ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - January 15th
"VIRUS" released in 1999
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The Russian space station Mir contacts a research ship in the South Pacific, Akademik Vladislav Volkov. While the crews of both ships converse, a large energy source traveling through space strikes the Mir. The electrical surge hijacks the Mir and beams itself down to the oceangoing ship. The astronauts are killed, and the energy invades the ship's computer, wreaking havoc on the crew at the same time. Seven days later, during a typhoon, the tugboat Sea Star, captained by alcoholic Robert Everton (Donald Sutherland), loses its uninsured cargo, which was the captain's last chance to get out of debt. Sea Star's crew, led by navigator and ex-Navy officer Kelly Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis) and engineer Steve Baker (William Baldwin) discover the engine room taking on water; Foster suggests that they take refuge in the eye of the storm to make repairs. Everton agrees, but while Sea Star rests in calm waters, he contemplates committing suicide. Simultatenously, the Akademik Vladislav Volkov appears on Sea Star's radar, and realizing that it could be worth millions in salvage, Everton orders his crew aboard.
Almost all of the ship's electronics are destroyed and most of the wiring is slashed; even stranger, areas of the ship are riddled with bullet holes. They can't find any crew, though, much to Everton's delight (if there were crew he couldn't claim the ship as salvage). Everton orders Steve to go with fellow crewman, Squeaky (Julio Oscar Mechoso) and restore power to the ship. They do so, but immediately, the ship's anchor drops on its own, sinking the Sea Star with deckhand Hiko (Cliff Curtis) and first mate J.W. Woods, Jr. (Marshall Bell) on board. Steve leaves Squeaky to guard the engine room, where Squeaky is soon lured to his death by a robotic, spider-like creature. Hiko has been injured and gets saved by Steve, while Woods comes out unscathed. As Foster treats Hiko's leg in the sick bay, the only survivor of the Volkov crew—Chief Science Officer Nadia Vinogradova (Joanna Pacuła)— bursts in and shoots at them. She misses, and Steve manages to subdue her. Nadia is hysterical about "it" needing power to travel through the ship and implores them to shut down the engine. She hits Everton and swings an ax at Foster, who subdues her and takes her to the bridge.
When Squeaky does not respond to Steve's calls, Steve checks the engine room and orders Woods and crewman Richie Mason (Sherman Augustus) to help him. Richie and Woods encounter more strange robots and find an automated workshop producing them. When Richie prods a new machine, it shoots Woods with a nail gun, then the pair are attacked by what appears to be a gun-wielding Russian crew member. Eventually, Richie and Woods catch up with Steve, who has found the engine room door welded shut. They are suddenly attacked again by the Russian, who is revealed to be a cyborg. Since they already raided the munitions depot, the trio are able to battle the cyborg. At the bridge, Everton accuses Nadia of being the one who dropped the anchor and sank the Sea Star. He threatens to shoot her but Nadia doesn't care, as long as Everton cuts the ship's power. Realizing this makes no sense as Nadia was hiding in the sick bay, Foster stops him. Woods, Steve and Richie arrive with the apparently dead cyborg and set it on a table; beginning to connect the dots, Foster asks Nadia to tell them what happened. She explains that the electrical energy from the Mir boarded the ship eight days prior, and it was not just energy but a highly intelligent lifeform. It scanned the data on the ship's computers to learn how to kill humans, then started using the ship's machine shops - first, it built the smaller robots. After that it began killing the crew and converting them into cyborgs; the one on the table was the ship's captain and Nadia's husband. When the eye of the storm passes over and violent seas return, the crew looks for a way to destroy the creature before the entity makes it way to civilization and takes over the world!
Almost all of the ship's electronics are destroyed and most of the wiring is slashed; even stranger, areas of the ship are riddled with bullet holes. They can't find any crew, though, much to Everton's delight (if there were crew he couldn't claim the ship as salvage). Everton orders Steve to go with fellow crewman, Squeaky (Julio Oscar Mechoso) and restore power to the ship. They do so, but immediately, the ship's anchor drops on its own, sinking the Sea Star with deckhand Hiko (Cliff Curtis) and first mate J.W. Woods, Jr. (Marshall Bell) on board. Steve leaves Squeaky to guard the engine room, where Squeaky is soon lured to his death by a robotic, spider-like creature. Hiko has been injured and gets saved by Steve, while Woods comes out unscathed. As Foster treats Hiko's leg in the sick bay, the only survivor of the Volkov crew—Chief Science Officer Nadia Vinogradova (Joanna Pacuła)— bursts in and shoots at them. She misses, and Steve manages to subdue her. Nadia is hysterical about "it" needing power to travel through the ship and implores them to shut down the engine. She hits Everton and swings an ax at Foster, who subdues her and takes her to the bridge.
