Disease-driven entertainment for your Halloween enjoyment

Here's a column from Oct. 26, 2014, that hasn't aged well in many respects. Still, the list of pandemic-related entertainment at the end is solid. I would add Paul Tremblay's Survivor Song and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven to the list. 

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It wouldn’t surprise me to see a few more hazmat suits and protective-gear costumes among trick-or-treaters this year, and that’s a positive sign.

Some people find it crass to parley the Ebola virus into Halloween dress-ups, but I’m not one of them. It’s uniquely American to spit in the eye of death, so a little gallows humor in reaction to wall-to-wall Ebola coverage is not only natural, but healthy. Truth be told, your odds of being struck by a bus — or even a comet — are better than your chances of contracting Ebola, which isn’t airborne (not yet, some pundits proclaim) and is barely even in the United States, so the only thing holding Americans back from an orgy of ebola-themed costuming is that the fear isn’t real enough.

Meanwhile, Americans should also be checking out the post-apocryphal landscape in stories and cinema. Here’s my pick of the best disease-driven entertainment for your Halloween pleasure.

• The Stand (1978) — Some readers may find the scariest part of this novel is its size. A brick at more than 1,100 pages, Stephen King goes all Book of Revelation in the second half as survivors of a worldwide plague must decide to join the forces of good or evil. But the first half is all about Captain Trips, a flu-like disease that wipes out most of the world’s population after woebegone military and healthcare officials fail to contain it.
•  Contagion (2011) — A great ensemble film by Steven Soderbergh looks at another end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it (but I don’t feel fine) scenario involving a pandemic. Unlike King, Soderberg keeps the Devil at bay, but society’s flubs are scary enough. I watched this for the first time with my wife, who was nursing a wicked cold and sneezing constantly. It made the movie all the more unnerving.
• The Hot Zone (1994) — Richard Preston made a name for himself with this nonfiction account of Ebola and several others deadly viruses. I read it on vacation in a copy that I’d bought secondhand; Preston’s description of how various virulences spread made me no longer want to touch the book or any public doorknobs, toilet seats, or restaurant tables. Creepy.
• I Am Legend (1954) — Skip the so-so movie with Will Smith from a few years back and go straight to the source, Richard Matheson’s novella of the same name. Granted, the plague that’s being spread is vampirism, which isn’t exactly Ebola, but the results are the same: the crumbling of civilization. If you must see a filmed version, 1964’s “Last Man on Earth” with Vincent Price is a winner, while 1971’s “Omega Man” adaptation is a hippie-dippie look at a funky future.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) — Jack Finney’s novel “The Body Snatchers” is the basis for this McCarthy-era tale of paranoia. Whom can you trust when aliens that look just like your family and friends come a-knockin’? Answer: Nobody. These aliens are as invisible as Ebola and ten times as deadly.
• “Fever Dream” (1959) — This short story by Ray Bradbury is the quintessential infectious-disease tale. A sick little boy feels that his body is being calcified from the inside out, but the doctor finds nothing wrong except a slight fever. First his legs, then his arms, then his head are subsumed, leaving behind something that only looks human. I often read this aloud to my students on Halloween because it’s so effective and affecting.

I’m sure I’ve left out some good stories about bad viruses, including tons of zombie books, movies and TV shows, so send suggestions via one of the methods below. In the meantime, wash your hands frequently, keep them away from your eyes and nose, stay home if you’re feverish, and happy Halloween.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com

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