Worried About Swine Flu: Here Are Five Virus Movies To Feed Your Fears

Got flu? Hopefully not, and hopefully all this talk of pandemics and Madagascar closing its borders are just media hysteria. Still, there's nothing wrong with a little self-imposed isolation for you and the family, so here are some timely cinematic selections for you to watch in between hand-washing sessions.

5. The Last Man on Earth (1964) The first of three adaptations of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and the most faithful to the source material. I'm picking this over Charlton Heston's Omega Man because of the latter's goofy "mutants" and also because of the annoying Police song of the same name.



4. The Crazies (1973) "Madness unleashed by human error"...there's a Bush Administration joke in here somewhere, but I'm too busy stockpiling Tamiflu to make it.



3. 12 Monkeys (1995) There are worse things for a time traveler from a virus-ravaged future than being locked up in an asylum. You could be locked up with Brad Pitt...oh, crap.



2. The Stand (1994) Stephen King wanted to write an epic story similar to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and he did. Only instead of elves and dwarves battling mythic beasts in fantastic worlds, King killed 99.4% of the population and gave us a Biblical allegory. Fun read.



1. The Andromeda Strain (1971) You'd think the military would be happy that the satellite they sent to secretly harvest microorganisms for biological weapons returned with a microbe that has the potential to kill all mankind. But noooo.