When Squeaky does not respond to Steve's calls, Steve checks the engine room and orders Woods and crewman Richie Mason (Sherman Augustus) to help him. Richie and Woods encounter more strange robots and find an automated workshop producing them. When Richie prods a new machine, it shoots Woods with a nail gun, then the pair are attacked by what appears to be a gun-wielding Russian crew member. Eventually, Richie and Woods catch up with Steve, who has found the engine room door welded shut. They are suddenly attacked again by the Russian, who is revealed to be a cyborg. Since they already raided the munitions depot, the trio are able to battle the cyborg. At the bridge, Everton accuses Nadia of being the one who dropped the anchor and sank the Sea Star. He threatens to shoot her but Nadia doesn't care, as long as Everton cuts the ship's power. Realizing this makes no sense as Nadia was hiding in the sick bay, Foster stops him. Woods, Steve and Richie arrive with the apparently dead cyborg and set it on a table; beginning to connect the dots, Foster asks Nadia to tell them what happened. She explains that the electrical energy from the Mir boarded the ship eight days prior, and it was not just energy but a highly intelligent lifeform. It scanned the data on the ship's computers to learn how to kill humans, then started using the ship's machine shops - first, it built the smaller robots. After that it began killing the crew and converting them into cyborgs; the one on the table was the ship's captain and Nadia's husband. When the eye of the storm passes over and violent seas return, the crew looks for a way to destroy the creature before the entity makes it way to civilization and takes over the world!
[after Ritchie activates a robot that attacks them]
Hiko: [threatening Ritchie with his Maori war-club] Touch it again, I'll cut your hands off!
[Ritchie pauses]
Richie.: Yeah, I can respect that.
Top: Sea Star's navigator, ex-Navy officer Kelly Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis), has a bad feeling aboard boarding the derelict Akademik Vladislav Volkov;
Above: Engineer Steve Baker (William Baldwin) and captain Robert Everton (Donald Sutherland) discuss the salvage of the Russian vessel.
Screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer first conceived the idea for Virus while writing the screenplay for John Woo's Hard Target, basing it on the film The Naked Prey. After the script did not turn out Pfarrer worked on a script influenced by the film Aliens that became the basis for Virus. Because of the special effects that the script called for, it was impossible to make the script into a movie at that time, and instead took it to Dark Horse Comics who published it as a 4-part comic book series in 1992. Years later, now confident that special effects technology had caught up, Pfarrer revised the original script and pitched it to Mutual Film Company executives Mark Gordan and Gary Levinsohn, who co-produced the film with former Lightstorm Entertainment producer Gale Anne Hurd (through her newly founded Valhalla Motion Pictures).
Having worked with Hurd on previous Lightstorm productions The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) (as well as on True Lies (1994) and the Universal Studios attraction, T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996)), visual effects supervisor John Bruno was chosen to make his directorial debut. Interestingly, Bruno was about to start work on the visual effects for Titanic (1997) and bowed out of the mega-project when the offer came through to direct his first feature. With production set to begin in January, 1997 cast members, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin and Joanne Pucula, travelled to Newport News, Virginia for principal photography.
The ship used as the Akademik Vladislav Volkov was the ex-USAFS Hoyt S. Vandenberg. which at the time of filming the ship had been decommissioned since the mid-80's and mothballed in the James River Reserve Fleet. Because of the ship being mothballed, the Vandenberg was covered in rust and disrepair when production began. As such, only one side of the ship was painted and dressed up, leaving the other half in poor condition; Hence, only one side of the ship was ever filmed on camera for the movie and one of the ship's satellite dish antennas was intentionally damaged for the film's final scene where the ship was destroyed. Interestingly, when the Vandenberg was sunk outside Key West, Florida (on May 27, 2009) to serve as an artificial reef and for recreational diving, she still had the Russian name in Cyrillic lettering on her from the movie as she went down.
