Theo Robertson You want to know about rabies ? Try this: One time I was abroad and was unfortunate to be bitten by a stray cat . I didn't think too much of it at the time . I traveled back to the capital city to catch my plane back to Britain and I got into a conversation with the night porter at my hostel who had spent his national service as a medic and for some strange reason the conversation got round to rabies . " We don't have much of that here in cities , but there's a lot of it in the north of the country . Very terrible death , I'd much rather die of AIDS or cancer " he told me . Considering I'd just returned from the north of the country I felt the first pangs of worry . The porter then went into detail of footage he'd seen while in the medical corps " You can see in the victim's eyes that they're aware of what's going on despite their delusions...the throat contracts in spasms and that's what kills them , they effectively suffocate . Very nasty death " By now I was having a panic attack and didn't actually care if I got blown up by a terrorist bomb on my way back to the airport Before I left the next day I popped into a cybercafe and looked up cases of rabies in the region . What I saw terrified me since the disease isn't exactly unknown where I was , several people had died there in the late 1990s . I then looked up symptoms of rabies on the internet and the night porter wasn't kidding , it's almost certainly the most terrible death known to mankind , it kills 40-50,000 people a year and worst of all even if you're receiving inoculations against the disease if you develop symptoms that's it - You're almost certainly going to suffer a lingering painful death . Few and far between are survivors of rabies and those who do survive are left with terrible brain damage making them little more than vegetablesAs soon as I arrived back to in Britain I felt slightly dizzy and had a sore throat . I might have been the first symptoms of rabies or more likely it might have been the cold virus . I popped into my local health centre where I had an appointment with my doctor " Any foaming at the mouth ? If you'd been exposed to rabies you'd have contracted it by now " which is incorrect since it can take as much as several years for symptoms to develop though the average incubation is two to three months , I'd been bitten a couple of weeks earlier . The doctor ( Who seemed much better at asking questions rather than answering them ) managed to contact a hospital in Glasgow where I went the next day .I love hospitals . Having all those young nurses fussing over you , so normally if a young , tall , slim , blond nurse took my blood pressure I'd be in flirting heaven but not this time . I let the nurse carry out the tests without any wise cracks . I was then seen by the doctor , she was in her early twenties , brunette , perhaps the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen . No cheeky comments , no flirting and most of all no false machismo to impress this definitive vision of beauty . To give you an impression of how serious I was after I'd had the first course of vaccinations , I thanked her and said " I hope to never see you again " and I meant it . The hospital sent the vaccine to my local hospital where I was successfully inoculated against the virus over a course of a month . I'm alive but for several weeks I couldn't even begin to describe the fear I felt . I couldn't even hear the word " Rabies " without breaking into a cold sweat . It was perhaps the most frightening experience of my life That's the problem with THE MAD DEATH - It doesn't go far enough . I do remember the title sequence but alas I also remember a few unintentional funny scenes . A woman smuggles in her pet from the continent and it ends up on the menu for a fox which then attacks the star of UFO . If I remember correctly the most " shocking " scene involves Basil Brush being covered in shaving foam being slammed against Commander Stryker's car windscreen . Oh and Commander Stryker's been a naughty boy since he's been having an affair with his secetary and has given the rabies virus to her : Cut to Ms Secetary lying on a hospital bed dying of rabies . It looked like she was faking an orgasm while vomiting toothpaste ! You do get the impression that no one on the production has seen a rabies victim die . There's other images that stick out in the mind like the army going on a cull or the final ambiguous scene that implies it's all going to happen again but comes across as being cheesy .If you really want to know about this terrible killer disease , go abroad and get bitten by a stray mammal then type in " Symptoms of rabies " in any search engine . Make sure you have plenty of toilet paper ready because you'll certainly need it

TheExpatriate700 Having heard so much about it online, The Mad Death ultimately turned out to be a disappointment when I finally obtained it on DVD. The main highlights turned out to be its opening sequence and an eerie synthesizer score.The main problem with the miniseries is that it is not particularly well written. Many of the characters are too dumb to care about, picking up animals that are clearly rabid even to an untrained eye, and not bothering to have animal bites checked out by a doctor. Furthermore, the film has a certain element of predictability about it, with many of the plot developments telegraphed in advance.Moreover, there is a disturbing lack of violent animal attacks in the film. If one purchases a film called The Mad Death about a rabies epidemic, the least one would expect would be a good, violent mauling every fifteen minutes or so. Most of the violence here is directed toward the animals, mainly gunshots to the head.

