CineBad!!!

A Russian communications ship is in the middle of the ocean communicating with the Mir Space Station. Suddenly, something attacks the space station and blows everything up on earth and in space. What was that? Cut to a small tugboat staffed by an international crew led by an Ahab-esque megalomaniacal captain (Sutherland), and Kit, the moral, independent navigator (Curtis.) During the eye of a typhoon, they come upon the abandoned Soviet ship and Captain Everton decides to claim salvage rights. He and Steve, another crew member (Baldwin), get to parry all sorts of rules of maritime law between them at this point, debating the legality of running into an oddly abandoned multi-million dollar ship in the middle of the sea and just claiming it. In an accent that I think was supposed to be Irish, Captain Everton gets more and more insane and greedy as he thinks about all of his potential riches.

However, Virus transcends the barriers of a mere greedy-person-trying-to-keep-all-the-money-at-all-costs flick, it also functions as a disaster movie (the impending typhoon) and a monster/sci-fi movie. The sci-fi element was by far the cheesiest. The sci-fi element takes over when we discover that an alien force has beamed itself aboard the Russian ship and taken control of the mainframes. from there, it took control of the “state of the art robotic lab” that just happened to be on board, and started building robots. Not content with mere robots, the alien force started killing off Russian crew members to turn them into more robots. It’s definitely cool in a Borg-like sort of way when the alien-possessed robots start attaching robotic limbs to the corpses. The most advanced robot has 6 arms, and the only visible human part remaining is its teeth. After all, human teeth are much more effective than, say, metal spikes or other robotic devices they could have built.

The crew members decide that the best way to solve their differences and come to a mutually beneficial arrangement, is to try to communicate with the aliens through a computer terminal. Luckily, the Russian ship’s mainframes contained useful information on how to speak, read, and write in English, allowing the Alien Force is able to tell the crew members to basically bugger-off, because they’re about to be turned into spare parts factories anyway. Ooh- the irony!! The aliens consider the humans to be a “virus!” The Captain, in his ever-fluctuating accent, tries to form an alliance with the aliens by typing “Everton is the dominant life form,” thinking it will earn the aliens’ respect. It doesn’t, as is fairly predictable. Donald Sutherland makes a mighty good alien- possessed half robotic corpse, though!

The end, like all good monster flicks, is left wide open for a sequel, which is usually the scariest part. When will we have to subject ourselves to Virus II? And we know we will, because of the pleasantly high cheese factor!