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Umm, actually everything on the back is in some type of Chinese, except the
copyright warning. This "Laser Disc" is for "unadvertised private home use
only." Other rights that are reserved include, "duplication, rental or loan
circulation, all forms of public display, broadcast by any means [like that
would ever happen], etc." If you do any of this stuff without "obtaining prior
written licence" you will get in big trouble. 1996, 98 minutes, VCD
Anthony Wong stars in this movie that is what Dustin Hoffman's movie Outbreak should have been: a story about a raping and murdering dude that infects a
bunch of people with ebola by tricking them into eating hamburgers made out of
human meat. It really isn't as funny as it probably sounds, but there are
moments
in this film that will make you giggle. Probably not the rape scenes or the
murders or the cannibalism scenes or the on camera slaughter of frogs and
chickens, but I'm sure there's a moment here or there that you won't be cringing
during and wondering if there is any chance that Hong Kong has such a thing as
a Category IV movie. Yes, this is another one of those Category III movies
from Hong Kong. Over there, they apparently rate their films like we do our
hurricanes, with Category III being the strongest rating (and I should tell you
that the "strongest" aspect refers to the type of stomach required to sit
through such a film for an extended period of time). Naturally, human beings
being what they are, a nice little subgenre has developed in Hong Kong cinema,
called the Cat III movie or something like that. That's pretty much short hand
for the nastiest, most foul and depraved beasts far eastern cinema can offer
up. This is the category that stuff like The Eternal Evil of Asia falls into (but strangely enough The Deadly Camp, also starring Anthony Wong is only Category IIB). It also provides us with a
handy way to identify which of the myriad Hong Kong movies readily available
through various importers (I always use Poker Industries) are worth your money.Ebola Syndrome is not really what I'd call well made, (you're aren't going to
get any Battle Royale style cinematography here), the very workmanlike visuals and camera work will
remind you more of one of those Italian jungle-cannibal movies that that
country inexplicably barfed up for about two years in the late 70s. There's
maybe one slow motion scene, as if they knew that every Hong Kong film needed a
little bit of that, but it isn't particularly well done or effective. That
said, the movie is full of gore, sex, and Anthony Wong is pretty much way out
of control from start to finish as the psycho Kai, so it lives up to its
reputation as the movie to show you're mainstream friends (if you have any) at
parties to gross them out and let them know that you know where the good stuff
is and it ain't at Blockbuster (don't make me pull out Men Behind The Sun on you!)  Kai is your average run of the mill creep that has a hankering for other
people's wives when they're out working. As you'll see once the movie
progresses, Kai will be revealed to be a person with substantial problems, hang
ups, and aggression issues. Kai kicks his adventure off by humping some chick
in Hong Kong while her hubby is away. Naturally hubby comes home and is less
than amused that Kai is dipping his chopstick into his wife. This results in a
good old fashioned beat down, complete with pissing scene! Whoa! I knew we
were in for something a little bit more than our usual run of the mill ride
down Gore Street when the husband ordered his wife to pee on Kai. Upon
further reflection though, this may not have been as unexpected as it seemed
(while the scene was going on and I was thanking Universe Laser & Video for not
making this one of those Video CDs that comes in Smellovision). I seem to
recall that in The Eternal Evil of Asia , there was a little urine action when one of the guys was turned into a giant
pud and peed out the top of his head. Okay Ebola Syndrome, I think you'll have to admit that they've got you beat there. What else do
you got for us? Lots more it turns out. After beating the guy up and
depositing bodily fluids on him (it's just sterilized waste, what's the big
whoop?), the husband gets some scissors that look like some type of wire
cutters and tells Kai that he is going to castrate him. Kai begs him not to
and offers to do it himself if the husband will just let him have the scissors.
Unbelievably the husband thinks that that's not such a bad resolution to the
infidelity that is afflicting his family and he gives Kai the shears. Kai goes
down to his crotch like he's going to do it, but then his hand accidentally
slips
and the husband ends up with a pair of scissors in his eye. Pure coincidence,
I'm sure. Kai goes on the offensive, killing the husband, the husband's buddy,
and the woman. The woman had turned on Kai as soon as her husband came home,
so I don't think any of us can argue with Kai's decision to break off their
romance in this fashion. Meanwhile, the woman's young daughter is around and
so Kai dumps gasoline on her and before he can fire her up, someone interrupts
him and he takes off never to be seen again in Hong Kong until years later.  Fast forward several years to South Africa. South Africa? Yup, I don't know
what Kai is doing down in South Africa, but you can be sure it involves
screwing women and complaining about being bullied. That's one of Kai's
lovable quirks. Even though he's an accomplished killer, he still whines about
being picked on by everyone. Specifically his target is the wife of his
friend. She and Kai's friend run the Chinese restaurant where he has found
employment as a waiter (I don't think he makes very good tips). She's always
yelling at him about something or other and he fumes about it, complaining to
whoever will listen. Kai's grasp of health department regulations is tenuous
at best as he reacts to his crappy job by spitting in the food. But that's not
really the worst of it. Even though his buddy's wife rags on him mercilessly,
he still enjoys listening in on his buddy and the wife having sex. Yes, Kai
lives with these people that pretty much hate him. Ebola Syndrome realizes
that people dying from ebola alone isn't enough to solidify itself as a Cat III
classic, so you get the scene where Kai is in the bathroom listening to his
housemates having sex (at one point during their coupling the guy says something
like, "it's a bird, it's a pig, it's Superman!). This gets him excited and he
starts to satisfy himself. Then he gets a brainstorm and he runs downstairs to
the restaurant and into the kitchen. He grabs some raw meat and cuts an
opening in it. In the bathroom he takes the raw meat and proceeds to use it in
such a manner that makes you realize what a wussy movie American Pie was. When Kai is finished with his business, he takes his date, I mean the raw
meat, back down to the kitchen and puts it back in the fridge. Feel free to
insert (hahaha) your "secret sauce" joke here. As if being a crabby waiter
prone to doing the most unsanitary things to the customers' food imaginable
wasn't enough for Kai, his pal takes him out into the African countryside to get
some fresh meat for the restaurant. At this point I was wondering where all
the ebola action was. I wasn't complaining that what I'd seen wasn't
entertaining in its own whacky way, but gosh darn it, the front of the Video CD
showed a bloody hand with three dudes in hazmat suits staring fearfully at it.
