Going Viral: Great Movie Epidemics

As early as Mary Shelley's 1826 novel 'The Last Man,' we've been frightened and fascinated by stories of cataclysmic plagues, as in 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.' Here are some viral classics. Slip on your hazmat suit and let's go!

A virus-based drug that increases simian intelligence also turns out to be deadly to humans. Who knew? All it takes is one infected airline pilot to set the world on a new course towards ape dominance.

Primates are at it again! A capuchin monkey infected with "Motaba" is smuggled out of Africa -- and becomes the elusive Patient Zero in this medical thriller. Dustin Hoffman leads an all-star cast.

Despite the title, this time a human is to blame for spreading the pathogen that kills 5 billion. But is it loony Brad Pitt and his animal rights activists? We dare not reveal the twists in Terry Gilliam's sci fi mind-bender.

A bat, a pig, a Chinese chef and Gwyneth Paltrow set off a horrific worldwide pandemic. Noted for its realism, 'Contagion' is a sprawling drama about the people racing to cure the disease before more lives are lost.

'World War Z' stands apart from the average zombie flick in that it's not merely about escaping the ravenous dead. Like 'Contagion,' its focus is on finding the source of -- and the antidote for -- the virus at the core of the crisis.

There's no mystery here: '28 Days Later' clearly identifies the "Rage Virus" as the cause of its zombie-like outbreak. And by eschewing the supernatural, these living biters become more plausible, and thus more terrifying, than the undead.

'Night of the Living Dead' maestro George A. Romero helmed this low-budget freakout, in which an experimental bioweapon gets into a small town's water supply and makes the locals go, well, crazy. Effectively remade in 2010.

The third adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel -- after 'The Last Man on Earth' (1964) and 'The Omega Man' (1971) -- has Will Smith trying to concoct an antidote to a virus that's turned its few survivors into vampire-like mutants.

Here's a decidedly '70s take on the "virus movie." A government satellite is infected by a deadly alien germ; when it crashes to Earth, the fight to isolate the germ turns 'The Andromeda Strain' into a bona fide conspiracy thriller.

Not all viruses kill -- at least not directly. Take this disease that afflicts everyone on the planet with sightlessness -- everyone, that is, except for Julianne Moore. This bleak, underrated drama is worth seeing. (No pun intended.)

Alfonso Cuarón's futuristic thriller doesn't explain what causes worldwide human fertility -- though "the 2008 flu pandemic" is mentioned -- but it's clear about the apocalyptic consequences. Julianne Moore is not so lucky in this film.

As in 'Children of Men,' the plague that decimates Europe in the 2020s -- here called the St. Mary's Virus -- is just one part of the dystopian backdrop, as Natalie Portman helps Hugo Weaving bring down a fascist dictatorship.

Horror king Eli Roth made his name with this shocker. Five college kids vacationing in the woods become acquainted with a hermit -- and his flesh-eating bacteria. An isolated incident? The movie's sequel suggests otherwise.