Chilling Classics Cthursday: VIRUS (1980)

I tells ya, grabbing the ol' 50-pack every week for Chilling Classics Cthursday is a bit of a thrill. The anticipation as I dig through the box-o-movies! The moment of truth when RNGesus's selection is revealed! It feels like coming down the stairs on Christmas morning as a yoot, or reaching into the bowl at a Saturday night neighborhood key party as an elder. The movie itself may be garbage or it may be gold, of course. It might even be gold-garbage or garbage-gold. But no matter; I make high-pressure executive decisions about what to watch or not watch six days out of the week, so my seventh day of rest is appreciated. And I doubly--nay, triply--appreciate that this whole endeavor puts movies in front of my eyeballs that I may otherwise have never encountered. 

Like this week's movie, Virus (1980)...although it's strange this was not on my radar because on paper, at least, it seems like it was absolutely made just for me. So much so, in fact, that I'm pretty sure you could play Final Girl Mad Libs at a key party (that's what you do at key parties, right?) and easily end up with Virus's story and cast. 

Over in East Germany, some shady types abscond with a vial of MM88, a virus so virulent and deadly that it freaks out the scientists behind it. Unfortunately for...well, the world, the shady types crash their getaway plane and MM88 art loosed. Dubbed the "Italian Flu," the virus wipes out millions and millions of people all over the globe, including US President Glenn Ford and Senator Robert Vaughn!

Researchers at all the international antarctic research stations are safe, not only because of their isolation, but because the virus becomes dormant in below-zero temperatures. As if figuring out what the hell they're going to do as the presumed last survivors wasn't enough, they also must contend with another terrifying development: one of the scientists predicts that an earthquake is about to fuck shit up back in Washington, DC, which will surely trigger the automated nuclear response system that was armed by a hotheaded US general before he croaked. It's got to be deactivated before there's global nuclear armageddon, which means a likely one-way trip into VirusLand for some someones.

Virus is a curiosity, indeed: a Japanese disaster movie with an all-star, mostly English-speaking cast, directed by Kinji Fukasaku of Battle GD Royale fame. At the time of its production, it was reportedly the most expensive Japanese film ever made, one that producers hoped would break through in the western market. Instead, it flopped both at home and abroad, where its 156-minute runtime was chopped down to 108 minutes, its widescreen visuals were chopped down to pan-and-scan, and it was chopped plopped down into the public domain, where it landed in cheapie releases like Mill Creek's Chilling Classics. According to the legends, the full version of the film is only available in a random Sonny Chiba 3-pack (Chiba appears in the western cut for all of maybe five minutes). Essentially, they excised as much of the Japanese content as possible for the truncated cut, including the collapse of Tokyo in the wake of the virus, whole-ass backstories for major characters, and a denouement that is perhaps a bit less bleak than the one we get. They even cut the subtitles for the handful of Japanese scenes that remain. Madness. 

Also madness: that so many of the obscure Chilling Classics Cthursday messterpieces (like Drive-In Massacre, say) have received the fancy Blu-ray treatment while something like Virus, with its stacked crew and cast, is crying out for one.

Because honey when I say stacked cast, I mean a DISASTER MOVIE STACKED CAST that would make Irwin Allen proud. At the risk of sounding like imdb, can I just say:

• Glenn Ford
• Robert Vaughn
• Sonny Chiba
• Henry Silva
• Edward James Olmos
• Chuck Connors
• Bo Svenson
• Janis Ian provides the end credits song??
• OLIVIA HUSSEY
• GEORGE KENNEDY

I am telling you, the hits just kept coming and coming. I was that Leonardo DiCaprio meme, pointing at the screen every time a beloved and familiar face appeared.

The best part, perhaps, about this insane cast is that Fukasaku did not give one flying fig about accents, or the lack thereof. Olivia Hussey is Norwegian, but just talks like Olivia Hussey (yes, it is like cashmere for your earholes). And really, what could be better than Chuck Connors as a British submarine captain saying "You chaps alright?" in his regular Chuck Connors voice? Nothing could, that's what.

