In theory, a science-fiction horror movie about a biological weapons outbreak should be terrifying. Virulent bacteria, quarantined scientists, the government lying through its teeth—sounds like fertile ground for a nail-biting thriller. Unfortunately, Warning Sign (1985), directed by Hal Barwood, takes that premise and wrings it dry until we’re left with nothing but Sam Waterston looking perpetually confused and Kathleen Quinlan playing a security officer who mostly runs around pushing buttons. The film wants to be The Andromeda Strain. It ends up as The Andromeda Yawn.
The Setup: Don’t Breathe, Don’t Blink, Don’t Care
The movie opens in a supposedly secret military lab disguised as a pesticide manufacturer. Because nothing screams “cover story” like a facility with barbed wire and guards armed to the teeth. A test tube breaks, unleashing a deadly bacteria that turns people into homicidal maniacs. Cue Protocol One: everyone inside is sealed off from the outside world. The security officer Joanie Morse (Kathleen Quinlan) punches in the code to lock everyone in, accidentally creating the most boring prison movie in history.
Meanwhile, her husband Cal (Sam Waterston), the county sheriff, is called in to help—because when dangerous bioweapons are involved, what you really need is a small-town cop whose biggest case up to now was probably wrangling drunk teenagers off a tractor.
Sam Waterston: Sheriff Bland
Sam Waterston has played principled lawyers (Law & Order) and morally tortured men (The Killing Fields). Here, he looks like he wandered onto the wrong set and stuck around out of politeness. His job as Cal is to furrow his brow, deliver flat lines, and ask questions the audience figured out twenty minutes earlier. By the time he finally shoots an infected worker, you want to pat him on the back for doing something—anything—that resembles decisive action.
Kathleen Quinlan: Pregnant With Plot Armor
Quinlan is Joanie Morse, the security officer who starts the quarantine but also manages to be the only person mysteriously immune to the infection. Why? Because she’s pregnant. Yes, the antidote fails for everyone, but Joanie’s magical maternal hormones make her untouchable. Estrogen: stronger than bleach, deadlier than penicillin, and now your best bet against homicidal maniacs in hazmat suits.
The film tries to make this a profound reveal, but it lands like a bad soap opera twist. Imagine The Exorcist ending with Father Karras surviving because of his high vitamin C levels.
Yaphet Kotto Deserves Better
Yaphet Kotto plays Major Connelly, the head of the government’s containment team. Kotto, a legend from Alien and Live and Let Die, is reduced here to a grumpy bureaucrat whose entire personality is “stern military guy with a clipboard.” When he isn’t barking orders, he’s spouting exposition so clunky it could double as a concrete block.
The scariest part of his performance is imagining how many times he wondered if turning down this role might’ve saved his career some dignity.
Jeffrey DeMunn: The Drunken Exposition Machine
Then we have Jeffrey DeMunn as Dr. Dan Fairchild, the alcoholic former scientist who, despite being a shambling mess, is somehow the only one who knows how to stop the outbreak. He’s the archetype of “washed-up genius reluctantly dragged back in.” Think Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park if he were less charming, more drunk, and prone to rambling about antidote recipes.
By the time Fairchild concocts a miracle cure involving thorazine and pregnancy blood samples, the audience is already infected with the deadliest disease of all: indifference.
The Horror: Rabies But Boring
Once infected, the workers don’t mutate into monsters, they don’t sprout extra limbs, they don’t even foam at the mouth in a fun way. They just get angry. That’s it. They become “homicidal maniacs,” which in practice means they stomp around the facility growling like frat bros denied entry to a keg party.
For a movie marketed as sci-fi horror, the scariest thing onscreen is the outdated 1980s computer interface, complete with DOS-style green text. At least the bacteria had the good sense to infect people quickly—it spared them from watching the rest of this movie.
Richard Dysart: The Mad Scientist Who… Isn’t
Richard Dysart shows up as Dr. Nielsen, a character who could have been an ominous villain. Instead, he’s just another guy who gets infected and eventually kills himself, presumably to escape the script. His big moral quandary—whether to contain the knowledge of the incident—falls flat, mostly because by the time he debates it, no one cares.
Plot Holes Big Enough for a Hazmat Truck
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The Cover Story: They tell the public it’s an “experimental yeast” contamination. Sure, because nothing gets the locals panicked like the thought of rogue sourdough starter.
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The Containment Protocols: For a high-security lab, their procedures are laughable. One guy’s contaminated contact lens spreads the disease building-wide. Forget killer bacteria—Optometry is the real menace here.
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The Antidote: It doesn’t work for anyone except Joanie, who becomes Patient Zero for the cure because… pregnancy. Imagine pitching that in a meeting: “Guys, the fetus saves the day.”
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The Ending: Joanie aerosolizes the antidote through the building’s ventilation system. So after ninety minutes of grim posturing, the solution is basically spraying Febreze.
Tone: Grim, Grey, and Grating
The film has all the energy of a public service announcement stretched to feature length. It wants to be a parable about government secrecy and scientific hubris, but it never musters the suspense of Outbreak or the visceral terror of The Thing. Instead, it’s a beige, plodding slog that feels twice as long as its runtime.
Even the action scenes—characters in hazmat suits brawling in dim hallways—look like rejected footage from a CDC training video.
Unintentional Comedy
If there’s any joy to be found here, it’s unintentional. The infected workers lumber around like middle managers late to a meeting. Joanie’s big immunity reveal plays like a parody of after-school specials: “Kids, remember, pregnancy can save your life!” And the climactic showdown with crazed workers is about as threatening as a bar fight at Applebee’s.
Final Thoughts: Biohazardously Bad
Warning Sign had potential: a top-notch cast, a topical premise, and the chance to explore paranoia in the age of bioweapons. Instead, it wastes everyone’s time with flat characters, laughable science, and a resolution so absurd it makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look grounded.
If you want a genuinely terrifying outbreak film, watch The Thing, 28 Days Later, or even an episode of Cops during flu season. Warning Sign is the cinematic equivalent of a wet sneeze—annoying, messy, and best avoided.
