I came across "Virus" on DVD at the dollar store recently, and though I'd never heard of it, a quick look at IMDb revealed that the film had a pretty decent rating so I risked a buck on it. I loved disaster films when I was a kid so I'm surprised this one slipped past my radar back then. After further research I learned that there are several different cuts of this movie available and that the DVD I purchased is in fact the shorter U.S. cut, which is missing almost an hour of footage (mainly featuring the Japanese characters and their back stories). Despite that, I still found "Virus" to be a pretty entertaining (if a bit depressing) film and I'm interested in tracking down a copy of the "true" version of the film.
Apparently "Virus" was the most expensive film made by a Japanese company at the time of its release (1980), featuring a large cast of both Japanese and Western actors. Unfortunately it never got proper worldwide distribution and was a major financial failure, which is a shame because this was a pretty damn good flick, even in this truncated version. The American cast (who are featured more prominently in the cut I saw) are all genre stalwarts who appeared in a lot of similar disaster films around this same time period -- Glenn Ford as the President of the United States, Robert Vaughn as his Senatorial foil, Henry Silva as a crazed Army general, and so on. I was particularly tickled by the total mis-casting of Chuck "Rifleman" Connors as the captain of a British submarine, because he doesn't even try to affect a British accent. (Perhaps the Japanese producers figured "Screw it, we're just going to dub over him with a Japanese actor anyway.") It does tend to be a bit talky, could've used some more action scenes, and obviously its Cold War era politics are now out of date, but overall "Virus" was a pretty decent little end-of-the-world/apocalypse saga.
As the movie opens, some cloak-and-dagger types meet in an East German hideaway and exchange a vial of a new biological weapon known as MM-88. The plane carrying the men away from the exchange point crashes in the mountains and the virus is freed, causing a worldwide epidemic of disease that all but wipes out humanity from planet Earth. The only survivors untouched by the disease are a small group of researchers and military types stationed in Antarctica, where the virus cannot spread due to the cold temperatures. These 800-and-change survivors find themselves not only faced with the prospect of repopulating the barren Earth (with only 8 women in the population!), but also preventing yet another catastrophe, because in the final days before the fall of the U.S. Silva's character had armed a missile defense system which pointed all of America's nukes at Russia. An earthquake in the region threatens to cause the defense system to activate, which would then result in a retaliatory strike from a similar defense system on the Russian side. So just as our group of survivors is getting used to the idea of living in this Brave New World, now they have to worry about a follow up apocalypse! An American soldier (Bo Svenson of "Walking Tall" fame) and a Japanese scientist are dispatched to the ruins of Washington, D.C. to de-activate the missile system before all Hell breaks loose on Earth (again). I will not violate the Spoiler Warning rules by telling you how it all turns out, but let's just say it's not the typical Hollywood outcome.
"All-star cast spectaculars" like these were a dime a dozen in the late 70s and early 80s and a lot of them stunk. "Virus" doesn't. It's a shame that such an ambitious project went all but unnoticed on this side of the ocean at the time of its release. Now that the U.S. version is apparently in the Public Domain and is readily available at an affordable price, it's worth taking a look at a film that had more to say than your average disaster flick. "Virus" is one of my better Dollar Store DVD pickups of late, and one of the few that I'm likely to watch again in the future. Now, where do I find a copy of the "true" original cut of this film? Time to do some searching.
4 out of 4 found this helpful