If you're hoping to escape from illness-ridden friends or colleagues this weekend, the multiplex may not be the best place to hide. The newly released thriller Contagion follows members of the worldwide medical community as they attempt to halt the spread of a flu-like virus, capable of killing those it infects within days.
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Directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, the film asks whether we are ready for a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, which killed some 3 per cent of the world’s population, or could we be in for something even more serious? Whatever the reality may be, the critically praised drama is just the latest in a long line of deadly plague movies.
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
Symptoms: A satellite returns to Earth carrying an extraterrestrial biological infection. When the scientists dispatched to retrieve it (as well as the entire population of a nearby Arizona town) suddenly die of blood clots, the US government's Wildfire team is activated in a bid to stop the disease from going global.
Diagnosis: "The story of the world's first space-age crisis" was how the director Robert Wise described The Andromeda Strain, based on the novel by Michael Crichton. The scientist Stephen Hawking has famously argued that any arrival of alien life on Earth – whether intelligent or a virus – would probably result in our extinction.
The Omega Man (1971)
Symptoms: Humans have been almost wiped out by man-made diseases in this Charlton Heston classic, as the Soviet Union and China wage war with biological weapons. The film's star is the only person left unharmed, thanks to an experimental vaccine he has created. However, other people have survived in the form of mutant albino creatures lurking in the crumbling ruins of cities.
Diagnosis: In the original novel (I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson) a virus spread by mosquitos is responsible for the plague, while in the 2007 adaptation starring Will Smith, it is a "cure" for cancer that has the disastrous side effect of killing 90 per cent of humanity.
Shivers (1975)
Symptoms: David Cronenberg's breakout movie sees the residents of an ultra-modern Montreal apartment block become infected with slug-like parasites that cause uncontrollable sexual desire in their hosts. A local doctor must act quickly to (you guessed it) stop the disease from going global.
Diagnosis: Years before the HIV/Aids virus became commonly known, the Canadian director's brilliant body-horror was an intelligent and troubling investigation into the spread of venereal disease in western societies. The film also raises questions about the nature of humanity – specifically, what does it take for the veil of rationality to slip away and leave our animal selves -exposed?
12 Monkeys (1995)
Symptoms: Little is known about the killer virus at the centre of the sci-fi mystery 12 Monkeys, except that it is powerful enough to force the people of the future to live underground to escape it. The film sees the leaders of a miserable post-apocalyptic world send an agent (played by Bruce Willis) back in time to before the outbreak, in the hope of obtaining a pure form of the virus so that a cure can be made.
Diagnosis: While the plague itself may have been somewhat vague in 12 Monkeys, the method of infection was troublingly clear: not warfare, aliens or a scientific accident, but terrorism.
Outbreak (1995)
Symptoms: A rare and extremely deadly "viral haemorrhagic fever" called Motaba (an Ebola-like virus) is discovered in Zaire and carried to a small Californian town by an illegally traded capuchin monkey in this thriller starring Morgan Freeman, Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo. When an airborne strain mutates, scientists struggle to contain the bug, which causes high fevers, bleeding disorders and death.
Diagnosis: The film deals with the extreme measures that governments might be forced to take to prevent the spread of plagues. By sheer coincidence, a real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus occurred in Zaire just months after the film's release.
28 Days Later (2002)
Symptoms: An experimental "rage" virus escapes from a laboratory and infects the population of the British Isles in Danny Boyle's bleak horror. The "infected" lose all rational abilities and become homicidal cannibals, duly infecting anyone else who comes into contact with their blood or saliva.
Diagnosis: Although the infected are never referred to as zombies, 28 Days Later is certainly a zombie movie. Since 1968's Night of the Living Dead, zombieism has been noted for its plague-like qualities, passing from one person to the next until the entire population has become undead. This has never been made more vividly apparent than in the modern British classic.
Cabin Fever (2002)
Symptoms: In the movies, you know something bad is about to happen when a group of attractive young people plan a holiday in a remote woodland cabin. But instead of being stalked by demons or serial killers, it's a flesh-eating virus that makes life a misery for the characters in Eli Roth's debut.
Diagnosis: In fine gore tradition, the disease makes those who fall victim to it look like they've been covered in buckets of blood – despite not having any obvious wounds underneath. But while it may seem a little improbable, the film cleverly demonstrates how just the threat of disease can turn people against one another.
Children of Men (2006)
Symptoms: What would happen if all of the world's women were suddenly rendered infertile? The answer: faced with just a few more decades in existence, humanity gives up hope. The world economy crumbles, fascist governments rise and bitterness between different ethnic groups grows – until, that is, a young African immigrant to Britain is found to be pregnant.
Diagnosis: Alfonso Cuarón's film (based on the PD James novel) demonstrates that a virus wouldn't need to act quickly or infect one and all to bring about humanity's end – attacking the female reproductive system is all it would need.
The Invasion (2007)
Symptoms: Starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, this is the fourth film adaptation of the 1954 novel The Body Snatchers – the most famous version of which is the 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Rather than aliens replacing townsfolk with evil duplicates like in the original, the 2007 film sees an alien fungus clinging to the panelling of a space shuttle, which is then sprayed across US cities when the vessel explodes on re-entry. Its effect: violence and madness among the population, of course.
Diagnosis: While The Invasion ignored the original film's rich subtext – a reflection on post-war anti-communist paranoia – it still made for a respectable plague movie.
Blindness (2008)
Symptoms: When an epidemic of blindness strikes the population, it's not long before fear and desperation turn friend against friend and society begins to fall apart, at least according to this movie starring Julianne Moore and Mark -Ruffalo.
Diagnosis: The film's director Fernando Meirelles believed the story, from a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago, to be "an allegory about the fragility of civilisation". Similar events take place in the newly released film Perfect Sense, starring Ewan McGregor, which sees people losing their sensory perceptions one by one.
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