Fukkatsu no hi
Encyclopedia
, literally Day of Resurrection is a 1980
post-apocalyptic
science fiction
movie directed by Kinji Fukasaku
and based on a novel written by Sakyo Komatsu
. The movie starred Masao Kusakari, George Kennedy
, Robert Vaughn
, Chuck Connors
, Olivia Hussey
, Edward James Olmos
, Ken Ogata
, Glenn Ford
and Sonny Chiba
. The film is notable for being the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time.
called the HMS Nereid entering Tokyo Bay
in the then-future of December 1983. The ship's crew and Japanese seismologist Yoshizumi sends a reconnaissance drone to search the city for any survivors, only to find decayed bodies. It also gathers air samples of something called MM88.
After the movie credits, the film goes back to the then-future of February 1982, where a shady transfer is happening between an East German
scientist, Dr. Krause, and a group of Americans. It is revealed that MM88 is a deadly virus
created accidentally by an American geneticist that amplifies the potency of any other virus or bacteria it comes in contact with. The scientist wants a sample taken to a colleague in Switzerland
, Dr. Leisenauer, so a vaccine can be developed. However, the Americans, who are actually secret agents, are only interested in recovering the MM88, which was stolen from a lab in the US the year before. Escaping an attack by East German soldiers (where Krause is killed), the spies crash their plane and the virus is released, creating a pandemic
initially known as the "Italian Flu".
The governments of the world watch helplessly as their citizens fall ill and die by the millions. Too late does American President Richardson learn from Senator Barkley and Dr. Meyer that the Italian Flu is in fact MM88, which had been part of a secret study for a new biological weapon led by Colonel Rankin.
Within seven months, the world's entire population has died off except for 863 scientists and support personnel wintering in Antarctica. The virus becomes active at a warmer temperature than -10 degrees Celsius
, and the polar winter has spared the 855 men and eight women stationed on the southern continent. The British nuclear submarine HMS Nereid, which was on patrol before the epidemic began, joins the scientists after sinking a Soviet submarine whose infected crew attempt to make landfall near Palmer Station
.
The survivors set up a government to deal with the realities of their situation, including the obvious problem of several hundred men living with only eight women. The film comes full circle when the Nereid heads for Tokyo Bay, on its first mission under the "Federal Council of Antarctica."
However, just as the group begins to repopulate their new home, it is revealed that an earthquake
will set off the United States nuclear arsenal, since Joint Chiefs of Staff
chairman General Garland activated the Automated Reaction System (ARS) before his death, believing that the Soviet Union
would use the confusion caused by the pandemic to attack on North America.
The Soviets have their own version of the ARS and will fire off their weapons when the American missiles hit their targets. Unfortunately for the survivors, one of the Soviet missiles is aimed at Palmer Station, which is attributed to the Kremlin's erroneous belief that the research station was a cover for a secret missile base. Yoshizumi and Major Carter embark aboard the Nereid on a mission to shut down the ARS before the earthquake strikes, protected from MM88 by an experimental vaccine developed by Dr. Latour.
The submarine arrives at Washington, D.C.
and Yoshizumi and Carter make a rush for the ARS command bunker underneath the White House. They reach the room too late and all but a few men and the women (who left aboard an icebreaker at the same time as the Nereid) perish in the nuclear exchange. Over the course of years Yoshizumi walks back towards Antarctica. Upon reaching Tierra del Fuego
in 1988 , he encounters the remaining survivors from the icebreaker, including Marit, a Norwegian widow he fell in love with after his pregnant girlfriend in Tokyo died from the epidemic.
the producer of the film was the heir to Kadokawa Shoten
, major publishing empire in Japan. After his father died in 1975 he decided to create a cinema branch of the company and began producing many films in the late 1970s including Inugamike no ichizoku (1976) and Ningen no shômei (1977) a murder mystery with a worldwide release. In 1978 production on Fukkatsu no Hi started. Kadokawa wanted the film to be a big breakthrough in the international market so he tried to insure its success by casting some notable foreign stars and doing major international promotion (under the international title Virus). He also funded the largest budget of any Japanese film ever made at the time to solidify the movie as worthy of an international release.
