ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical overview of the epidemic film genre. It situates its incipient birth in US health films and ‘medical hagiographies’ of the 1930s and 1940s, which worshipped the role of scientists as a form of political propaganda during wartime. The chapter continues with the fear of contagion conveyed in post-World-War II film noirs such as Panic in the Streets, The Killer that Stalked New York and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where the disease becomes an expression of the reigning paranoia over Communist invasion of the body politic. It then considers the 1970s rendering of body horror and political conspiracy, with, among others, David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977), which explore the limits and intersections of the body with technology. Finally, it focuses on the global concerns raised by the emergence of the AIDS epidemic, reflected in the cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, with the commercial success of Outbreak. These cycles, which pre-empt the contemporary virus film, prove how the metaphoric impulse of epidemics has been historically moulded to offer a prolific array of meanings in tune with their producing contexts.
