A microbiological invasion from outer space gets off to an immediately gripping start: a walkie-talkie transmission from a small New Mexico town chokes off, an elaborate defense mechanism clicks into operation, and four civilian scientists are rousted from their homes and speeded to a top-secret, cylinder-shaped laboratory sunken in the desert. There follow some exciting elevated views of the stark white town, its streets littered with bodies, and some eerie shots of the asbestos-suited scientists combing over the disaster area at close range (a trickle of rust-colored powder is produced from a scalpel slash in a cadaver's wrist). Thereafter, the movie settles down to the colorless scientists doing unglamorous detective work in the lab; and at its best, it pulls you shoulder to shoulder with the characters and involves you at their same level of alert. Robert Wise's restrained direction succeeds very well at keeping a lid on Michael Crichton's pressure-cooker plot. With Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, David Wayne. (1971) — Duncan Shepherd