Prof-Hieronymos-Grost A woman smuggles her cat into the UK, an illegal act, the ban on animals traveling having been put in place to retain the country's Rabies free status. The woman is unaware that her cat has just been in an altercation with a fox, but back in the UK it begins to act odd. After a series of scenes involving the passing of the deadly virus from animal to animal, an American businessman Tom Siegler (Ed Bishop) resident in the UK comes across a seemingly stunned fox at the side of the road. The fox appears docile and is amiable to being petted, so Siegler takes him home, but the fox soon turns on him, Bishop becomes infected and is the first to die. The authorities become aware and immediately set in place some restrictions in the area, a cordon is placed within a five mile radius of his house. Michael Hilliard is a veterinary expert who is persuaded to take charge of the investigation and straight away he sets out to find anyone who came in contact with the dead man before he died, his actions and restrictions don't go down well with local animal lovers and the press also make him out to be a bit of a loon. But as the virus spreads, he seems to be justified, but can he restrict the spread and make the country virus free again? In the 80's there was a real fear that rabies aka "The Mad Death", might spread to the UK, there were frightening TV advertisements to warn and scare the public away from smuggling animals into the country from the continent where Rabies was widespread. A frightening premise for a film? well sure the reality of it is scary, but to make it as a horror The Mad Death really needed to push home the fear, sadly it doesn't. The Fear element just isn't explored, The Mad Death is called that for a reason, its a terrible death, but these factors are just not explored well enough to either strike fear into the viewer or to deter would be smugglers. Little or no tension is built up, too much time is spent early on showing in a rather dull way, how it spreads from fox to cat to fox to dog to human and so on, that soon the viewer will be asking what all the fuss is about. I can also say that I have never seen animal lovers portrayed in such a bad light, every single one in the Mad Death, is played as crazy or with murderous intentions, they have no interest in stopping the spread of the virus, even the merest of actions like keeping your dog indoors is treated with apathy and anger, all in all not very believable. The acting is stilted beyond belief, with numerous silences and laboured pauses, actors staring into space and these aren't the ones that are infected. There's also a love triangle going on that is dull in the extreme. The restrictions set in place by police and Dept of Agriculture are also quite laughable in their laxness, if such an outbreak occurred in reality, the UK would be absolutely doomed. Now i realize some elements of plot have to be there to further the story, but here it is pushed to ridiculous extremes. So has the Mad Death got anything going for it? well, there are a few interesting set pieces, a rabid fox locked in a garage, a rabid Alsatian loose in a shopping mall, spring to mind, but even these are lazily handled. In a time when viruses are a real threat to humanity, its hard to get scared by a poodle and a Labrador running wild in a forest. If the filmmakers were out to scare the audience they failed miserably, if they were out to educate the public as to the risks, they also failed as its a little too preachy

Opaque It didn't go far enough in the portrayal of the rabies victims (although it does a fairly job for the first), but we don't get to see the effect on the child victim either. But my main problem is with the size, strength and back-up of the response to the outbreak. As we have seen with the Foot and Mouth outbreaks, even in the past, MAFF and other agencies had the policy of strict containment and kill and burn when necessary approach. Even back in the 60's this was the case so why was there so much pussyfooting around? The scene in the pub for example, he should have been able to call in the police and got those people arrested and the publican closed down for not reporting it. And he certainly should have been armed as well.When the old woman released the dogs they should have gone straight to her house en-masse, arrested her and killed all her animals, instead one person turns up. Pathetic.It was a very good film though in general although lacking in 'power'in terms of solutions. Even with the way they 'sorted it out' there would be no way of saying whether it had got out of the containment area, going by the time elapsed (2 weeks) a 12 mile area around the first outbreak is rather naive in the least.Considering how easily rabies can be transmitted the danger was totally underestimated. A modern version of this would be interesting, at least in this film people could vaccinate their pets, I can't see that being the case these days.