Virus

A rip-roaring apocalypse thriller about a germ warfare virus that escapes and devastates the world. Bearing strong echoes of Stephen King's book The Stand and Romero's The Crazies, plus more than a hint of On the Beach, the film has as many locations and characters as a fat paperback, but is saved from the anonymity that sometimes afflicts such ventures by its wonderfully fatalistic tone: in this English-speaking co-production, Kinji Fukasaku allows his Japanese masochism full rein ('How can the entire Japanese population have died in three months?' someone pleads) and dispatches an all-star American cast with happy abandon. Admittedly his film contains some slightly repellent notions about the submission of sexuality to reason, which are as hard to swallow as Chuck Connors playing a British Naval Captain, but you can forgive a lot to a film-maker audacious enough to destroy the world twice over in one movie.