Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America

2006
Starring
Stacy Keach as Secretary Reed
Justina Machado as Nurse Alma
Joely Richardson as Dr. Iris Varnack
Scott Cohen as Virginia Governor Mike Newsome
Directed by Richard Pearce

OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! RUN!! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!! It’s the birds! Instead of killing us with their evil bird powers, they’re killing us with their evil bird diseases! The dastardly birds will not be stopped, as they give us a true-to-life Captain Tripps, the H5N1 Bird Flu mutated to human infectious! As the latest made for TV movie for ABC tells us, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! There is no escape….from birds!!!

Starting out with the opening of all openings, a warining informing us that bird flu from the H5N1 has already been found in 48 countries and killed 125 people. The film is careful to tell us that this is a “What if” scenario. Because anyone just tuning in might think a badly acted TV movie is in reality a real-time TV show called Survivor: Flu or something. Instead of conjuring up such images such as “What if the Punisher became Captain America?” or “What if Spiderman joined the Fantastic Four?” we get instead “What if everything bad happened, then suddenly everything good, because we’re America, and then suddenly WE ALL DIED??” The opening credits show Canadian geese-looking birds flying around and getting picked up on radar. Why on radar? Probably because several of them have computer graphics indicating that they are carriers of H5N1, which large size is easily picked up on radar. Scramble the fighters and shoot them all down! Come on, Iceman! Cowboy and Maverick got your back. We can’t have Goose on this mission, because we’re killing geese, and he’s dead.