Customer Reviews

Virus [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I only gave this VIDEO one star, but I'd give the FILM 4 stars. I really like this film, in spite of some of the implausable ideas like a single person being able to arm our nuclear arsenal. However, this particular video being sold (which I bought and have just now viewed) is MASSACRED! It looks & sounds like someone set up a camcorder in their living room & taped the movie off their TV. The sound is TERRIBLE, the framing cuts off any captions & subtitles, and, to add insult to injury, they CUT OUT the last 10 minutes of the film showing the journey back to the survivors in Antartica -- it ends with the world being destroyed by the nuclear explosions! Shame on whoever did this! Now I have to go try to buy a used Beta machine on eBay so I can watch my old Beta tape of this movie!

I was thrilled to not only find this DVD listed here, but to find the uncut, 155 minute version. But unfortunately, even though it is listed on the package, and on this site, as 155 minutes, it isn't -- this is the 103 minute international cut of the film. Still, this is a great film, and includes the dialog with the corpses in the church that was cut from the television version. I just wish someone would release the Japanese cut on DVD in the U.S.

The quality of this DVD isn't so great. The picture is grainy and the sound isn't very good. But it's not terrible, and again, I was happy just to get this film on DVD.

If anyone knows where I can get the 155 minute version on Region 1 DVD, please let me know!

Just to be clear, those 4 stars are for the FILM - not for this disc!

Directed in 1980 by the late Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) this apocalyptic film basically exists in two versions: the 'international' version (108 mins) and the full-length Japanese version (155 mins).

I discovered this film languishing on one of those 50-film DVD compilations and found it to be a real diamond in the rough. Despite the appalling quality of the pan & scan print, the film shone.

Intrigued enough to want to find a good-quality DVD of this film, I came across this disc, which was the only standalone version out there. Reviews said that the picture quality wasn't great, and the print was still pan & scan, but at least this disc included a few minutes of additional material missing from the version I'd seen. It was cheap, so I went for it. And, sure enough, there was a little bit of extra material in this version - but the picture quality was just as bad. Blurry, cropped, and horrible. Some scenes are even anamorphically squashed ... the sun is not normally an egg-shaped oval - but here it is! :(

In 2002 Japan received a superb 2-disc DVD release of this film containing both versions. Sadly this was a limited edition. Don't bother looking for it - chances are you won't find it, and, besides, the full-length Japanese version wasn't of much use to us Western viewers as (unsurprisingly) most of the additional scenes are in Japanese with no English subtitles available.

To cut to the chase, leave this disc be. Instead, scroll up to the search bar at the top of this page and type in 'Sonny Chiba Action Pack' :) There you'll find the full-length 155 minute Japanese version of 'Virus' on Region 1 DVD in a sparkling widescreen print, with excellent picture and sound quality, and (removable) English subtitles for the occasional Japanese-language scenes. Do yourself a favor, buy that instead and see this film as it was meant to be seen.

This little known classic was the most expensive Japanese film production of the early `80s, and one of the finest disaster movies ever made. Virus is massive in scale, with an epic, end-of-the-world plot that marries the best aspects of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain with the desperate post-apocalyptic action of The Day After Tomorrow.

The film is a lot of fun, but the DVD is beyond terrible. It looks and sounds as if someone projected it onto a wall and shot that image off the wall for this DVD. Horrible, horrible quality!!! Not even worth the $.78 that it's selling for used. The producers of this garbage DVD should be ashamed of themselves. They're obviously trying to make a quick buck with no regard whatsoever for quality.

My only complaint about 'Virus' is that I got a copy that was shortened by a good 40-plus minutes and is not in widescreen ... and so at times it felt like I was watching a pan and scan movie that had been liberally edited. However, the good news is that 'Virus', even suffering from these handicaps, is still good. The movie (made in the great decade of movies like this -- the 80s) involves the theft and eventual accidental release of a virus so lethal, it wipes out everyone in the world ... except for a few explorers and military types in the arctic. These survivors must band together and find ways to keep going. The great twist is that, in the 80s, many nations didn't get along but still had exploration stations grouped near one another in the arctic ... Russians and South Americans and French and Americans must fight their dislike for each other and learn to, well, get along. And that proves to be really fascinating, especially when a Russian commander orders the destruction of one of his own submarines because it might be infected -- and so the Americans gladly help out by torpedoing the sub to the bottom of the ocean (who said the Americans and Russians couldn't get along). This movie is a whos who of disaster movie royalty -- George Kennedy (and let's be honest, if it has George Kennedy, you know you're gonna like it), Chuck Connors (being manlier than man), Henry Silva (the budget movie weirdo), Glenn Ford and Robert Vaughn and Olivia Hussey (sadly Olivia is kind of wasted in this one, but she's still beautiful ... just the kind of woman you want to gaze upon as a deadly virus wipes out the planet). This is a Japanese movie and so the metaphysics and the actual action get mixed up into something that kind of resembles poetry some times. The other times, the movie has you riveted as it moves along at a breakneck pace (part of that pacing may be the 40 minutes of editing). Again, a widescreen version of this obviously epic movie would have been nice, as well as the entire movie ... but for the price and for the resulting movie, it is still a good deal. And again, it's got George Kennedy ... the grand old man of disaster. That's worth a look.

This is the WRONG VERSION of a good movie. This version is 108 min. and has 50 minutes cut from the original. Amazon has the 155 min. movie for about $10. Search under "movies and tv" using the sub-title "Day of Resurrection". The case has Japanese writing on the top half of the case and under it in smaller print is "Virus: Day of Resurrection". Video quality is very good. There is some over-acting and bad dialog but overall, the movie is great! This is one of my favorites!

This was a long movie so maybe they cut it for that reason. The ending is important and it is gone! YOu can watch this on Pub-D-Dub with reasonable video quality and the subtitles for free if you have a Roku or similar.

This was a slow movie and very predictable and the acting for popular stars was some what disapointing.

LOVED this when it first came out & still DO!!! It took a long time to find it and very happy with this copy!