AIBU to be surprised there is no proper film about the plague?

[AliceNotInChains]

Would love to see a proper well done movie about the plague - AIBU to be suprised that it hasn’t been done?? Titanic style

Pepys is free on kindle too 😁

OP if you like immersive theatre the gunpowder plot of set at the time of a wave of plague (really good too!)

I mean I hadn’t considered it before - you’re right. But it is a bit miserable

The decameron on Netflix is a series about the plague, I enjoyed it, it's more a dark comedy so quite funny in parts, I was hoping for a 2nd series but none as yet.

An adaptation of Mary Hooper's Sign of the Sugared Plum, which is a young adult novel, might make a more palatable film, but not a sweeping epic. It's got a sequel set during the Great Fire, too.

There is a book called ‘year of our sorrows’ set in Eyam during the plague, following the story of how they quarantined themselves but with a sort of romance bit intertwined. I always thought it would make a cracking good film. But I am biased because I’m from near there and I love historical drama.

"Rats"

Hopefully they wouldn't have a prominent role in the movie - the modern, mainstream scientific view is that it was spread by humans (and human fleas/lice) rather than the rats.

“I want to see a proper plague movie”

Said no one ever.

Dunno. Ratatouille style, plague prequel of the Disney movie? Vermincelli

Diseased rodent chef makes excellent Italian cuisine but accidentally brings a pox upon a negative reviewer.

Except the op, just now. 🙃

There's enough bad historical "knowledge" about "the plague" (everyone usually means the one of the 14th c, when really there was a few), such as bird masks (which didn't appear til mid 17thc) that I'm not sure Hollywood could possibly make it worse.

Plague Off with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta was good

Yeah but she doesn’t mean it.

🫠

There is a mystery 1950s film with Dirk Bogarde I think, a sort of The Lady Vanishes, where someone's sibling goes missing on holiday - but it's the punchline or twist so I suppose I mustn't name it or ruin it.

I’m not sure it would be very good. People get it, they die, they get buried. You could have a film set at the time of one of the major outbreaks but you’d need some kind of plot.

The only plague related story worth filming that I can think of is Eyam.

Just watch lots of horrible histories. There's even the plague song (now stuck in my head)
Agree with a pp a ghosts plague pit special would be amazing

Read Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, great book set in Eyam.

This is me too. I was petrified of contracting the plague from the dirty parts of the school playground at 6. Drove my parents mad as was constantly washing!

But all those (to me mind-bogglingly dull) dystopian horrors like 28 Days Later are essentially plague films. A realist film about the Black Death would be both dull and absolutely horrible.

I mean, there’s a reason directors aren’t queueing up to make the great Ebola movie.

Yanbu they should get Julia Roberts in. Eat, Plague, Love.

There’s always Outbreak for a modern take on the genre.

Hammett (the movie) was plague adjacent I believe ....as far as I understand it, great swathes of the great and the good plus the monarch and court debunked to their country estates from London in the summer as the disease hadn't run it's course but wasn't quite plague pit levels. Also Wolf Hall (Henry VIII & Thomas Cromwell) has this narrative. Not particularly keen to revisit personally 🤧

It features as a sideline in many films and dramas. But as an event it doesn’t really make sense unless for example you’re just talking about the first arrival in the UK in the 1300s. Even then it was around for about 40/50 years, with periodic outbreaks

What would the story arc be? There were no big medical breakthroughs, there was no vaccine or uplifting end to it. Just an awful lot of people dying a hideous death after a life of drinking unsterilised water, living with cattle and giving birth in fields.

Actually, I’d watch that.

I was petrified of contracting the plague from the dirty parts of the school playground at 6.

I think I might have caught it once 😀

I was looking at some 17th century records in which plague deaths were recorded. It wasn't a well used volume like parish burial records; probably few people had opened it since it was created. It was June, but that evening I felt so shivery, as if I was going down with flu, I had to go to bed with a hot water bottle.

I felt fine the next day, but have always wondered....