Flying Virus (2001) User Reviews

Zero budget schlock? Yeah...so what?

[uds3 · 4/10 · 11 June 2005]

If ever a film deserved "WTF?" It's this one. But hey they all had such FUN making it.

This is not a movie to be reviewed subjectively. You couldn't even call it a movie, but you know what? I enjoyed the whole damn thing. From probably the worst plane fx ever put up on screen, to the shoddy "lets blow it up then show it again from another angle" cinematography.. right the way though to Rutger Hauer's comical turn as the "wannabe baddest z-grade terrorist" ever unleashed on an unsuspecting bunch of refugees from the ANACONDA film set. The "Shadow People?????" heheheh! My only question is how did they ever get these actors to keep a straight face when delivering their lines.

Sheffer....who cut his teeth on zilch-grade flicks (TURBULENCE 3 springs to mind) excels himself here in his pursuit of Miss Anwar while endeavoring to prevent the "killer bees" (Irwin Allen sold them what he had left over from THE SWARM) from infiltrating the first-class cabin of the hitherto unknown Boeing design we see here.

It is the very comical ineptitude of everyone from the Director to the tea lady that makes this the crap classic it is. Where else you gonna see killer bees massing for attack in the toilet bowl? scores of trained and fully armed commandos unable to bring down a bunch of natives with spears? A 737 perform a 180 degree U-turn in less than 5 seconds? some teenage d***wad re-program a heat seeking missile with his lap-top? ONLY here my friends!

Pay homage where its due. THIS is the cruddiest and most entertaining piece of unoriginal if not downright hysterical cinematic flotsam ever to grace your local bargain-bin. Grab it while it's hot!

It's so bad I couldn't stop watching

[jadewood · 4/10 · 23 April 2005]

Don't watch this if you want a great movie. Watch this because it is a fun B scifi--horror movie. Some of the effects are good, especially when you remember this is not a big budget film.(I hope it wasn't.) I try to see all of Rutger Hauer's films,but I wonder why he choose this one. I guess Anwar is becoming the queen of the B's. It was fun to see Adam Wylie all grown up, you'll recognize him right away. The fun begins in the plane, not for those on board, but for us. It's so bad I couldn't stop watching.

It's dumb, but really worth the view. Give it a watch and see if you agree.

An Orville Reddenbacher special

[hoodcsa · 3/10 · 3 July 2004]

No one takes this thing to seriously and that helps a lot. The story is paper thin, but it proceeds fast enough. The airplane stuff is hilarious and Craig Sheffer seems to be well in to the spirit of things. He's no Brando, but he plays this stuff in an acceptable manner. The charms of Ms. Anwar have always eluded me, but she's as good as most this time out. Rutger Hauer's on board too and that pains me. This guy is to good to be making this much crap. Flying Virus is a stupid title but genre fans will stick with this movie.

A popcorn film. Make that a butter-free popcorn film.

Achieves a zen like level of idiocy

[gtc83 · 8 September 2004]

Wow, this is the most poorly made thing I've ever seen in my life. The story is like...I don't know what. Sometimes when you're watching a cheap B movie, something will happen that's just so stupid that you almost want to yell at the TV screen. Now, imagine a movie that consists of nothing but moments like that, one after another.

It starts with a bunch of guys with machine guns fighting some guys with spears. Even though the guys with spears stand still, right out in the open, the guys with machine guns can't hit them. Every time a spear is thrown, it lands right in a barrel of rocket fuel and kills a dozen of the guys with machine guns.

Then some guys attack the village where the "shadow people" live. (Aren't those the folks from Anaconda?) The helicopters fire missiles which only hit the grass huts. Then they attack with hand grenades, which only hit the previously blown up grass huts. Though they're not blown up anymore until the hand grenades hit them. Then we see a waterfall blow up, you know, from one of those Rambo movies when the Russians dropped a big bomb on Stallone.

Then there's a plane that has a 727 for coach, and a DC-10 for first class. Heck, first class is as big as a restaurant or something. They put all the coach passengers in first class, and it's still half empty. Someone fires a missile at the plane, but luckily there's a nerd on board who, in a couple of minutes, reprograms the plane's computer to emit a false radar image. It's also a GCI passenger jet, and it does turns which must pull about 30 g's.