I wanted people's guts rotting inside of them and bleeding from every
orifice!  It's off to the African bush for Kai and his restaurant owning pal in search of
the finest cheap meat that little money can buy. They drive around and have to
stop so that they can take a leak. Yes, it is another urine-centric scene that
really has nothing to do with the movie. These two guys stand way too close
together for my taste (we all remember that scene in The Deadly Camp where
those two guys peed on that mental midget, right?) and start peeing when all of
a sudden they hear
something. One of them asks the other if he farted, but it turns out that what
they heard was not the very relaxing sound of flatulence being released
simultaneously with pee pee, but a lion or tiger or some big cat growling.
They see it coming their way and they freeze for awhile so the cat won't eat
them, then they bolt for the car and make it back on their little meat safari
safe and sound. Then we discovered that Kai had finished urinating in his pants
and all over his buddy's car's seat. You can bet he got bullied for that one!
They get to some area where there is a Zulu tribe and we are treated to some
pretty graphic ceremonies where a live chicken has its head and spinal cord
pulled out by one of the witch doctors who is doing some type of ceremony you
just can't see on the streets of Johannesburg anymore these days. There's also
a bunch of dead Zulus laying around and there are two Zulu bodies conveniently
located next
to the dead pigs that our restauranteurs are going to buy. The Zulu guy selling
them the pigs tells them that they died from ebola. The next thing we know,
Kai is walking around and sees a native girl laying down on the ground. No one
else is around, so he sidles on up to her, ascertains that she is pretty much
non responsive and makes like a frat boy (Kappa House rules!) and starts raping
her. He's having a good old time in spite of the fact that she is obviously
deathly ill and soon she starts flopping around and Kai realises that she is
dying and starts screaming at her to let him pull out. Eventually he ends the
hijinks by crushing her head a few times with a rock. So, not only did they
pick up a couple of hundred pounds of pork on their little day trip, but Kai
also picked up a bad case of ebola. Lots more stuff happens in this movie and things pick up speed now that Kai has
himself a little ebola. The beauty of it all is that he doesn't realize he has
it until the very end of the movie and he just happens to be the one in ten
million people that it infects, causing a bad fever, but doesn't ultimately
kill. This allows Kai to run around raping and killing some women, including
the wife of his buddy. He also kills his buddy. This leads to the
short-lived food fad in Johannesburg known as "African Buns." African Buns,
available only from the restaurant where Kai works are basically hamburgers
made out of ebola infected people. That's one of the things I liked about this
movie. It was able to take a tired old premise and make it topical again. How
many times have we seen the cannibal gag where some freak grinds up people and
feeds them to other unwitting people? Lots. It's as common as a urination
scene in a Hong Kong Cat III movie. But here, they add the element of having
the human meat be infected with the scariest disease we got going nowadays.
Genius! Sheer genius! Once everyone starts croaking and flopping around all
over Johannesburg, Kai decides it's time to cash out of the restaurant biz and
go back to Hong Kong. Along the way, the girl that he tried to burn to death
sees him South Africa and tries to tell the authorities, but they tell her what
I would have told her: you seeing him here after all those years is just too
much of a coincidence to be believable. Naturally, back in Hong Kong he runs
into her again and they have a problem. She bites him and then realizes that
that will probably earn her the "boob of the week" award at work since he's
infected with ebola. Everything comes to a head when he takes a girl hostage
and dares the cops to shoot him since his blood will infect everyone it
splatters on. Then he runs through the streets spitting on people yelling his
new catch phrase, "I have ebola and now so do you!" Eventually Kai is defeated,
but the movie ends with a girl sharing some ebola infected food with a dog or
something. A movie that has so little redeeming about it that you can't help
but admire it. There is no hero per se. The girl who survived her encounter
with Kai is rarely seen and the movie focuses almost exclusively on Kai and his
free-wheeling lifestyle. Anthony Wong is able to look like a total scuzz, a
bit portly, sometimes with a little greasy pony tail Steven Seagal would be
proud of, and even in disguise with this awful-looking mustache. You watch
this train wreck in spite of yourself, because you wonder what Kai has up his
sleeve next. How much damage can he do? How many terrible things is he
capable of? Gory, nasty entertainment that is so far
over
the top, you'll be laughing to keep from gagging. A very good "party movie"
that will keep your friends grimacing throughout.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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