Production History
Virus started life as a film treatment written in 1980 by José María Cunillés and was latter fleshed out into a rather large script by Claudio Fragasso and his wife Rossella Drudi. As the market was hungry for zombie films in the wake of Lucio Fulci's blockbuster Zombi 2, two studios specializing in low budget horror, Dara Films in Spain and Beatrice Films in Rome, pitched together to option the script.
The original script, set in Africa, would have been much too expensive for Dara/Beatrice to produce, with scenes involving ships full of dead bodies and a corpse mincing plant, so Bruno Mattei, well known for being able to work with scant finances, was brought on board to direct with the help of Claudio Fragasso. Filming took place in and outside Barcelona over a four-week period where all the forest/jungle exteriors were shot before the production moved back to Rome to finishing filming at Studio Mafera. Shortly after this, Mattei realized that the footage shot in Spain was insufficient and partially unusable. Dara had decided not to rewrite the script before the production began and therefore much of the footage shot was random in its nature; indeed much of the film's plot is incomprehensible.
In an attempt to give the film a more exotic feel and provide the protagonists with another set piece in which to battle zombies, Mattei suggested that footage from the pseudo-mondo documentary La Vallée be incorporated into the film and sets built to mirror the village from the documentary so new scenes could be shot. This was agreed to by the producers, who were anxious to get the production back on track. As Mattei was busying himself with the studio filming, Fragasso was given free rein to shoot some new special effects shots (mainly consisting of zombies getting shot in front of a dark backdrop and the famous hand in face ending) to gore up the film, again at the producer's request.
The "fog" style attempt to save the production continued with a new ending tagged on, and the addition of some of Goblin's music from the Dawn of the Dead soundtrack. This almost caused a legal wrangle for the production as Goblin had not authorised their music to be used in the film. With all the new additions the film now ran over 100 minutes and consequently some of the original footage was removed prior to its first release in Italy in November 1980. Dara also edited the film further prior to submitting it for UK release.
Read more about this topic: Hell Of The Living Dead
Famous quotes containing the words production and/or history:
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)