The Chilean Navy allowed the film crew to use their submarine
CNS Simpson
to film scenes involving the two fictional submarines in the film, the British Nereid and the Soviet T232. Judging by the acknowledgments in the English version, the Canadian submarine HMCS Okanagan
was used as well; one of the officers serving in Okanagan, a Lieutenant-Commander David Griffiths, was given a speaking role as Nereid's First Officer. Other locations where filming took place included Antarctica, Alaska
, Halifax (doubling for a riverside area in Washington D.C.), Tokyo
, Toronto
, and Machu Picchu
.
A small amount of international publicity was given when a Swedish ship, the MS Lindblad Explorer
, struck a reef while transporting a production unit to Antarctica for location shooting and almost sank. The passengers were rescued by Chilean naval vessels. The Lindblad Explorer was returned to service but was ultimately lost in Antarctic Waters in 2007.
despite its enormous budget. Although it may have had some special showings in the United States and elsewhere, it did not receive a general release. It was sold directly to pay television and edited down to a 108-minute version. This cut left out much of the love story between Yoshizumi and Marit, and nearly all the Japanese scenes including Yoshizumi's entire trek back towards Antarctica. It also starts off with the meeting in East Germany between Doctor Krause and Rankin's agents, while the Nereids arrival in Tokyo Bay was moved to much later in the film. Some versions even end with the nuclear explosions.
1980 in film
- Events :* May 21 - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is released and is the biggest grosser of the year ....
post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
science fiction
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
movie directed by Kinji Fukasaku
Kinji Fukasaku
was a Japanese film actor, screenwriter, and best known as a celebrated and innovative filmmaker. He was born in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan, and died in Tokyo, from prostate cancer...
and based on a novel written by Sakyo Komatsu
Sakyo Komatsu
was a Japanese science fiction writer and screenwriter. He was one of the most well known and highly regarded science fiction writers in Japan.-Early life:...
. The movie starred Masao Kusakari, George Kennedy
George Kennedy
George Harris Kennedy, Jr. is an American actor who has appeared in over 200 film and television productions. He is perhaps most familiar as the convict Dragline in Cool Hand Luke , airline troubleshooter Joe Patroni in the Airport series of disaster movies from the 1970s and...
, Robert Vaughn
Robert Vaughn
Robert Francis Vaughn, , is an American actor noted for stage, film and television work. His best known roles include the suave spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., wealthy detective Harry Rule in the 1970s television series The Protectors, Albert Stroller in...
, Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
, Olivia Hussey
Olivia Hussey
Olivia Hussey is an Argentinian actress who became famous for her role as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Academy Award-winning 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet. For this role she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actress as well as the David di Donatello for best actress...
, Edward James Olmos
Edward James Olmos
Edward James Olmos is an American actor and director. Among his most memorable roles are William Adama in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, Lt...
, Ken Ogata
Ken Ogata
Ken Ogata was a Japanese actor.Ogata was born in Tokyo, Japan. Ogata is well known for his roles in Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book, Paul Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and Shohei Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama...
, Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford was a Canadian-born American actor from Hollywood's Golden Era with a career that spanned seven decades...
and Sonny Chiba
Sonny Chiba
, also known as Sonny Chiba, is a Japanese actor, singer, film producer, film director and martial artist.Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience.- Early life :Born in Fukuoka, Fukuoka,...
. The film is notable for being the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time.
Plot
The movie opens with a British nuclear submarineNuclear submarine
A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor . The performance advantages of nuclear submarines over "conventional" submarines are considerable: nuclear propulsion, being completely independent of air, frees the submarine from the need to surface frequently, as is necessary for...
called the HMS Nereid entering Tokyo Bay
Tokyo Bay
is a bay in the southern Kantō region of Japan. Its old name was .-Geography:Tokyo Bay is surrounded by the Bōsō Peninsula to the east and the Miura Peninsula to the west. In a narrow sense, Tokyo Bay is the area north of the straight line formed by the on the Miura Peninsula on one end and on...
in the then-future of December 1983. The ship's crew and Japanese seismologist Yoshizumi sends a reconnaissance drone to search the city for any survivors, only to find decayed bodies. It also gathers air samples of something called MM88.
After the movie credits, the film goes back to the then-future of February 1982, where a shady transfer is happening between an East German
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
scientist, Dr. Krause, and a group of Americans. It is revealed that MM88 is a deadly virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
created accidentally by an American geneticist that amplifies the potency of any other virus or bacteria it comes in contact with. The scientist wants a sample taken to a colleague in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Dr. Leisenauer, so a vaccine can be developed. However, the Americans, who are actually secret agents, are only interested in recovering the MM88, which was stolen from a lab in the US the year before. Escaping an attack by East German soldiers (where Krause is killed), the spies crash their plane and the virus is released, creating a pandemic
Pandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...
initially known as the "Italian Flu".
The governments of the world watch helplessly as their citizens fall ill and die by the millions. Too late does American President Richardson learn from Senator Barkley and Dr. Meyer that the Italian Flu is in fact MM88, which had been part of a secret study for a new biological weapon led by Colonel Rankin.
Within seven months, the world's entire population has died off except for 863 scientists and support personnel wintering in Antarctica. The virus becomes active at a warmer temperature than -10 degrees Celsius
Celsius
Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...
, and the polar winter has spared the 855 men and eight women stationed on the southern continent. The British nuclear submarine HMS Nereid, which was on patrol before the epidemic began, joins the scientists after sinking a Soviet submarine whose infected crew attempt to make landfall near Palmer Station
Palmer Station
Palmer Station, on Anvers Island, is Antarctica's only US station north of the Antarctic Circle. Initial construction of the station finished in 1968. The station, like the other US Antarctic stations, is operated by the United States Antarctic Program....
.
The survivors set up a government to deal with the realities of their situation, including the obvious problem of several hundred men living with only eight women. The film comes full circle when the Nereid heads for Tokyo Bay, on its first mission under the "Federal Council of Antarctica."
However, just as the group begins to repopulate their new home, it is revealed that an earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
will set off the United States nuclear arsenal, since Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
chairman General Garland activated the Automated Reaction System (ARS) before his death, believing that the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
would use the confusion caused by the pandemic to attack on North America.
The Soviets have their own version of the ARS and will fire off their weapons when the American missiles hit their targets. Unfortunately for the survivors, one of the Soviet missiles is aimed at Palmer Station, which is attributed to the Kremlin's erroneous belief that the research station was a cover for a secret missile base. Yoshizumi and Major Carter embark aboard the Nereid on a mission to shut down the ARS before the earthquake strikes, protected from MM88 by an experimental vaccine developed by Dr. Latour.
The submarine arrives at Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and Yoshizumi and Carter make a rush for the ARS command bunker underneath the White House. They reach the room too late and all but a few men and the women (who left aboard an icebreaker at the same time as the Nereid) perish in the nuclear exchange. Over the course of years Yoshizumi walks back towards Antarctica. Upon reaching Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
in 1988 , he encounters the remaining survivors from the icebreaker, including Marit, a Norwegian widow he fell in love with after his pregnant girlfriend in Tokyo died from the epidemic.
Cast
- Yoshizumi - Masao Kusakari
- Dr. Yamauchi - Sonny ChibaSonny Chiba, also known as Sonny Chiba, is a Japanese actor, singer, film producer, film director and martial artist.Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience.- Early life :Born in Fukuoka, Fukuoka,...
- Dr. Nakanishi - Isao Natsuyagi
- President Richardson - Glenn FordGlenn FordGlenn Ford was a Canadian-born American actor from Hollywood's Golden Era with a career that spanned seven decades...
- Senator Barkley - Robert VaughnRobert VaughnRobert Francis Vaughn, , is an American actor noted for stage, film and television work. His best known roles include the suave spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., wealthy detective Harry Rule in the 1970s television series The Protectors, Albert Stroller in...
- Dr. Meyer - Stuart Gillard
- Colonel Rankin - George Touliatos
- General Garland - Henry Silva
- Admiral Conway - George KennedyGeorge KennedyGeorge Harris Kennedy, Jr. is an American actor who has appeared in over 200 film and television productions. He is perhaps most familiar as the convict Dragline in Cool Hand Luke , airline troubleshooter Joe Patroni in the Airport series of disaster movies from the 1970s and...
- Dr. Borodinov - Chris Wiggins
- Captain Lopez - Edward James OlmosEdward James OlmosEdward James Olmos is an American actor and director. Among his most memorable roles are William Adama in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, Lt...
- Dr. Latour - Cec LinderCec LinderCec Linder was a Polish-born Canadian film and television actor. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked extensively in the United Kingdom, often playing American characters in various films and television programmes.In film, he is probably best remembered for his role as James Bond's CIA counterpart...
- Captain McCloud - Chuck ConnorsChuck ConnorsChuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
- Major Carter - Bo SvensonBo SvensonBo Svenson is a Swedish-born American actor, known for his roles in American genre films of the 1970s and 1980s.-Early life:...
- Marit - Olivia HusseyOlivia HusseyOlivia Hussey is an Argentinian actress who became famous for her role as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Academy Award-winning 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet. For this role she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actress as well as the David di Donatello for best actress...
Background/production
Haruki KadokawaHaruki Kadokawa
is a Japanese publisher, film producer, director and screenwriter. He was the son of Genyoshi Kadokawa and inherited the position of president of the publishing house Kadokawa Shoten in 1975. Under his guidance, the company soon branched into film production, and by 1994 Kadokawa had produced close...
the producer of the film was the heir to Kadokawa Shoten
Kadokawa Shoten
is a well-known Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Kadokawa has published both manga novels and magazines, such as Newtype magazine...
, major publishing empire in Japan. After his father died in 1975 he decided to create a cinema branch of the company and began producing many films in the late 1970s including Inugamike no ichizoku (1976) and Ningen no shômei (1977) a murder mystery with a worldwide release. In 1978 production on Fukkatsu no Hi started. Kadokawa wanted the film to be a big breakthrough in the international market so he tried to insure its success by casting some notable foreign stars and doing major international promotion (under the international title Virus). He also funded the largest budget of any Japanese film ever made at the time to solidify the movie as worthy of an international release.
The Chilean Navy allowed the film crew to use their submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
CNS Simpson
USS Spot (SS-413)
USS Spot was a Balao-class submarine of the United States Navy, named for the spot, a small sciaenoid food fish of the Atlantic coast, with a black spot behind its shoulders....
to film scenes involving the two fictional submarines in the film, the British Nereid and the Soviet T232. Judging by the acknowledgments in the English version, the Canadian submarine HMCS Okanagan
HMCS Okanagan (S74)
HMCS Okanagan was an that served in the Canadian Forces .Okanagan was laid down on 25 March 1965 at Chatham Dockyard, Chatham, England and launched on 17 September 1966. She was commissioned into the CF on 22 June 1968 with pennant number 74.In July 1973, Okanagan collided with the Royal Fleet...
was used as well; one of the officers serving in Okanagan, a Lieutenant-Commander David Griffiths, was given a speaking role as Nereid's First Officer. Other locations where filming took place included Antarctica, Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, Halifax (doubling for a riverside area in Washington D.C.), Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, and Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site located above sea level. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is northwest of Cusco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for...
.
A small amount of international publicity was given when a Swedish ship, the MS Lindblad Explorer
MS Explorer
The MS Explorer was a Liberian-registered cruise ship designed for Arctic and Antarctic service, originally commissioned and operated by the Swedish explorer Lars-Eric Lindblad...
, struck a reef while transporting a production unit to Antarctica for location shooting and almost sank. The passengers were rescued by Chilean naval vessels. The Lindblad Explorer was returned to service but was ultimately lost in Antarctic Waters in 2007.
Reception
The film was a box office bombBox office bomb
The phrase box office bomb refers to a film for which the production and marketing costs greatly exceeded the revenue regained by the movie studio. This should not be confused with Hollywood accounting when official figures show large losses, yet the movie is a financial success.A film's financial...
despite its enormous budget. Although it may have had some special showings in the United States and elsewhere, it did not receive a general release. It was sold directly to pay television and edited down to a 108-minute version. This cut left out much of the love story between Yoshizumi and Marit, and nearly all the Japanese scenes including Yoshizumi's entire trek back towards Antarctica. It also starts off with the meeting in East Germany between Doctor Krause and Rankin's agents, while the Nereids arrival in Tokyo Bay was moved to much later in the film. Some versions even end with the nuclear explosions.
DVDs
In 2002, Kadokawa Shoten released the movie in a special limited-edition Region 2 DVD set, which contained the original 156-minute cut and the shorter 108-minute version, plus extra materials. http://www.tohokingdom.com/web_pages/dvd/region2/day_resurrection_kadokawa.htm While the DVD in question does not have English subtitles, an English-subtitled version of the full cut was later released in 2006 as part of a compilation set called the Sonny Chiba Action Pack. http://www.tohokingdom.com/dvd/sonny_chiba_action_bci.htm Previous copies of the film released in North America often featured the 108-minute cut, partly because of the multinational cast that had several American actors.External links
Virus at the Japanese Movie Database- Virus Review at Toho Kingdom http://www.tohokingdom.com/reviews/carrozza/virus.htm (download full length edit: single video file and dual layer dvd .iso) (low resolution, short edit)