"Pip pip, fellas"

Virus gets to it quickly and goes hard as MM88 wipes out humanity. Fukasaku makes liberal (and sometimes distressing) use of stock footage as the world collapses into riots and chaos. Things slow down considerably when the story shifts to Antartica, as a whole Benetton's worth of global representatives try assess, plan, and survive. Surprisingly, they only have one or two flare-ups before settling into the "let's all work together" vibe the movie seems to put out. 

It's that vibe, however, that leads to an issue I found so off-putting that it almost completely derailed the I Love Virus Express. At the combined international research bases, there are 855 men, and 8 women. Sure enough, this red flag of a demographic disparity quickly becomes a central issue when one of the women is sexually assaulted. A French scientist responds with, essentially, "Iz zis not zee way of man? Iz man not an animal?" 

The men decide that the only answer is for the women to learn "a new morality," wherein they must forget about 1:1 relationships and "accommodate more than one man." Mind you, this is not about survivors feeling tasked with repopulating the planet. It's strictly about 8 women servicing 855 men, whenever the men feel like it, through "appointments." 

This struck me as fairly appalling and completely egregious, particularly in a Japanese film given the country's dark history concerning the hundreds of thousands of women (overwhelmingly, Korean women) forced into sexual slavery as "comfort women" during World War II. It's a history that Japan has downplayed, inaccurately recorded, and even outright denied and tried to erase. Since 1992, there has been a weekly protest at the Japanese embassy in Seoul by some of the few remaining survivors and those in solidarity to receive some justice, particularly a satisfactory return of dignity to the women by means of a sincere acknowledgment and apology. 

So to watch the 8 women in Virus be told they just have to suck it up and "be accommodating" was, in a word, "not it." The icing on this repellant cake is that the women served no other purpose in the film. None. It was 1980 so surely they couldn't even be scientists at the research stations, they served as secretaries. Virus easily could have gone full The Thing and done away with female characters altogether, they mattered so little. (Honestly, I'm still mad about it as I sit here typing this!)

If there were no women in the movie, however, then you wouldn't have the limp love story between Olivia Hussey's character Marit (she's Norwegian!) and Masao Kusakari's Dr. Shûzô Yoshizumi. It may be expanded on in the Japanese cut, but here they just kind of look at each other a few times and have, like, one conversation. I get it, though, they're the two biggest babes in Antarctica and literally the hottest people left alive. Might as well fall in love! (Though Marit still has to keep all of her "appointments" with other men. New morality, remember.)

Sigh. That whole angle was a real buzzkill for me, like my bra immediately went up in flames, you know? Otherwise, though, Virus has so much going for it and is worth a view (if not some kind of reassessment) even in the heavily-edited state. The acting is largely as ham-and-cheesy as you might expect from that cast list (and from a disaster movie), but it works. The film predicts the Cold War nuclear scare downer films that would soon come along to traumatize audiences, such as The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984). It's interesting that America quickly assumes the leadership position amongst the survivors, yet America is also responsible for the virus and the nuclear threat. We're portrayed as trigger-happy, gung-ho for war, and a country that denounces the Soviet Union while also engaging in Soviet tactics like developing biological weapons and erasing whistleblowers. That sounds...well, completely accurate, really.

Although now that I think about it, maybe they weren't all following "America" so much as they were just following George Kennedy. Now that's an idea I can get behind.

Chilling Classics Cthursday: METAMORPHOSIS (1990)

I will admit, when I saw the little (1990) on the cardboard sleeve holding this week's Chilling Classic Metamorphosis, I flinched so hard that I got cramps in places I didn't even know I had. Yeah, there's, like, The Exorcist III, but horror-ly speaking, there ain't much from that year to get excited about. But! When a credit for Joe D'Amato's production/distribution company FILMIRAGE appeared alongside writing and directing credits for George Eastman (aka Luigi Montefiori), I was cramping anew, but with curiosity. After all, Eastman co-wrote the 1987 giallo/slasher StageFright and co-wrote and starred in D'Amato's cannibal...err, classic?...Anthropophagus. Ah, so Metamorphosis is an Italian joint from these folks? Well, said I, this film should be a weirdo, perhaps gory, perhaps sleazy journey.

Spoiler alert: IT'S NOT. 

