ABC Spreads The Germ of A Disturbing 'Bird Flu'

Later, when a vaccine is finally developed, those in charge decide that "essential medical personnel" should be first to get it -- in other words, them. That's somewhat reminiscent of the bureaucrats in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove," who decide it would be best for the country if they all took refuge in an underground shelter stocked with wine and women, if not song, and wait out the nuclear war raging above.

Plagues, of course, are not something to be made light of, but the movie is so brutally relentless in depicting the effects of the disease -- replete with shots of mass graves, blood-soaked human organs and "CSI''-like close-ups of germs -- that it becomes more numbing than alarming. It's a cautionary tale with no recommendations on what precautions to take.

There's no time to develop any of the characters. Dr. Varnack marches around issuing warnings, advice and recommendations but doesn't seem to have a life. The mutated virus, H5 in the film, is compared to the Spanish Flu of 1918, believed responsible for up to 100 million deaths. As the movie ends (semi-spoiler alert), there's nary a peep of hope in sight.

"Fatal Contact," written by Ron McGee and directed by Richard Pearce, is horrific but dubiously useful. And as insensitive as it might sound, the death tolls and harrowing developments begin to seem repetitious and prosaic. Then there are the less-than-hideous side effects, like a raging coffee shortage in New York. The horror, the horror!

For reasons not made clear but covered by the term "chaos," looters grow violent, and teams of hooligans set trucks on fire. Society is breaking down, people are behaving like animals and gas is probably up to 100 bucks a gallon.

Despite the seeming urgency of the subject matter, I think I'd skip the movie if I hadn't already seen it -- maybe opting to wait for the Broadway musical.

So this is how the world ends -- not with a bang or a whimper, but a bluck-bluck-bluck. Thank goodness Colonel Sanders didn't live to see it.

Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America (two hours) airs tonight at 8 on Channel 7.