by RICHARD SCHEIB (Headpress; 2025)
Here’s something I believe we all need: a book-length study (the first, if I’m not mistaken) of disease/pandemic movies. The author was Richard Scheib, who runs the UK based Moria film review website and, as he admits in an introductory essay, suffers from chronic COPD that’s left him with “thirty percent of the lung capacity of the average person.”
A VIEWING GUIDE TO THE PANDEMIC: DEPICTIONS OF PLAGUE AND PANDEMIC ON FILM AND TV (Book Trailer)
This means Scheib is in the covid-19 high risk category, so he can be forgiven for the pedantic tone he takes throughout. Also revealed in the introduction is the fact that this book was written in April 2022, which explains the apocalyptic air that suffuses its pages; the CDC has relaxed its Covid guidelines considerably since ‘22, and Scheib admits his introduction was “written in a heat of fearful alarmism.” That, however, doesn’t detract from the subject matter.
Admirably exhaustive in its scope, A VIEWING GUIDE TO THE PANDEMIC starts with a breakdown of THE PLAGUE OF FLORENCE (PEST IN FLORENZ; 1919), apparently the first pandemic themed photoplay, and continues with admirably concise summations of dozens of subsequent films. Some, like PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950), THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1969) and 12 MONKEYS (1995), are classics, while others, like EBOLA SYNDROME (1996, apparently “the single most offensive film listed in this book”) and VENEMOUS (2001), are less-than-classic. Also covered are zombie-themed pandemic films like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), BRAINDEAD (1992) and PONTYPOOL (2008), and oddities like WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT FEELING GOOD? (1968) and THE HOLE (DONG; 1998).
PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950) Trailer
A number of relevant films are left out (I’d have liked to have read Scheib’s takes on the 1979 Gabriel Garcia Marquez scripted EL ANO DE LA PESTE and the Bird Flu inspired Chinese anthology project 1:99), but corralling every disease-related film ever made is an impossibility. What’s most impressive here are the final chapters, focused on Covid-centered efforts like the Charles Band production CORONA ZOMBIES (2020), the Bollywood TV miniseries THE GONE GAME (2020) and the BBC production TOGETHER (2021), and “postpandemic” items like ANTHROPOCINE (2020) and SONGBIRD (2020). The latter films imagined a covid-ravaged future involving internment camps, marauders and permanent indoor confinement, but were compromised, inevitably, by budgets too low to properly convey the filmmakers’ ambitions. That’s a situation that certainly isn’t unique, in or outside these pages.
EL ANO DE LA PESTE (1979) Trailer
CORONA ZOMBIES (2020) Trailer