Dr. Peter Houseman (Gene LeBrock) is a brilliant, hot professor and genetic scientist who wears an obligatory 1990 mock turtleneck and is working on some top-secret project having to do with eradicating aging, disease, and death. 

It's always that with these geneticists, isn't it? Immortality! Who needs it, I say. Certainly no one in horror movies, because it never goes well.

And it's not going well for Peter, that's for sure. Not only does he keep killing his test subject monkeys (their alpha and beta waves go nuts after he injects too much glucose!), there's a suit from New York on the scene, as the folks in charge want to know where all the grant money Peter's department gets is going. Accountability! Who needs it, I say. On the bright side, the suit in question isn't "some hysterical old maid in menopause" as Peter fears, but rather a hot woman named Sally who makes eyes at him and is 29 years old. Or so she claims!

I know that style can affect someone's perceived age and there's that weird phenomenon where People Who Came Before You always seem older than they were Back Then. But 29? To that I say: hmm. One thing is for certain, though, and that's that Sally is a fucking drip. But that's okay, so is Peter! They are a couple of absolute drips who are part of the reason why Metamorphosis ends up being a near-total slog, so of course they fall in love. They even get a blue-lit, saxophone-filled 1990 sex scene that our more puritanical audiences of today would find "unnecessary" as it "doesn't move the plot forward." 

I find the whole conversation that's happening around cinematic sex scenes interesting, honestly. I can see why actors might say "no more sex scenes, please and thank you." I think intimacy coordinators are a good thing. It's awfully weird to think that sex scenes have historically been quasi-obligatory, especially in certain dramas, and we all just...accepted that. You paid your dues with surprise sex scenes when watching movies with your parents, either going to get a snack or suddenly paying a lot of attention to the family pet or simply sitting in the silent, mortifying awkwardness. It is rare, I think, for anyone to find these scenes "turn-ons" or even interesting--like I don't know who is getting off to these two loaves of crustless white bread having a go at it in Metamorphosis, but I'd like to meet them, theoretically. But I don't know, sex scenes were accepted like a...like a...like a new skin tag, maybe. You're not really a fan of it, it's not worth creating a fuss or going to the doctor over, but keep an eye on it. I'm not sure if that makes sense. 

It's the "not essential to the plot" aspect of the no sex scenes, please argument from audiences that bugs me because a movie filled with only scenes or interactions that are "essential" and "move the plot forward" sounds positively dreadful. (And really, even films where you could (should?) claim that the sex scenes are essential to the plot, such as Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden, are still denigrated so is that even really the argument?) 

Anyway! 

At risk of losing his funding and his laboratory, Peter takes drastic measures and decides to dose himself with his serum, which requires an injection in the eye!  

Let me tell you, by this point in the proceedings I had a feeling that Metamorphosis was going to be a stinker, but that injection machine briefly raised my hopes that I would at least get to experience a truly squirm-inducing moment. Surprisingly, however, Eastman stops short of going there, cutting the shot juuuuust as the needle is about to go in. Injectus interruptus! I was left imagining what barf-inducing injectinanigans someone like Lucio Fulci might have brought to the moment. Hmm, maybe there's a more explicit cut of Metamorphosis out there...? I don't care enough to find out, but maybe you do.

After this process, which is supposed to rewrite his genetic sequence or something, Peter sweats and gnashes his teeth sometimes, and has blackouts during which he goes out, beats up, and, it is implied, sexually assaults women. This was a groan-worthy development, but thankfully Eastman is restrained here as well and we don't see much. 

It's noteworthy, perhaps, that one of Peter's victims, a woman named, uh, "Prostitute," is played by frequent D'Amato/Eastman/Bruno Mattei collaborator/exploitation star Laura Gemser of the Black Emanuelle series in one of her final roles. More noteworthy, perhaps, is that she was also the film's costume designer, credited as Laurette Gemser. She moved away from acting, as she couldn't get any roles outside of exploitation pictures, and transitioned towards costume design in the late 80s before retiring from the public eye altogether in the early 90s. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is that she also designed the costumes for Troll 2. Oh my gooooooooood!

Peter finally begins an actual, you know, metamorphosis, but into what? At first, it involves some contact lenses and one scene of him writhing on the floor.

