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TONIGHT (Tuesday) at 8pm eastern
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Beware of catching 'Flu'

Joely Richardson (center) leads a team of scientists in 'Fatal Contact.'

FATAL CONTACT: BIRD FLU IN AMERICA. Tomorrow night at 8, ABC.
ABC's scare-tactic flick "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" is a disaster movie predicated on a hypothetical question: What if the avian flu mutated into a strain that could be passed from human to human?

Here's another hypothetical for you: What if ABC remembered how to make a decent movie for television?

"Fatal Contact" (tomorrow night at 8 ) is written by Ron McGee, whose other disaster movies include "Atomic Twister" and "Maiden Voyage." He has also written some telemovies that were disasters, such as his docu-dramas about Meat Loaf (the singer, not the food) and the Monkees (the group, not the simians). With McGee concocting the story, it's no wonder it's so listless and artless.

Yet from the network that once gave us "The Day After," one of the best of all hypothetical horror movies, "Fatal Contact" is a wretched disappointment. The exponential encroachment of the deadly effects of the H5N1 avian flu virus should be frightening, and the deadly toll heartbreaking, as it was when nuclear radiation claimed its victims in "The Day After" or "Testament."

But in "Fatal Contact," it's all too cardboard to take seriously. A traveling businessman on a tour of manufacturing suppliers in Asia is at a plant when one of the workers coughs. It's the most overplayed, overwrought cough since Ali McGraw fell ill in "Love Story," and before you can say germ warfare, the pesky new strain of bird flu is winging its way to the United States, courtesy of a commercial airlines passenger.

Once the narrative gets stateside, the primary players are established. Joely Richardson from "Nip/Tuck" plays a somber scientist working for the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Scott Cohen from "The 10th Kingdom" plays a somber Virginia governor who establishes a riot-inducing quarantine. Stacy Keach from "Prison Break" plays the somber secretary of Health and Human Services. And Justina Machado, who played Rico's wife on "Six Feet Under," makes the only human impression of the bunch as a nurse in New York City.

"Fatal Contact" uses every trick in its boring book to try and up the emotional ante, but nothing works. At first, we zoom in on the microscopic villains as they're first transmitted, as if they were in a pandemic episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

Next, we get the businessman, patient zero, collapsing with blood spurting out of his nose in one of his Wal-Mart-like superstores. (At least his concerned colleague screams, "Somebody call 911!" rather than, "Cleanup on aisle five!")

It isn't long thereafter when we get the HAZMAT suits and the superimposed, snowballing body counts: "Week four deaths: 152,372." "Week seven deaths: 4,230,053." (By this point, my personal count was "Hour one yawns: 14.")

There's an awkward and repeated use of a poignant song, Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," and some scenes staged by director Richard Pearce that presume we care about the characters adding to the death count. He presumes wrongly.

"Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" doesn't just have the smell of death. It also reeks of failure.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/415865p-351351c.html

PLEASE RECORD THIS and let the world watch it (via http://chomskytorrents.org )

TONIGHT (Tuesday) at 8pm eastern
on ABC TV

New Bowman mp3 added to wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Bowman