Having worked with Hurd on previous Lightstorm productions The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) (as well as on True Lies (1994) and the Universal Studios attraction, T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996)), visual effects supervisor John Bruno was chosen to make his directorial debut. Interestingly, Bruno was about to start work on the visual effects for Titanic (1997) and bowed out of the mega-project when the offer came through to direct his first feature. With production set to begin in January, 1997 cast members, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin and Joanne Pucula, travelled to Newport News, Virginia for principal photography.
The ship used as the Akademik Vladislav Volkov was the ex-USAFS Hoyt S. Vandenberg. which at the time of filming the ship had been decommissioned since the mid-80's and mothballed in the James River Reserve Fleet. Because of the ship being mothballed, the Vandenberg was covered in rust and disrepair when production began. As such, only one side of the ship was painted and dressed up, leaving the other half in poor condition; Hence, only one side of the ship was ever filmed on camera for the movie and one of the ship's satellite dish antennas was intentionally damaged for the film's final scene where the ship was destroyed. Interestingly, when the Vandenberg was sunk outside Key West, Florida (on May 27, 2009) to serve as an artificial reef and for recreational diving, she still had the Russian name in Cyrillic lettering on her from the movie as she went down.
[Foster is captured by the Goliath Monster]
Goliath Machine: English. Do you speak English?
Kelly Foster: Fuck you!
[Goliath Monster calculates the response]
Goliath Machine: [confirms] English.
Top: The "entity" transforms Everton into Bio-Everton!;
Above: The virus manifests itself in the Goliath robot.
With prosthetics designed by special makeup effects supervisor Vincent J. Guastini, Donald Sutherland spent over six hours in the makeup chair for hos transformation into BioEverton. The ordeal was so much for Sutherland to bear that he wanted to film all of his scenes which required special makeup effects in one day so he would not have to go through the makeup application process again! With only three-and-a-half months to produce the robot from the initial drawings to the finished product, effects company XFX Images delivered the giant "Goliath" robot; standing approximately 9 ft tall and weighing an estimated 4000 lbs!
A line of action figures, the Virus Collector Series, was developed by ReSaurus to promote the film, and, in 1999, prolific French video game developer Cryo (also known as Cryo Interactive Entertainment) released on PlayStation Virus: It is Aware. The game is a survival-horror title akin to Resident Evil in concept, although the game's storyline had little to do with the plot of Virus, apart from the introduction and ending cinematics, which feature creatures infesting a ship and a space station, respectively; the actual game follows a female police officer, Joan, trapped in an infested hotel along with her partner Sutter. The game was generally poorly regarded and has since fallen into obscurity.
Virus was a critical and commercial flop, grossing less than half of its budget and earning awful reviews. Roger Ebert gave Virus an even lower rating than Deep Rising (a similarly themed monster movie released the year before), which he considered one of the worst films of 1998 and placed on his most-hated list. Jamie Lee Curtis herself did not think highly of the film; in an IGN.com interview in 2003, Curtis stated that Virus, "would be the all time piece of shit...It's just dreadful... That's the only good reason to be in bad movies. Then when your friends have [bad] movies you can say 'Ahhhh, I've got the best one.' I'm bringing Virus!"
A line of action figures, the Virus Collector Series, was developed by ReSaurus to promote the film, and, in 1999, prolific French video game developer Cryo (also known as Cryo Interactive Entertainment) released on PlayStation Virus: It is Aware. The game is a survival-horror title akin to Resident Evil in concept, although the game's storyline had little to do with the plot of Virus, apart from the introduction and ending cinematics, which feature creatures infesting a ship and a space station, respectively; the actual game follows a female police officer, Joan, trapped in an infested hotel along with her partner Sutter. The game was generally poorly regarded and has since fallen into obscurity.
Virus was a critical and commercial flop, grossing less than half of its budget and earning awful reviews. Roger Ebert gave Virus an even lower rating than Deep Rising (a similarly themed monster movie released the year before), which he considered one of the worst films of 1998 and placed on his most-hated list. Jamie Lee Curtis herself did not think highly of the film; in an IGN.com interview in 2003, Curtis stated that Virus, "would be the all time piece of shit...It's just dreadful... That's the only good reason to be in bad movies. Then when your friends have [bad] movies you can say 'Ahhhh, I've got the best one.' I'm bringing Virus!"
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 9%
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