He soon starts turning into a reverse Benjamin Buttons, which is to say that he gets really old and thinks he's dying. Hmm now that I think about it, aren't we all reverse Benjamin Buttons? I've never seen the movie so I could be wrong, but who cares when it feels right!

Peter gets kind of gross but we can't really see it, and Sally is worried. He breaks out of the hospital and kills a few people but we don't really see that either--just some brief shots of the bloody aftermath. Now look, I'm not a gorehound by any means but sometimes gore is what a movie needs. And let me tell you, Metamorphosis needed gore! This is as gross as it gets, and it's not nearly gross enough to liven up the joint:

Eventually Peter makes his way back to his laboratory with the cops in hot pursuit. (Note: temper your expectations about the word "hot." And the word "pursuit," really, as the cops are just sort of at the lab all of a sudden.) Peter busts down a door from the inside, and we get the big reveal that we've been waiting for for 90 excruciating minutes.

A kind of t-rex? It's a pretty fun and decidedly unexpected moment no doubt. It immediately instills one--or me, anyway--with so much anticipation. Imagine a rampage by a man who is now a kind of t-rex and it's obviously a rubber kind of t-rex outfit! Heaven, right? Well, we don't get that because yet again,  Eastman plays it safe. Peter-rex stands there in the doorway, flailing his arms a little and going RARR while the cops shoot him a hundred times. Then we see a puddle of goo on the floor that we are to infer are the remains of Peter. I do not have the words to describe what a let down this is!

The whole damn thing was a let down of astronomical proportions. 

Okay, that might be an exaggeration. But Metamorphosis is a let down nonetheless, no matter how hard the score from PAHAMANIAN tries to add some pizazz. It's not good enough to be good, and it's not bad enough to be good. It's just sort of there, which is really the worst thing any movie can be. It was such a slog and a drag that I will say something I never imagined I would say: A close-enough version of this same story was told more entertainingly in another Chilling Classic...Track of the Moon Beast! At least that movie has Professor Johnny Longbow's quasi-recipe for Professor Johnny Longbow's chicken and corn stew, as well as Frank Larrabee's "California Lady." 

Oh well, next week we'll be on to another Tale from the 50-Pack and when asked about the lousy Metamorphosis, I'll describe it the way some guy in the movie described Peter-rex: "It was a nightmare...from the past."

Chilling Classics Cthursday: MESSIAH OF EVIL (1974)

On the one hand, I say that Mill Creek Entertainment should be immediately arrested because they have no business being within a country mile of Messiah of Evil. As you might expect, the Chilling Classics version of this beautiful and perfect dream of a movie is cropped and smushed and yellow-tinted and inexplicably begins with a frigging ballad wherein a woman croons "hold onnnnn to looooove" over the entirety of the (what should be) eerie opening scene. It's insane, and like I said, it should be an actual crime.

Guess which version is the Chilling Classic!

On the other hand, I say that Mill Creek Entertainment should be immediately presented with all of the Nobel Prizes because regardless of the quality, this here 50-pack was my intro to a movie that has since become one of my very favorites. Sure, that was in large part thanks to the Code Red DVD, which was so gorgeous that it was like seeing the movie with, like, a baby's brand-new eyeballs or something. But still, at least Mill Creek put this movie in front of me in some form.

I've written about and talked about this film many a time, so much that you likely know how I feel about it by now--and you likely also know how hard I recommend it. (If you don't know, the answers to both "how I feel" and "how hard I recommend" are "a fuck ton" and "very.") It's so cool that this cult classique is really getting out there, what with last year's fancy-ass Blu-ray from Radiance Films and its occasional appearance on streaming services and whatnot. It's accessible! The love is spreading, like the weirdos from Point Dume (or maybe Point Dune) who are peering around buildings at night and waiting. Waiting for you! And they'll take you one by one and no one will hear you scream. No one will hear you--well, you know.

There are times that I wonder whether or not I should go door to door and ask people if they've heard the good word about Messiah of Evil. That's how much I love it! But I'm also lazy, so please consider this blog to be my missionary work, and tell me:

Have you heard the good word about Messiah of Evil?