EBOLA SYNDROME
Dir. Herman Yau, 1996
Hong Kong, 98 min.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 10 PM
Trigger Warning: Rape, cannibalism, torture, racism, gore, borderline necrophilia.
Ebola? Everybody FREAK OUT!!!
An assault on all things decent, if ever a movie needed—nay, demanded a TRIGGER WARNING, it’s 1996’s EBOLA SYNDROME: Rape, cannibalism, torture, mayhem, autopsies, racism, borderline necrophilia, children in extreme danger, gore and dismemberment—it’s all here! Even wild animals! If you are sensitive and caring soul, you should avoid this film, well, like the plague…
Protagonist Kai (expertly played by Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, oozing sweat and vileness) is a miserable and awful piece of shit. After murdering three people in Hong Kong, he’s on the run and hiding in South Africa, working a low-paying job in a restaurant.
After raping a dying Zulu woman, Kai contracts Ebola—but he’s that “lucky” one-in-a-billion who is immune: the disease doesn’t kill him, and he becomes a sort of “Typhoid Mary.”
But how does a Typhoid Kai spread the dreaded E-disease when the only way to contract it is through the exchange of bodily fluids? By not only having LOTS of unprotected sex (both consensus and not), but by grinding up some of his victims and serving them as “Africa Buns” to the hapless patrons of the restaurant, speading doom across Johanessburg.
Soon Kai is on the run again, but back to Hong Kong with a suitcase full of cash, scattering viral hell across two continents. Public safety and civic concern mean nothing to the gross Kai, he cannot think past the end of his penis—and in many ways, you could say that he is the human embodiment of a virus, cruel and thoughtless, only concerned with his own pleasures. Maybe the nasty disease doesn’t kill him because it recognizes a kindred spirit…
Not quite artless, the film really doesn’t try to have a style—except for maximum transgression. But you know what? This movie is SO over-the-top that many will find it hilarious—and others will be shocked into silence by how damn WRONG this flick is—and others will more than likely be outside the Spectacle protesting its even being shown….
But the really funny thing is that this movie, as outrageous as it is and as much of a public health danger that Kai is, never even begins to come close to the unthinking, blind hysteria that we have actually been experiencing in the U.S., and especially in New York City, where now even the bowling balls must be given hazmat suits…
Whether you come to laugh in the face of death, or to get a glimpse of our possible germ apocalypse, EBOLA SYNDROME is unlike any movie you’ve ever seen. Dude, SALO is boring compared to this!