And that's just a small portion of the obvious screw ups. The story of this thing makes that seem like nothing in comparison. I feel the need to repeat that - all those screw ups are absolutely nothing in comparison to the story. Imagine some ridiculously preachy environmentalist propaganda piece mixed with a horrible B movie adventure type thing, and throw in some "killer bees", which are actually just regular cute little honey bees. I really loved the part where the guy named "Saviour" (yes, I'm not kidding) starts preaching about how the female lead's government is responsible for destroying the rain forest. I mean, they're in South America, and she's obviously from Britain. The movie opens with "Tensions are high due to the United States refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement". But the point of contention is about building a highway through the rain forest. I wasn't aware that global warming is responsible for highway construction. But what does it matter...once you get preaching, it's hard to stop even if you quit making sense a couple of hours ago. As far as the mega super highway through the rain forest - it doesn't go anywhere. Are there a lot of super highways built that just sort of end out in the middle of nowhere? And then our characters find a tractor out in the middle of the jungle and conclude that it is proof that they're going to extend the highway at least as far as the position of the tractor. I guess it's inconceivable that a small tractor, 100 miles from the construction site, might be used for anything other than building a super highway. The apparent theory is that they airdrop the equipment out in the middle of the jungle so that it will be available for use when the highway gets there.

There are lots of really terrible B movies out there, but they all pale in comparison to this grand accomplishment. Someone should create a research project to find out what in the world goes on inside the heads of the people who made this. It's unfathomable.

A shallow basis, but a good movie to laugh at how silly it is.

[oceanicairlines · 5/10 · 5 April 2006]

I am a pilot, and am very familiar with commercial aircraft, but the scenes in this movie contain several different aircraft, until they finally choose a poor computer generation of a Boeing 767-200ER for Inter-Americas flight 209. However the cabin and flight deck are right for the aircraft unlike many movies today. I love the cabin attendants, the best service I have ever seen. Just watch and you'll see why Michelle has to be one of the best flight attendants. The story it's self is very predictable, and the acting for some of the characters is subservient. But overall it is a good movie to sit and veg with on a Friday night, how ever I don't like the fact that it doesn't make you think, other than how unrealistic this is. Also a passenger who has no flying experience, could not ever under any circumstances land a 767 on a field. The aircraft comes in for a landing at 160-180mph, and handles like a bus, so the ending is unrealistic. However it is true that that aircraft can make a landing on a field, it has happened, but only with an experienced crew.

Airplane III in 3-B

[thesar-2 · 1/10 · 1 March 2009]

'Killer Buzz'? I wish. You can't blame me for trying. I must've downed 16-17 beers attempting to get through this movie. And all that got me was a "killer" hangover and deeper depression from having spent more time on this crud than the length of the preview. I've read this was originally called (much more appropriately) 'Flying Virus' as the advertised bees (hence the title & cover) share approximately 15 minutes screen time out of an exhausting 95 minutes. I love "When Animals Attack" films, even bad ones, but this is a cheap Rambo-less low-budget jungle action movie. At least half of it is. The other half should've been called 'Airplane III in 3-B.' When I was young, I might as well admit I was infatuated with Gabrielle Anwar (including her wonderful Tango scene in 'Scent of a Woman') and I thought Craig Sheffer might go someplace outside 'Some Kind of Wonderful.' (Rutger Hauer has no excuse – he would've ended up in the same Mickey Rourke retirement home had it not been for 'The Wrestler.') Unfortunately, they ended up in this cheap Sci-Fi reject, which spent some of its $50 budget on explosions and stuntmen jumping all over the place and less on a wire-held plane. I was hoping the mostly absent bees to reach civilization sometime. They almost do – they all buy coach seats and terrorize Sheffer and nobodies on a plane making 'Snakes on a Plane' look like a masterpiece. The other half involves – get this for being original – corporate greed & using mutated bees to get oil. Some people watch b-movies for a good laugh. I promise you two, but unfortunately, you'll have to wait until the closing. #1 Sheffer's rope act and #2 the line "let's get out of here." Where were they going? Hilarious.

killed my buzz

[KHayes666 · 4/10 · 15 May 2005]

This movie was so cheap its not even that funny. The producers, directors, etc must have used the same shots for different scenes 5 different times.

The overall plot wasn't too bad, but how in the world did this Zeke guy go around slaughtering tribes and towns without any sort of military resistance from the country. If some yahoo went around firing missiles in Chicago, Detroit, etc than he'd be shot down within the hour.

Another thing wrong was they never elaborated on the fate of everyone that was infected on the plane before the proverbial "shyt hit the fan" part. Did David Naughton's character bite the bag or what? Lastly, did anyone else who saw this movie laugh when Zeke hit the drink after the bees attacked, that may have been the smartest move in film history.

Poor effort but with the planes....I give it 4 out of 10

I'm very disappointed..

[klaseriksson79 · 1/10 · 22 January 2005]

This is the worst movie I've seen in a long while. The story wasn't exciting at all, the scenes inside the plane were terribly unrealistic. Few movies I've seen with the "airplane disaster theme" had been good though.

I mean Adam and the woman who helped pulling the Dr. North into the plane would be sucked out like never before had it been in real life.

Fun to see all sharp turns that plane took in the air...

So typical that a young computer geek with glasses would stop the missile from hitting the plane, seen that before? Oh yeah...

So typical that it all had to end in a kiss..

I would like to see the 767 that could manage that landing and still stand on its wheels while on the ground.

The first scenes with the shooting took way too much time as well.

There are B movies but this doesn't even qualify into that category.

Rutger Hauer versus Killer Bees... Now why on earth would I not watch this?

[Vomitron_G · 4/10 · 23 May 2010]

There, I did it again... After going through this phase (a few months ago) of wanting to see as many killer-bee movies as possible, its sting must have left something in my system, because last week I got me 2 other killer-bee movies... As we all know, Rutger Hauer is the man, so I just had to see this one. Basically Mr. Hauer's pretty hilarious performance of a corrupt military bad-ass/bad guy is the only thing that kept my going through this movie. He's great and has the best lines of the whole movie. Watch him kill off an entire innocent tribe. Watch him kill even an entire civilized town. Watch him say "Actually, bees are allergic to ME!" and then see him get killed by a crocodile! Extremely fun stuff, but the rest of the movie.... Well, the movie has two story-lines. One about the rain forest being destroyed for commercial profits, the other one is... uhm, well: Bees on a Plane. That's it. Oh yeah, the scene where Graig Sheffer was hanging on a rope outside a flying plane was a hoot! You've got to see it to believe it. Highly unbelievable stuff. Maybe so-bad-it's-good... And Gabrielle Anwar is kinda cute.

Baby saw a bad, bad movie

[Rosabel · 1/10 · 27 December 2007]

This is without a doubt the worst movie I have ever seen outside MST3K. In fact, it would have been a perfect candidate for Mike and bots to snark on, and I can only hope that the Film Crew might discover it one day and give it the appropriate treatment. The writing is terrible, and the film doesn't even TRY to make any of the characters likable. From sullen, duck-billed Gabrielle Anwar to scruffy, chip-on-the-shoulder Craig Sheffer, to Rutger Hauer, who looks astonishingly like Michael Moore in this film, there is not one character I wouldn't be happy to see stung to death by killer bees. Ann Bauer is supposed to be a sexy reporter who has men falling like ninepins everywhere she goes, but she absolutely no chemistry with anyone in the movie, neither her loathsome soon-to-be ex-husband or the laughable Lothario, Scotty. Anwar mutters her dialog half the time, and Sheffer seems to think that grumbling sarcasm denotes strong masculinity.

These two characters are supplemented by Hauer's Ezekiel, some nutcase American commando who lurches about waving a pistol in one hand and a little black book in the other. One guess what THAT is supposed to be, and I don't think it's the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice. There is also a U.S. State Department official named Scotty, who mysteriously seems to be running the entire Brazilian Amazon, with just one office and no secretary. According to this movie, Brazil has no real government, because Americans have moved in to eradicate native tribes, carpet-bomb nice upper-middle class towns, set up military no-go areas and take home all the oil. I'm guessing they picked on the State Department to run this operation, because trying to pin it to the better-known CIA and Department of Defense would have been too unbelievable.

This movie gives the term "ugly American" a whole new level of meaning. The must insulting suggestion is that American soldiers don't seem to know how to shoot when confronted by loincloth-wearing bushmen armed with spears and bows and arrows. Wave after wave of machinegun-toting American commandos are mowed down by flying spears and flaming arrows before they can manage to get off a single shot. Of course, they obligingly stand upright and go running across clearings even though they are surrounded on all sides by bushes and buildings, so it makes it a bit easier for the natives to take aim. And boy, can they aim! Every dart kills a soldier, and every flaming arrow hits a can of gasoline, causing an explosion which kills a few more Americans. I guess in basic training, these guys were told that if their clothes catch fire, they should go flailing across country, until they find another barrel of gasoline to catch hold of for support. It's like watching 4 Denethors charging across the screen.

"Oil" seems to be the magic word here, which smooths away inconvenient facts and excuses the most ludicrous plot device, in this case, killer bees that will ethnically cleanse the Amazon of inconvenient natives so Americans can systematically rape the land. Actually, I think the writers deserve an award for their restraint: they managed to get through the entire movie without once using the word "Bush".

The movie also uses a hoary old cliché, which is that natives are well-meaning but disorganized. They need a white man to turn them into a potent force, and this shows up in the shape of the mysterious leader of the 'Shadow People', an American doctor named (I kid you not) 'Savior' (Duncan Regehr), who righteously lectures Ann on America's polluting ways, citing this as "one small example of your government's policy of sacrificing the environment for corporate greed."

Half the idiocy takes place on the ground, and the other in the air on a bee-infested passenger jet where Ann's husband Martin gets to prove what a hero he is. He is accompanied by Easily-Led Captain ("You're in charge out there"), Feisty Black Stewardess, Nerdy Kid, Surfer Babe and Bill Maher Wannabe. Everyone else is just ethnically diverse background chorus.

It Stings

[bhsfacebook · 1/10 · 3 October 2018]

Terrible writing, worse acting, and gratuitous explosions make this a perfect swarm of awfulness. This may be the worst film Rutger Hauer ever made. That's saying something.

Bees

[misterfire · 8/10 · 31 October 2005]

I had a feeling this would be a fine movie the moment I saw the ad on TV announcing Rutger as a part of it. And my feelings were confirmed when I watched it... is this movie hilarious or what?

I've seen praticlly only two types of comments at IMDb about Flying Virus. Let's analyze them.

The first kind of comments are those cursing this movie, calling it a piece of sh17, but come on people, what did you expect from a movie called Flying Virus, that takes place in Brasil, and all those amazing stuff you have read from the plot... were you expecting a masterpiece? Only if you guys are insane! Now, the second kind of comments are those that found this movie very fun, entertaining, hilarious, those are the smart ones! It has great lines, excellent pictures, fine actors, what else do you want? And there is one important detail, if you know Portuguese, I suggest you watch it with the Portuguese audio instead of the original, you won't stop laughing!

Hum... I have to finish this comment with a question: have you watched Killer Bees! ? That was hilarious too!

Can You hear them coming?

[fredrikwestlund · 7/10 · 31 August 2002]

Excellent Movie! I like this kind of "Congo" Movies Virus and stuff! If you like "virus" movies... airplane disaster movies and so... see it... you wont regret it.. i gave it 8/10

Bad worse worst

[illusionbox · 2/10 · 12 March 2004]

I will simply comment this movie like this...

It started bad and become only worse and worse....among the worst rubbish I've ever seen.

First you could realise who would end as a good guy and bad guy. You could predict what couples would occur You could also predict how people would die Added to this you also saw the same explosions and flight dives used in different places of the movie. The effects looked sometimes like a movie from the 70s or maybe early 80s. (with other words cheap cheap cheap) I'm specially dissapointed in Rutger Hauer to take a role like this with ridiculous lines all along the movie.

Actually on Video it's "Killer Buzz"

[duntrune · 17 September 2003]

but no matter the title, it's still a lowbuck, horrifically written flick. Gabrielle Anwar running around in a jungle is amusing for about 3 minutes, but you have to watch 100- odd minutes of garbage to get it.....it does get bonus points for it's Ed Wood styled same stunt from three different camera angles stretching of the budget, and loses the bonus points just as quickly for it's "Shadow People" with Prince Valiant haircuts..... truly bad, completely ludicrous, and on the Cheez-o-meter, it gets; 3 out of 10, bad, but not lovably so....

The title just about says it all

[wellthatswhatithinkanyway · 17 July 2002]

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Yay,what better way to enjoy a Wednesday night in front of the telly than with a good-old DTV Rutger Hauer movie.Right?Er,sadly no.To start with,the purpose is kind of defeated when Hauer's screentime is really limited.But this is really the least of your problems.Cliched characters,comically low budget bee effects and laughable dialogue throughout are.Oh,and it's also overlong.Just letting you know.*

Best killer bee movie in ten years!

[orsonwelles-1941 · 9 November 2003]

Despite the nearly overwhelming subplot and a flubbed line that was not reshot,I genuinely enjoyed this low-budget stingfest. The CGI bees were a hell of a lot better than those in that made-for-cable travesty Deadly Swarm and the attacks were effectively staged. This coupled with the exuberantly over-the-top characterizations will guarantee this film cult status in about 20 years.

So bad it's worth watching

[KIM_HARRIS · 29 August 2003]

Well... only worth watching if you really have nothing better to do. The story is ludicrous, the dialogue embarrassing and the special effects cheesy in the extreme. However, it did provide some laughs. It is worth watching just for the aeroplane sequences. How they persuaded Rutger Hauer to appear in this is hard to imagine and while Gabrielle Anwar is not the greatest actress in the world she would have been hard put to do much with this dialogue. I would love to know how much the budget was for this movie. They can't have shot more than one take of anything and I should think the whole thing was made in a week. Have fun!