Summary Capsule
Trapped on a high-tech boat gone insane, people die and scream and stuff
Justin's Rating: Johnny Five is alive... and back for vengeance
Justin's Review: Some people say the golden age of bad B-grade horror films are long since gone, forever vanished to whatever state that giant nuclear ants and sixty foot women go to (I'm thinking Iowa). But that's just hobgnosh, since we continue to get sequels to films like Troll or Leprechaun or (and God help us all) Air Bud: Golden Retriever. Some modern bad horror flicks have no disillusion about what they're bringing the public; it's, "maybe five people will rent this and then we can get takeout Chinese tomorrow night." Yet some other films sport massive disillusions to their very nature. Despite having scripts written with fingerpaint (wasn't that stuff cool?), they still force respectable actors to be straight-faced about it, instead of hamming it up like they properly should.
Virus is the latter, a mismash of sci-fi/horror concepts that has no other great strength than just being plain bad. Still, I liked it. Following PoolMan's Rant that Hollywood likes to produce two movies simultaneously with similar themes, Virus joins Deep Rising in replacing a haunted house with a big ol' ship, kind of a "terror on the high seas" concept. Our heroes are a bunch of traders/scavengers who stumble upon a supposedly deserted Russian ship. Their captain (Donald Sutherland) is a depressed moron, their second in command is Jamie Lee Curtis, and I'm pretty sure that a Baldwin is in there as well. Desperate to make serious dough by claiming the ship as salvage, the crew subjects themselves to terror and shouting. Do you ever notice that people in horror films tend to shout a lot? And not even at the scary moments, like, all the time. "I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!" "DON'T FORGET TO LIGHT A MATCH, YOU IDIOT!" "AHH! YOU DIDN'T PUT THE TOILET SEAT DOWN!"
So far it sounds like the plot to Alien, right? Heh, the ripoff keeps on rolling. It seems the terror originated from an outer space light-virus-thing that beamed down from Mir onto the ship, and promptly got stuck there. Poor space virus, doesn't even know how to work a modem. It then whittles away the time by turning the entire crew into cyborgs, all of which look like rejects from Terminator or Star Trek's Borg. It gets pretty gruesome as the boarders discover all the human body parts lined up like a conveyer belt, ready for assembly.
Jamie Lee Curtis has never been an object of my fandom. Sure, she's sort of pretty (but too manish to be attractive), she can get tough and violent like the best (but never has the greatest of "I just killed you or am about to kill you" lines), and she can scream (but never quite looks terrified). Generally, she exists to have morbid premonitions ("Something's not right... let's go home and cry to momma") and shepherd all the squabbling sissies to their doom. They do find a cutie on board, but the law of horror survival says that only one female can make it to the end credits alive, and Jamie's got the guts for cannibalism.
Easily the highlight of the film comes toward the end, when Baldwin and Curtis escape the ship. Early on in the film, the token black guy goes moderately insane and starts building some toy, muttering to himself in a moderately insane kind of way. I sometimes talk to myself, but I rarely, say, build a custom Harley while doing so. So he finishes building his toy and promptly gets killed (of COURSE he gets killed... we might be able to tolerate a homicidal virus unleashed on mankind, but we dare not let an inventor loose, since he might create a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows). Essentially, Baldwin and Curtis use this device to bug out, which turns out to be a massive ejection seat, something that KITT might've whipped up had he been an ocean-going vessel.
This haunted house at sea is somewhat intriguing with the idea of a high tech monster instead of hosting the typical demon or killer swarm of Bats. Most of the actors get to play double duty as the "good" guys, and their Tinkertoy counterpart. At least I give the movie some credit for giving both the good and bad guys some serious armament (if I have to see one more movie with an airlock explosion...). It all degenerates into a fight to get off (but plenty of plot twists manage to keep them in harm's way) and plenty of bloody moments. It's no hard stretch to rip holes in the story's weak (and laughable) plot, particularly when it comes to this superintelligent virus that is KILLED BY WATER, and thus promptly LANDS ON A BOAT. Really just watch to see the cool little death machines, which come in all flavors and sizes. Virus 2 was supposed to revolve around a kitchen toaster's homicidal plan to knock off a June Cleaver lookalike, but unfortunately that project was scrapped.
Special Note: After writing this review, I looked up a number of other movie critics who echoed a lot of things I said here, such as the Borg, the stupidity of a computer-based virus in the middle of the ocean, and the duality with Deep Rising. I can only assume these critics traveled forward in time, ripped off my review, and returned back to 1999 to take the credit.
 1999 Rated R SciFi Horror Director
Starring
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Russian cosmonauts can be pretty darn cute
New horror movie rule: any person with a cheeky nickname (like "Squeaky" or "Tiny") is destined to die, no exceptions
Thank God that everyone from other countries can always speak English
Poor Mir space station got beat up in every film before it crashed to earth (see Armageddon)
The Movie Store!
Virus: Movie [VHS]
Virus: Movie [DVD]
Virus: Soundtrack [CD]
Intermission!
Virus was written by Chuck Pfarrer, who also penned the comic book series of the same name. Mr. Pfarrer also lent a hand to Red Planet, The Jackel, Barb Wire, Darkman and Navy SEALS.
This is director John Bruno's first solo directorial film. He also co-directed one movie before this one with James Cameron and Stan Winston called T2 3D: BATTLE ACROSS TIME.
Official and Not-So-Official Websites
Universal Official Site
Groovy Quotes
Richard: Let me tell you something. You get me killed and I'm going to kick your ass.
Captain Everton: Everton is the dominant species. I am Everton.
Indian guy: Touch it again and I'll cut your hands off.
Richie: I can respect that.
The Virus' analysis of humans: SPECIES IS DESTRUCTIVE, INVASIVE, NOXIOUS. HARMFUL TO THE BODY OF THE WHOLE.
DVD Review
This disc is moderately packed for such a bomb, with a trailer, featurette, director's commentary, and some other assorted crap. Honestly, why would they assume you're THIS fascinated with a cult B-horror film to see all this stuff? Well, perhaps the director's commentary would've been fascinating in a morbid sense ("My inspiration for this limb severing came from Shakespear's Hamlet").
If you liked this movie, try these:
Aliens
Deep Rising
Terminator
