Ebola Syndrome (Herman Yau, 1996)

Bloodied and battered, a haggard-looking, pee-stained Anthony Wong stands over his victims in triumph. Shortly after removing the tongue of his lover with a pair of scissors, Anthony Wong turns his attention to his lover's young daughter (who's hiding in a nearby closet). Interrupted just as he was about to set her on fire, Anthony Wong decides to take off, leaving the little girl covered in gasoline. If you're wondering who this Ebola stricken psychopath is going to kill next, do yourself a favour and stop... wondering about that. Are you sitting down? He doesn't have the Ebola virus. Well, not yet at least. But that's just the thing, if this is how Anthony Wong behaves when he doesn't have the Ebola virus, imagine what he's going to do when he does. Trust me, it's not going to be pretty. Oh, and I know for a fact that he's going to contract the Ebola virus. You wanna know why? It's simple, really, he's the star of Herman Yau's wonderfully vile Ebola Syndrome, yet another Category III sex and gore extravaganza that manages to make all other attempts at "cinema" seem totally lame by comparison.

If Anthony Wong didn't contract the Ebola virus in this movie, I would have (Yeah, yeah, you would have thrown a major hissy-fit.) You're goddamn right I would have thrown a major hissy-fit.

That being said, Ebola or no Ebola, Anthony Wong's Kai is someone you don't want to have on your bad side. On the surface, he might seem like a harmless goofball with a soft spot for shapely whores. But the second you hand him, oh, let's say, a pair of scissors, he's going to use them in a manner they weren't intended.

Seriously, though, don't ever hand Anthony Wong a pair of scissors. Now, I would love to tell Shing Fui-On (The Blue Jean Monster) this, but I'm afraid I can't, as Anthony Wong just killed him using the legs of a mahjong table. As the legs of the mahjong table began to crush his larynx, he probably thought to himself: Why, oh, why did I hand Anthony Wong those motherflippin' scissors?

You see, Anthony Wong is having an affair with Shing Fui-On's wife (Tsang Yin). And when Shing Fui-On (who is Anthony Wong's boss) and a friend catch them in the act, Shing threatens to cut off his penis. A blubbering Wong pleads with Fui-On on the behalf of his still attached penis. When that fails, Anthony asks if he can cut off his penis. This request clearly confused Fui-On, because he proceeds to hand over the scissors. I don't think I need to tell you what happens next.

Leaving Shing Fui-On's young daughter crying and covered in gasoline in her parent's Hong Kong apartment (in the mid-1980s), we jump forward ten years to find Kai working at a Chinese restaurant in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Hired by the owners, Kei (Lo Meng) and his wife (Cheung Lau), as a waiter (a low paid one at that), they obviously never saw Herman Yau and Anthony Wong's previous collaboration, The Untold Story. If they had, there's no way they would have hired him. But then again, it's implied that Kei and his wife know about Kai's murderous past in Hong Kong. Meaning, they shouldn't act surprised if they suddenly find their genitals on the menu.

I am surprised, however, that the Association of Chinese Restaurants didn't try to have The Untold Story and Ebola Syndrome banned, as they both manage to tarnish the Chinese dining experience.

Anyway, remember that little girl that Kai left covered in gasoline back in the '80s? Well, she's a flight attendant now. And guess where her next flight is headed? That's right, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The second the flight attendant enters the restaurant Kai works, she starts to feel sick. She can't quite put her finger on it, but something about this place causes her relive the day a crazed man killed her father with a mahjong table and cut off her mother's tongue with a pair of scissors. Though, it's obvious that she doesn't remember what Kai looked like, as she just asked him to direct her to the restaurant's washroom.

Even though she goes back to her hotel room, the flight attendant knows something sinister is afoot (she has nightmares about the place). Meanwhile, Kai is horny. After his attempt to pick up a prostitute ends in failure (Kai: "Fifty for a fondling?" Prostitute: "I only fuck white dudes... no yellow trash."), Kai masturbates into a hunk of pork (he uses a knife to create a makeshift vagina) while listening Kei have sex with his wife.

As expected, Kai puts the jizz-laden pork back in the fridge and serves it to customers the very next day. Oh, Kai, you're the most unpleasant character in film history.

Since the the local butcher shop refuses to give Kei a fair deal on pork, he and Kai drive into the bush to buy a pig from a nearby tribe of cannibals. Despite the fact the tribe's camp is littered with lesion-covered corpses, Kei and Kai buy a pig. On the way back, they experience some car trouble. While Kei works on the engine, Kai wanders off.

Noticing a woman collapse by a river, Kai approaches her. You won't believe what happens next. Oh, you do know what happens next. Well, aren't we demented today. Yep, Kai licks his hand and penetrates the unconscious woman with his penis.

Holy crap, how many orgasm faces is Anthony Wong going to make in this movie? I mean, he's already made three. Whatever, the unconscious woman starts to convulse and spits a milky substance in Kai's face.

To the surprise of no-one, Kai develops a fever. While out of commission, Kei and his wife argue about what to do with him. As they're doing this, Kai wakes up and kills them both; a third employee is killed after he starts snooping around.

If Kai didn't have Ebola, do you think he would have murdered them? It's hard to say. What's not hard to say is, Kai is a scumbag.

Chopping up Kei, his wife and the nameless employee, Kai turns them into "African pork buns" and serves them at the restaurant the very next day. Yum. And in doing so, gives everyone Ebola. Pretty soon people are collapsing and twitching all over Johannesburg.

Finding Kei's hidden stash of cash, Kai decides to go back to Hong Kong to cause more havoc. An Ebola carrier (he has the disease, but doesn't display the symptoms), Kai has no qualms whatsoever about spreading the virus. Did I mention he's a scumbag?

While living it up in the penthouse suite of a fancy hotel, Kai gets a hankering for some whores.

When room service fails to deliver him the whores he desires, Kai goes elsewhere for his whore-related needs.

Oh. My. God. Check out the whore in the tight red dress. Her shape is sublime. I'm guessing the "actress" who plays the thick whore in the tight red dress is Lori Shannon, as she's the only cast member who looks like a "Lori Shannon," if you get my drift.

When the prostitutes develop Ebola symptoms, the local authorities begin to search the city for the person responsible for knocking one of Hong Kong's shapeliest whores out of commission. But they shouldn't bother looking for Kai at that fancy hotel, as he has since moved in with old flame.

I don't know what's more disgusting, the South African autopsy scene or the sequence where Kai spreads the virus willy-nilly (the scene at the ice cream store is beyond gross). I'm gonna go with the latter. I know, it doesn't sound all that nasty on paper, but I nearly lost it when the band-aid on the finger of the ice cream store waitress comes loose while touching a spoon that had been in Kai's mouth.

One of the last Cat III movies to be made before the handover (all Hong Kong films made after 1997, if they want to play on Mainland, need to be approved by Chinese censors), Ebola Syndrome is distasteful, loathsome, hateful, nauseating, and sickening. In other words, it's one of the best Cat III movies ever made.

The Untold Story (Herman Yau, 1993)

It's official, Anthony Wong is my new favourite actor. Sure, I've only seen him in Herman Yau's The Untold Story (the film I'm currently writing about), and Herman Yau's Taxi Hunter, but based on the sheer intensity he displays in both these movies, I think I can safely declare that he in fact rules. Now, a lot of you are probably wondering why I didn't open with a bit about the insane amount of leggy floozies that appear in this film, or why I didn't open with a snarky remark about Parkman Wong Pak-Man's San Antonio Spurs baseball hat. First of all, I don't make snarky remarks. In fact, my remarks are, for the most part, completely snark-free. And secondly, why would a gruesome tale about a psychotic restaurant owner who murders men, women and children, chops up their bodies into tiny little pieces and then serves them to his customers have leggy floozies? I'm just messing with you, this film is filled with leggy floozies. And I don't feel guilty at all for calling them leggy floozies. They're leggy, they're floozies and they're ready to party.
 

  
All kidding aside, the inclusion of so many leggy floozies just goes to show why I consider pre-handover Hong Kong cinema to be superior to all other types of cinema. Filled with bizarre shifts in tone, kooky subplots, chopstick rape, unaware cannibalism, highly inappropriate humour and grisly violence (the kind that would make Lucio Fulci stop and say, "Mamma Mia, dat iz, uh, how you say? some really fucked up shit), The Untold Story was able to earn the fullness of my attention with a breathtaking ease.
  

  
I've noticed that my interest in films has been gradually waning over the past few months. Itching for most films to hurry up and finish already, I've been wading through  a lot of dreck that's not even worth reviewing. Some of you might be thinking to yourself: Aren't the majority of the films you review not worth reviewing? Ah, just because a film is awful, doesn't mean it's not worth reviewing. No, the film's I'm talking about are neither good or bad, they're just plain bland.
  

  
Well, long story short, The Untold Story managed to briefly rekindle my love of cinema, as, like I said earlier, it contains everything I like. Of course, I don't mean to imply that I "like" watching little kids brutally murdered with a meat clever. What I think I meant to say is, I like it when movies aren't afraid to show the gory unpleasantness of close quarter child homicide. Yet, as much as I appreciate arterial spray, even I had to wonder if showing a crying five year-old spew neck blood all over his assailant's face was a little too much.
  

  
(Hey, enough about dead children...) Aw, man, some of the kids are doing cadaveric spasms. (What did I just say? Let's get back to discussing what's important, and that is the pantyhose-adorned plethora of leggy floozies Danny Lee hooks up with in this movie.)
  

  
Okay, I'll do that. But first, I'd like to inquire as to why Bo (Emily Kwan), a desperate to please female lady cop who works for the Macau police department, is dressed in army fatigues. I think I just answered my inquiry when I described Bo as "desperate to please." In other words, I think the reason Bo dresses the way she does is because she wants to be taken seriously as a female lady cop.
  

  
You could also say the reason Bo wears men's clothes is because if she didn't, her male co-workers would be hitting on her around the clock.
  

  
Don't believe me? Just ask the armada of leggy floozies who accompany Danny Lee's Officer Lee to the office, as they're inundated with untoward advances. Except, they're not really "untoward advances," are they? Leggy floozies want you to hit on them, it's what they're there for.
  

  
Anyway, Danny Lee's Officer Lee doesn't just bring leggy floozies to the office, he brings them to crime scenes too.
  

  
After some kids discover a bag of severed human limbs washed up on a beach, a group of detectives, the aforementioned Bo (who is wearing, like I said, army fatigues), Robert (Eric Kei Ka-Fat), King Kong (Lam King-Kong) and Bull (Parkman Wong Pak-Man), get in an argument over who's going remove the severed limbs from the beach.
 

  
As their argument is about to come to blows, Danny Lee's Officer Lee shows up, with a leggy floozie in yellow hot pants on his arm, and gets the investigative ball rolling by ordering them to take the body parts back to the lab.
  

  
Meanwhile, at a nearby restaurant, the establishment's new owner, Wong Chi-Hang (Anthony Wong), is cutting up a pig with a meat clever. Hmmm, I wonder if he's connected to the body parts from the beach? What am I saying? Of course he's connected.
  

  
Identifying the people who used to be attached to the severed limbs is proving difficult for the detectives (the limbs are rotten).
  

  
Even if they could get usable fingerprints from the severed hand, it would be impossible for the detectives to concentrate on their work. (Don't tell me, Danny Lee's Officer Lee has brought another leggy floozy to the office?) That's right, he has. And get this, she's a white chick. (All right, it's official, Danny Lee's Officer Lee is a pimp.)
  

  
Noticing that Robert, Bull and King Kong are salivating over the leggy floozy's large tits, Bo starts to feel self-conscious about her lack heft in the bra department.
  

  
Perfectly encapsulating the film's twisted sense of humour, one of the male detectives tells Bo that even if the leggy floozy currently skanking up a storm in the office got breast cancer and had to have half her tits surgically removed, Bo's tiny boobs would still be inferior to that of the mammarily reduced leggy floozy.
  

 
Getting nowhere fast, Bo gets an idea. No, this idea has nothing with tracking down a lead, she gets an idea after watching Danny Lee's Officer Lee leave the office with yet another leggy floozy, a slinky whore in a floral-style mini-dress.
  

  
While Bo is busy noodling with her idea, Wong Chi-Hang is cutting up another pig. Wait, that's not a pig, that's the cook he just hired. After the new cook accuses him of cheating at mahjong, Wong Chi-Hang decides to kill him. However, instead of dumping his body in the ocean (like a normal person), Wong Chi-Hang uses the cook's body to make cha siu bao (buns filled with barbecue-flavoured cha siu pork). Except instead of being filled with barbecue-flavoured cha siu pork, they're filled with barbecue-flavoured cha siu people.
  

  
Seriously, Danny Lee's Officer Lee should really think about leaving the leggy floozies at home. I mean, how is anyone supposed to get any work done? Hold up, that's no leggy floozy, that's Bo!!!
  

  
Wearing a tight mini-dress (covered in a black and purple diamond pattern), Bo wields her black nylon-adorned gams like a pair of shapely batons. Beating the men over the head with said gams (metaphorically, of course), Bo seems to be enjoying her new-found status as a leggy floozy.
  

  
Her enjoyment, however, is short-lived when the detectives get a break in the case. It would seem that the family that used to own Wong Chi-Hang's restaurant have relatives on the mainland. And these relatives are constantly sending letters to Macau inquiring about their whereabouts. Well, this leads the detectives to Wong Chi-Hang's restaurant.
  

  
Told to stop being a leggy floozy, Bo and her co-workers head over to have a "chat" with Wong Chi-Hang.

  
You would think that Danny Lee's Officer Lee would have put a moratorium on parading leggy floozies through the office–you know, since they're this close to catching a serial killer. But no, Danny Lee's Officer Lee brings another leggy floozy to work. Not counting Bo's brief stint as a leggy floozy, he brings a total of four leggy floozies to the workplace.
  

  
Fake bemoaning aside, it's a good thing the film had leggy floozies. Think about it, imagine if it didn't. That's right, if it didn't, we'd be talking about one of the sickest movies of all-time. Don't get me wrong, the film is still sick. It's just that the leggy floozies, and a couple of other factors, managed to mollify some of the film's more grisly aspects.
  

  
Of course, there's no way to mollify the scene where Wong Chi-Hang murders five small children. This sequence has to be the most heinous act ever to be captured on film. I don't know what it is about the Hong Kong sensibility that allows such barbarism to be shown, but there's nothing I think of that comes to topping the gruesomeness of the child murder scene in The Untold Story. I feel bad about ending this on such a dour note, but the last thirty minutes are brutal. Let me put it this way, it makes Red to Kill and Run and Kill look like walks in the motherhumpin' park compared to this.

The Blue Jean Monster (Kai-Ming Lai, 1991)

According to Pauline Wong Siu-Fung's leggy gal pal, the reason babies are born without teeth is because the father usually knocks them out with his erect penis. (Wait, that can't be true.) It isn't. It's what passes for humour in the delightfully irregular The Blue Jean Monster, the latest Cat III flick to unwittingly scamper across my desk with an unruly thud. (Please. Don't try to make it sound like you stumbled upon this film by accident, 'cause nobody is buying that; not even for a second. You saw that the curvaceous Amy Yip was prominently featured on the film's poster wearing a red bunny suit, and you did what any sane person would, you tracked the film down, and then you watched it. End of story.) You know what, you're absolutely right. That is the reason I watched this film. (In order to get to the scene where Amy Yip prances around in a red bunny suit, you're going to have to endure a lot of politically incorrectness. I mean, weren't you offended by the film's anti-gay temperament?) Offended? Me? I don't think so. First of all, I wouldn't call the film's overall temperament "anti-gay," just parts of it. And secondly, the anti-gay slurs come as a result of one of the characters witnessing something that angered them. Since you're already practically on the edge of your seat, I'll tell you what perturbed them. You see, a pregnant Pauline Wong Siu-Fung (Her Vengeance) was upset because she caught her husband rolling around on the living room floor with Power Steering (Tse Wai-Kit), their physically disabled friend. Interpreting their frenzied rolling around as man-on-man action, Pauline Wong Siu-Fung let's fly a barrage of anti-gay epithets. In reality, and in a manner that would have made the cast of Three's Company proud, Pauline Wong Siu-Fung misunderstood the sight of her husband and Power Steering merely trying to jump start the former's undead corpse using electricity for gay sex.

If that sounds absurd, it's just the tip of Amy Yip's glorious nipples in terms of brain-crippling weirdness. Here's another example that just came to mind. In order to find out which employee at a fast food joint felt up the breasts attached to ETC (Siu Jing-Yee), her less chubby friend, Gucci (Gloria Yip), instructs them to do the same to a couple of hamburgers. Remember that scene in The Thing where Kurt Russell tries to find out which team member is the alien by testing their blood? Well, the hamburger feel up scene in The Blue Jean Monster is just like that, only a million times more stupid.

Speaking of food, