Monday, July 1, 2019

"Near Denver? Are They Nuts?" - The Alpha Incident (1977)

Let's return to the collection of classics made by the prolific Wisconsin filmmaker Bill Rebane (see also Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake, 1975; The Capture of Bigfoot, 1979; The Game, 1984; and of course Blood Harvest, 1987). We will now discuss The Alpha Incident (1977), a politically savvy descent into science fiction horror that involves a Martian pathogen and a lonely train depot.

Shockingly, not all of your universe's critics see The Alpha Incident for the classic that it is. Reviewer dmj245 writes, a bit awkwardly, "I've seen high school plays that had more life and action by children with little or no talent, than what this movie expresses." Reviewer BobaFett_1138 writes, with a keen sense of spelling, "The story and the dialog are both awful! The premise is really ridicules and flawed and doesn't ever has enough suspense to it." And reviewer graduatedan writes, judgementally, "I 'm not sure if the director intended this film to be a character study or a thriller, but either way, The Alpha Incident fails miserably."

Read on for a truly objective discussion of The Alpha Incident, one of Bill Rebane's finest forays into science fiction...
The film starts with a bang as two scientists wearing surgical masks look through a microscope. “I wish I knew what the hell this was.”

“Ease up, will you, Frank? Splashdown was only yesterday afternoon. First team finished its report, what, three hours ago. They flew it here as fast as they could. Well, it’s all in the final report.”

After this thrilling exposition, we understand that some microorganism was discovered when a space capsule returned—from Mars.

“After the first report was in, orders were to ship most of it to Colorado for underground storage.”

“Near Denver?” Frank asks. “Are they nuts?” (Clearly, in your universe, Colorado is a small urban state; in my universe, a great deal of Colorado is not in fact near Denver.)

As the two scientists leave their lab, Frank says ominously, “I don’t like the implications of the Denver move. It smells of...biological warfare.”

The scientists continue to speak about the issue, adding no new information but walking down a nicely designed staircase.

The film cuts to the train transporting the organism to Colorado. Dr. Sorenson is the only man escorting the material on the journey, and he is joined by George “Buck” Flower, a railroad employee in overalls with a country accent whose exact job is impossible to decipher. Mr. Flower attempts to find out what is in the cargo car. “I don’t want you telling me it’s a baby you’re feedin’ three times a day.” He adds, perhaps unnecessarily, “They wouldn’t ship a baby that way anyhow.”

“I know what it is. It’s money.”

“That’s right, Hank, it’s money.”

When Sorenson falls asleep, Mr. “Buck” Flower does what any curious old-timer would in his position: He steals Sorenson’s keys and, to the strains of an organ on the soundtrack, opens the padlock on the small chest the train is carrying. He takes what appear to be test tubes from the chest, falls against the wall, and breaks the tubes, embedding some glass in his hand. “I didn’t mean to break it,” he explains to himself. “I just wanted to see what it was.”

Back at the lab (the security system of which rivals those of Orange Julius and even Hot Dog on a Stick), the scientists explain to each other that the alien organism is some kind of disease with properties of enzymes as well as viruses.

They also find a lab rat whose brain has exploded.

As all things must in a Bill Rebane film, events unfold in a location in Wisconsin, where a middle-aged man named Charlie—played by Ralph Meeker, who appeared in The Night Stalker (1972), Food of the Gods (1976), and the original TV movie The Dead Don’t Die (1975)—mans the train depot at Moose Point.

Mr. “Buck” Flower wakes Sorenson up in the train car and extols the virtues of Wisconsin: “Say, we’re gonna run into some good lookin’ country up here. Yeah, and some good lookin’ people. You’d meet some good lookin’ ladies here. You know, when I was younger, I was...”

The train stops at Moose Point to decouple the fateful boxcar, which will be picked up by another locomotive headed for North Dakota. Mr. “Buck” Flower and Sorenson enter the train depot, joined by Mr. Meeker, his matronly accountant Jenny, and a railroad man named Jack. Tensions flare quickly when Sorenson asks Mr. Meeker for a key, and Jack makes a big deal out of it for no reason in particular.

Sorenson does not have to leave the station to find out what has happened, however. Mr. “Buck” Flower admits he broke the containers in the boxcar. Jack asks what was in the boxcar. Sorenson replies, with great specificity, “It’s a shipment of a relatively unknown, potentially dangerous substance.” He quarantines the station.

They find out quickly that Mr. “Buck” Flower has physically touched everyone in the room except for Sorenson.

In a (relatively unknown, potentially dangerous) sequence, Jack tries to run away by climbing onto his railcar, but Sorenson shoots him in the shoulder. Instead of continuing to ride the rails away from Sorenson, Jack stops the car and follows Sorenson back to the station.

Sorenson calls some kind of command center manned solely by a gray-haired man with a red phone. His first question is “Did you find out who’s touched who?”

After the thrilling phone call, the tension continues in the station. Jenny says, “I keep looking at my hands waiting for them to turn blue or fall off or something. Only nothing’s happening!”

Jack, of course, is growing more angry. “How long are we supposed to stay here? A day? Five days? A year? The only time I stay inside this long is when I’m in bed with a chick, or when I’m just sleeping.”

Mr. “Buck” Flower takes a different approach. He decides he is the only one who has certainly contracted whatever disease the pathogen causes, so for some reason he runs out of the station and down the railroad tracks. He runs around a lake. Sorenson, whose motives are as unclear as Mr. “Buck” Flower’s at this point, pulls out his (relatively unknown, potentially dangerous) gun and shoots across the lake at Mr. “Buck” Flower, hitting him, but not fatally.

Mr. “Buck” Flower continues running through the woods, trying to avoid a group of National Guardsmen in a Jeep.

And they also send in a tank.

Back in the command center, the white-haired general picks up his beeping red phone and says, “No! We don’t want any tanks! Are you nuts? For five people? Forget it!”

The tank is never seen again.

Back at the train depot, Sorenson says, out of the blue, “We can’t fall asleep. If we do, we die!”

The camera zooms in on Mr. Meeker, who opens his eyes wide to stay awake.

Jenny says, “I don’t understand. What’s different about sleep?”

Sorenson explains like the scientist he is: “Respiration is...different. Uh, body temperature’s lower. There are a lot of things that are different.”

The film thus becomes a tense race between Washington, D.C. finding a cure and shipping it to Wisconsin versus four people falling asleep. Sorenson is optimistic, especially when he announces Washington is shipping them food and amphetamines. “We’ve got to help each other, watch each other, stay awake. Play games. There are magazines in here. We can read out loud. Coffee, lots of coffee.”

Jack says what we are all thinking: “Ah, you sound like a tour director on a cruise.”

A night full of coffee, cigarettes, and poker ensues.

In the morning, a helicopter drops off a bag of supplies. They find cigarettes, amphetamines (“Take it with coffee; it’ll take effect quicker”), food packets from the space program, and plastic bags for urinating. Mr. Meeker asks, “No cocoa?”

In probably the film’s most shocking sequence, Jenny changes her clothes in the bathroom in a sultry, revealing manner, accompanied by smooth jazz music.

Night falls suddenly, as it must in Wisconsin. Jack finds some booze and starts drinking, despite Sorenson’s entreaty that he should stick to the amphetamines. Jack dances with a reluctant Jenny while Sorenson and Mr. Meeker sit around doing nothing.

Back at the lab, the scientists toss big words around like “polarity” and “molecular structure” and “laser experiment,” but they are not making progress.

The film takes a dramatic turn when Jenny and Jack climb into the boxcar to make love, followed by Mr. Meeker, who intends to be a voyeur. Jenny slaps Jack and runs away, but soon returns to kiss him.

At the lab, the scientists eventually stumble upon a good idea—simulating the Martian environment to see how the organism reacts in its own habitat.

In the train depot, Mr. Meeker nods off, and then falls down dead. Like the rat’s, Mr. Meeker’s brain starts expanding, grotesquely emerging from his head.

Also, Jenny shoots herself in the head.

A helicopter drops a bottle with a note to the survivors. “It’s the antidote,” Sorenson says. Jack takes the pill and dies immediately, as of course the government has supplied them with poison rather than a real antidote. “Bastards!” Sorenson yells.

In the film’s chilling coda, a Jeep carries men in hazmat suits to the depot. Sorenson is still alive, but asleep on the floor. He was never infected.

Unfortunately for Sorenson, in a scene echoing the end of Night of the Living Dead (1968), a gun points through the window of the depot and fires at Sorenson.

Not many thrillers could sustain eighty percent of their running time set in a nearly empty train depot with four characters waiting for a phone call and trying not to fall asleep, but it must be said that The Alpha Incident succeeds at least as well as Mr. Rebane's other films. The character interactions among the quiet Mr. Meeker, the close-mouthed Sorenson, the inscrutable Jenny, and the talkative Jack are worth the price of admission, until they start to die tragically. The presence of George "Buck" Flower as Hank is the icing on the cake, and it is unfortunate he disappears from the proceedings before the end of the film.

As it is unclear whether Mr. "Buck" Flower dies in the film, it is doubly unfortunate that Mr. Rebane never made a sequel, which would probably be called The Alpha Incident 2, or perhaps... No, the only possible title is The Alpha Incident 2.

Like most of Mr. Rebane's films, The Alpha Incident is a wonderful advertisement for the charms of the great state of Wisconsin in your universe. The beautiful trainyards and cabins and depots of Wisconsin are highlights of this film, not to mention the chemistry labs and fields where National Guard tanks drive over shrubbery. Wisconsin must be quite a wonderland, if tourists are able to avoid Martian pathogens, giant spiders, lake monsters, ice ghosts, bigfeet, clowns, and the other remarkable features of Mr. Rebane's filmography. We will further delve into his work in the future on Senseless Cinema. Take that as a promise...