I fell in love with, with just the notion of, you know,

the scene where they're, like, examining the ship.

What about the bits of green?

And then you just see the one little green speck

and you're like, wait, that one little tiny speck of dust

caused all of this.

It's growing.

Perhaps the strangest infection ever put on film

is the 2020 adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story,

"The Color Out of Space".

Nicolas Cage plays the patriarch of an eccentric family

living in an isolated country house.

One night a meteorite crashes into their yard,

bringing with it an unearthly infection.

Teenaged daughter Lavinia is the only member of the family

who quickly realizes the meteorite is not what it seems.

It's behind the lightning.

At first it's fascinating because it's this

beautiful thing... there's that dichotomy of it being this

gorgeous meteorite that lands in their front yard and it's

kind of this amazing thing that's otherworldly.

And then gradually you see that this is

a very malevolent entity.

Whatever was in the meteorite infects the land

and transforms the family...

First, their minds... then, their bodies.

It's like a virus... you can't see it, you don't know

where it is or when it's present or how dangerous it is

or when it might strike.

But you have to be on guard all of the time.

Look out!

The worse things get,

the deeper the father sinks into denial.

Come on, dad, don't pretend that you haven't noticed.

Nothing has been this place up.

Why are you so in denial?

Okay, you know, I've had it with your drama!

The picture features a classically

unhinged performance by Nic Cage.

His performance is a stunner,

but in and around that performance is a story

about a family's shared sense of reality

being smashed into tinier and tinier fragments

by an environmental poison

that has leaked into their well water.

Much of the film is seen from the point of view of Ward,

a young scientist who befriends the family.

Jack, what are you up to?

Playing with my friends.

This de facto stand-in for the infamously racist Lovecraft

is played by a person of color.

I remember Nic saying a few times

that he'd always wanted to do a family drama and, for him,

that's what "Color" was.

What do you mean you tried?

Do you have any idea how much those animals cost us?

They are alpacas... alpacas.

And so that's how we entered it and I think

it's exactly that, it was a dysfunctional family

in very bizarre circumstances,

and that's what really gave it its kick.

I can't get a dial tone.

It becomes body horror, which is basically

taking something as simple and intrinsic to our experience

as humans as a mother's embrace of their own child

and turning that into something grotesque.

Late in the picture the llamas out in the garage

all become this one slimy

10-headed grotesque llama creature.

The teen girl is slicing

pentagrams into her flesh.

The father loses his mind.

We've been having a hard time, you know?

And Lavinia realizes she is humanity's last line of defense

against the color out of space.

It's so beautiful.

It's a progressive spin on Lovecraft's

relentlessly misanthropic tale.

Lavinia isn't ruined by the color, rather,

she's elevated by the color

and she kind of reaches her true purpose

by willingly and voluntarily merging

with the color and sacrificing herself

so that the color returns to its original source.

Only Ward survives, slowly emerging from the wreckage

into a colorless world.

It came out right before, you know, Covid...

hit and started impacting the entire world.

It's absolutely relevant to today

and I don't know what the moral of the story is,

because we haven't, you know,

we haven't reached the conclusion of this one yet.

What touched this place cannot be quantified or understood

by human science.

And I don't really know what the moral of the story

of "Color Out of Space" is, either...

yeah, other than maybe be the Black guy, for once.

I'll take it.

It was just a color out of space.

In the movies, lethal contagions can come

from outer space, escape from a lab,

or emerge from the rain forest,

leaving a trail of the dead in their wake.

But as films and real life have shown us,

the human race is resilient.

Boy, I better get vaccinated.

New threats will come, but we can survive them...

or can we?