Though it's the first official studio movie to deal with the horrors of chemical warfare, it arrives at the far more innocent time of the mid 1960's. We're still the good guys here, even though we're running a top secret lab in the middle of the California desert that's manufacturing little flasks of lethal stuff powerful enough to kill millions.....
That doesn't sit well with a mysterious loony tycoon who sneaks two thugs into the lab to raid the fridge of all those cute little flasks. And what a bonus they snatch......our newest cocktail, 'the satan bug', which once released, will wipe out every living thing on earth. (The dialogue does offer some good news for eskimos and birds circling the Arctic.....they'll drop last....)
Our government swings into action, trotting out lots of familiar character actors. all wearing sharp fitting suits and fedoras and fully armed with walkie-talkies, riot guns and black sedans. In a few more years, the wave of paranoid-dread thrillers would turn these buttoned-down G-men into sinister villains, but in this sturdy, by-the-book, All-American thriller, they're still the guys we root for.
The movie's tone comes as no surprise......it's taken from a contemporary suspense novel by that master of robust military adventure Alistair MacLean and directed with a rock steady moral compass by high adventure specialist John Sturges. ("The Great Escape") Like all of MacLean's ripping good yarns, the plot twists and turns, springs a surprise villain, and has enough sudden reversals of fortune for two or more movies. ...
There's an efficient coldness to MacLean and Sturges's work.....plenty of people die, but the film takes little or no time to linger on them,fortunes of war,don't ya know........it barely blinks a tear over the hapless, innocent population of a Florida beach town, wiped out after the villain orders one of his goons to break a virus flask to prove he means business. The script goes a little fuzzy on this guy's endgame anyway......as to whether he's really a true believer after world disarmament of chemical weapons or just wants to breaks flasks to see how many people drop dead at one time.....
We always return to "The Satan Bug" and films like it because it exists in its own compact little universe.....filmed almost entirely in visually stunning California/Arizona desert locations. If the movie itself seems strictly emotionless, government law enforcement business, genius composer Jerry Goldsmith's score reminds us the stakes are high....his music softly, ominously groans and wails, at times punctuated with a sting of electronics. (His title music, paired with minimalist, abstract animation depicting a rampaging virus can still give you the chills)
And there's loads of fun to be had spotting all the familiar character actors.....the tall Lincoln-esque John Anderson, Simon Oakland, Richard Basehart, the still immortal James Hong. Playing the archvillain's primary goons..... an unusually subdued Frank Sutton (Gomer Pyle's apoplectic drill sergeant) and Ed Asner, Asner, just starting his career as a heavy, has little or no dialogue, but using stillness and silence, he deftly embodies the sense of menace that hangs over the movie. In short, he';s scary as hell.....
Our hero in charge, George Maharis, has the woeful task of delivering enormous amounts of plot exposition, but he does fine and we always wonder why Maharis only had a few shots at leading roles after his years of success in the "Route 66" series. And we forever thank Sturges, who rarely puts women in his high-testosterone epics, for allowing us to gaze upon the stunning Anne Francis, who wanders in and out of the movie as Maharis's gal-pal......
By all means, expose yourself to "The Satan Bug" is you haven't already.......cause here's a movie that gives a whole different meaning to 'going viral'......racing through an unsuspecting populace faster than a piano-playing cat youtube video. We'll smash four flasks...(****) ....and don't forget to hold your breath if Ed Asner throws one at you......
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