It’s the end of the world as we know it and your all dead.
Virus (Fukkatsu no Hi) (1980) : 6 out of 10: When it comes to apocalyptic cinema, the late 1970s and early ’80s had a certain flair for doom. The doom was often accompanied by a synth-heavy soundtrack and a Cold War-induced anxiety complex. Virus (also known as Fukkatsu no Hi) is Japan’s ambitious answer to that genre, and it doesn’t go halfway about it. This isn’t your average contagion thriller confined to a single city or a scrappy band of survivors holed up in a supermarket. No, Virus swings for the bleaker fences with a global scale and a cast list that reads like a diplomatic summit of ‘70s character actors. When the end comes, it’s international, bureaucratic, and deeply pessimistic.
The plot kicks off with a man-made virus, because of course its man-made, called MM88. (Hitler reference?) It’s potent, airborne, and unfortunately gets loose during a gun battle in what I am assuming is a vampire-infected village based on all the hanging garlic and cobwebs.
Soon enough, the world is plunged into chaos, with governments faltering, science scrambling, and military leaders doing what they do best: posturing, panicking, and pressing buttons they probably shouldn’t. As the virus races across continents, wiping out the Earth’s population, the few survivors left are holed up in Antarctica as the virus does not like chilly weather.
The Good
The Good: Virus is a seventies disaster film with George Kennedy. That’s it, full stop. Kind of like the way Devil Fish is an Italian soft-core porn film with shark attacks. Whether the film is good is beside the point when a film is that far into my wheelhouse.
One standout is Henry Silva doing such a spot-on Christopher Walken impersonation I had to check the cast twice to make sure it wasn’t Captain Koons himself.
If there is one part of Virus that should have been jettisoned, it is the nuclear Armageddon portion. The reason behind it is as follows. A man in Antarctica who predicts earthquakes as a hobby predict a massive earthquake in Washington DC and another man sees his prediction and realises and earthquake will cause the nukes to launch and a third man then realises the Russians will nuke Antarctica in retaliation.. and it is beyond silly and has zero credulity. (I mean, the guy making the prediction is literally just drawing on a map. There is no actual science involved.)
It is a bit of a shame because the action scenes surrounding the disarming of the nuclear trigger are some of the best in the movie. Alas, everyone is already dead from the virus. Feels like notes form a producers insisting on an anti nuke message being shoehorned in.
The Bad
The Bad: Virus is three movies in one… and that is a problem. We have biowarfare spreading a deadly virus caused by the Americans, Nuclear Armageddon also caused by the Americans. And, well, lots of Americans sitting around rooms (and commanding British attack subs) being very American.
The three movies are virus escapes destroys all life on earth. Survivors in Antarctica try to restart civilization with 500 men and 8 women. (We are going to need a system.) And two guys try to stop an automated system located in the White House from launching all the nukes. There are a lot of different plots for one movie.
The scenes in the White House (the plague scenes, not the stop the nukes scenes) feature Glen Ford and Robert Vaughn. They reminded me of the scenes with the president in Resident Evil 6, alas Glen Ford does not turn into a zombie but just sits and sweats a lot occasionally making speeches to no one.
One observation that the RiffTrax guys nailed in their version is that the Oval Office gets noticeably (and unintentionally hilariously) dirtier as the scenes go on with papers and God knows what else strewn about the floor. The RiffTrax guys point out it was as if they had a college rave the night before. It honestly started to bother me, like the Winnebago in Spaceballs.
Chuck Conners as the British sub commander makes Kevin Costner sound like Kevin Whately. Not even an attempt to pretend he is British. Couldn’t be less British if he tried.
The Ugly
The Ugly: I found Olivia Hussey a little stiff in Black Christmas. In Virus, she is a plank of wood. Honestly, a plank of wood wearing a wig with a crudely drawn face would have given a more effective performance.
All the Norwegians (except for a very pregnant Olivia Hussy) were found shot dead. Olivia’s character claims they all killed each other or committed suicide for no reason. For some reason, this is accepted at face value and never brought up again.
The music is really awful. Not just the syrupy soundtrack; we also have one of those horrific soft seventies ballads that plagued movies of the era to end this thing. If everyone is dead, who is singing this?
In Conclusion
Virus plays like a mixture of The Andromeda Strain and The Swarm, with a side of Fail Safe meets Octopussy. This is not a cheerful watch, but it is a curious one. A melancholic tapestry that ponders what happens when science, politics, and seventies character actors collide. One part sci-fi, one part cautionary tale, and one part ensemble melodrama, Virus is an overstuffed mess. But it is often an entertaining overstuffed mess. And let’s face it, a Seventies disaster film with George Kennedy is already a win.
RiffTrax Review
RiffTrax Review (2025): 5 out of 10: Somewhere there is a clear, wide screen, subtitled two and a half-hour version of this film. (After writing this review and in the process of posting it I found the clean Wide Screen version free on YouTube… ugh). Alas, here in the States we get a TV cut of lesser quality in standard definition running at a rushed 103 minutes. The RiffTrax version runs at an even more poorly paced breakneck 84 minutes that includes five minutes of Mike and the boys sheepishly explaining why they sat on a film about a worldwide pandemic for a couple of years. (Cowards)
Virus (particularly the even more edited version on RiffTrax) also suffers from pacing issues during the plague portion of the film. We find dead sheep in the field, and before a villager can even develop a cough, half of Italy is dead and stock footage fills the screen. The RiffTrax version shortens these segments even further, causing a truly bizarre whiplash.
Speaking of RiffTrax’s habit of editing films to make them funnier… RiffTrax actually edits out one of the three segments of the film (the 500 men and 8 woman we are going to need a system section) so we go straight from a meeting in Antartica to a Christmas Party about a year later where all the women have babies out of nowhere.
I get why they felt it would be hard to joke about such a thing. But it actively makes an already weirdly paced and overstuffed movie even that much more confusing. Plus, it is an obvious plot point I thought the movie had introduced and then just skipped.
Usually, I will say if you are going to watch Virus, get the RiffTrax version. But you know I really can’t in this case. The riffs are fine on their own. There are surprisingly few references to our own recent worldwide pandemic (Cowards).
More problematically, there seem to be few running gags, and the observations seem very surface level. Not a horrible job, but this is a rare case where I honestly enjoyed the non-RiffTrax version of the film more. (Not by much, mind you. Of course, now I have to watch the 2 1/2 hour version I just discovered on YouTube, so I will update if necessary). My favorite part of the RiffTrax version is their sheepish explanation on why they sat on this film so long. Kevin boldly exclaims that the uncut, unriffed version is unwatchable. I have to disagree on this one, Kevin.
Okay, Kevin has a point
If Kevin was referring to the US cut of Virus as seen on Amazon, for example, that the RiffTrax clearly came from based on poor film quality. Then yes, Kevin Murphy is wrong. But Kevin is a very talented professional, so I have a feeling he has seen and was referring to the two and a half hour Japanese version of Virus that I saw after writing my original review. And in this case, Kevin makes a good point.
What is bizarre about the extended cut (or original cut if you will) of Virus is that it doesn’t solve any of my complaints. The movie still skips from dead sheep (properly identified in the Japanese version as located in Kazakhstan rather than Cossackland or whatever the US cut calls it) to dead people in Milan.
Virus also still gives no explanation of the whole Norwegian mass murder/suicide). What does it add? Lots of child suicide and domestic drama and non-stoic Japanese people beating each other up. Also, the US general is clearly more evil than the US version, which makes me wonder who in the US ordered reshoots and edits on that.
Still, Kevin is not wrong… it is a trudge.
