The Satan Bug

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The Satan Bug
Directed by	John Sturges
Produced by	John Sturges
Written by	Alistair MacLean James Clavell Edward Anhalt
Starring	George Maharis Richard Basehart Anne Francis Dana Andrews
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	April 14, 1965
Running time	114 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Satan Bug (1965) is a science fiction film in which a US government germ warfare lab has had an accident. The first theory is that one of the nasty germs has gotten free and killed several scientists. The big fear is that a more virulent strain, named The Satan Bug, because all life can be killed off by it should it escape, may have been stolen. The film was loosely adapted from Alistair MacLean's 1962 novel The Satan Bug.

It was also one of the first espionage films to follow the lead of the wildly popular James Bond films that set the tone for action/adventure films of the '60s and early '70s. In contrast with the Bond spy thrillers, however, The Satan Bug was a serious attempt by director John Sturges to go in a different direction from his previous all-star blockbusters (The Magnificent Seven, 1960, and The Great Escape, 1963). Indeed, while it is hard to conceive of a film like Goldfinger (1964) without a major star in the lead role, The Satan Bug actually benefits from the lack of big name stars. George Maharis, a product of The Actors Studio, is an effectively laconic hero who uses his brain, not his fists. The Satan Bug is, in essence, a "thinking man's" spy thriller. However, as noble an effort as it was, The Satan Bug failed at the box office and remains largely underrated.

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John Sturges
1940s	The Man Who Dared \| Shadowed \| Alias Mr. Twilight \| For the Love of Rusty \| Keeper of the Bees \| The Sign of the Ram \| Best Man Wins \| The Walking Hills
1950s	The Magnificent Yankee \| The Capture \| Mystery Street \| Right Cross \| Kind Lady \| The People Against O'Hara \| It's a Big Country (with Clarence Brown, Don Hartman, Richard Thorpe, Charles Vidor, Don Weis and William A. Wellman) \| The Girl in White \| Jeopardy \| Fast Company \| Escape from Fort Bravo \| Bad Day at Black Rock \| Underwater! \| The Scarlet Coat \| Backlash \| Gunfight at the O.K. Corral \| The Law and Jake Wade \| The Old Man and the Sea \| Last Train from Gun Hill \| Never So Few
1960s	The Magnificent Seven \| By Love Possessed \| Sergeants 3 \| A Girl Named Tamiko \| The Great Escape \| The Satan Bug \| The Hallelujah Trail \| Hour of the Gun \| Ice Station Zebra \| Marooned
1970s	Joe Kidd \| Chino \| McQ \| The Eagle Has Landed