Search - Classic Disaster Movies (Virus / Hurricane / Deadly Harvest) on DVD

Disasters, all right! Disasters of the cinema arts!

Bunny Man! | Seattle, WA USA | 04/22/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"These, folks, are cheesy shows. You watch the first (Virus) and wonder how a film could be worse. But you watch the second (Hurricane) and realize that yes, it is possible to make an even worse movie than Virus. But boy oh boy, when you get to number 3 (Deadly Harvest) you realize that the impossible has been made manifest! It is also stunningly awful!

In short (the films aren't worth more than that), the productions are cheap and sleazy, the actors are off their feed (if indeed, they'd eaten from the apple of talent at all), the settings are lousy, most of the footage is stock footage, and some shots are even repeated. The scores match all of this in quality. But the DVD presentation equals the worst I have seen on the medium (a cheapo early DVD of Metropolus, where all the subtitles were trimmed off left and right). The film is grainy, they are too dark, etc. etc. etc.

The reason to own these epics? If you are an exhaustive collector of the"

Squeeze too much stuff on a DVD and the picture degrades

D. L. Hall | Eureka, CA USA | 09/06/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This DVD taught me that if you squeeze too much stuff on a dvd, the picture degrades. All three of the movies on this DVD have terrible resolution, which diminishes any opportunity for enjoyment. The resolution competes with the silly plots and terrible acting so I don't know what's worse."

3 hardly known TV quality disaster films

X. Allen Smith | Portland, OR USA | 12/13/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This DVD set is definatly not the best in the world. It features three minescule entries into the disaster film genre of the 1970's. All three films are television quality, both in script and in picture. The best of these three by far is "Virus" (1980 starring Chuck Connors and George Kennedy) AKA "Day of Ressurrection" or "Fukkatsu No Hi" in Japan. The other two films are "Deadly Harvest" about a world food shortage due to the disintegration of the ozone layer or something, anyway it's really quite a bore. The film is set in the late '70's on a farm where a family has to protect their food from "city folk" who keep trying to steal it. Then there's "Hurricane" of 1974 starring Larry Hagman. This film was okay, the quality is pretty bad and the story and acting is VERY campy. There is a lot of hurricane stock footage from the 1960's-70's in it as well. "Virus" is also presented pretty poorly and this edition features the American TV version of the film that is short nearly an hour of footage, but it's still a pretty interesting film without it.

There are also some pointless special features like a Trivia section that really doesn't have a whole lot to do with the actual films shown as it does with the pretty famous actors that are for some reason in the films. And that is really all there is to say about this very unimportant set of films."

"Fukkatsu no hi" it ain't so kiss your $$$ goodbye!

TANSTAAFL | Arizona USA | 04/29/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I was buying something on Amazon and I was informed that for an additional $5.01 purchase I would get the free super saver shipping so I browsed the cheapie DVDs looking for something palatable and I found this DVD compilation and bought it. because of Virus or "Fukkatsu no hi" as the 3 hour Japanese version was called.
Originally I saw Virus on Showtime in the 80's it ran 2 hours 10 minutes and wasn't bad even though as I understand it an hour of Japanese scenes and dialog had been removed.. The special effects were TV quality but the storyline was good. I have been telling friends about it for years and they wanted to see it. I've searched for the original version but I only found it on Japanese websites at a cost of over $60 US. (At that exchange rate no wonder the Japanese take month long golfing vacations in Hawaii).
When the order arrived after 3 weeks and not the 10 days advertised by Amazon, my wife and I planned on watching Virus that night. What a disappointment. The picture was so dark that we had to crank up the brightness and picture quality on our 32 inch JVC to the maximum setting. I knew that there would be a major reduction in quality when compressing 6 hours onto a 4.7 GB DVD but it was degraded further because The transfer was done from a well worn print or overplayed tape.
To our further disappointment many of the more poignant scenes had been deleted. Gone were the Tokyo hospital scenes where only four nurses were left to care for the thousands of dead or dying. Gone was the scene where the Japanese Antarctic station made radio contact with a young American boy who was the only survivor in his town. All gone because the film had been cut to 107 minutes!.
We haven't watched the other two "classics" as yet. Maybe we haven't been bored sufficiently with our 500 Dishnetwork channels or maybe its because we are avoiding the inevitable. Whichever it is after we finally watch the last movies we'll use the disk as a coaster or toss it in the local Salvation Army donation bin. Either way my money is gone and when I place my next order with Amazon I'll skip the Super Saver shipping thank you very much.."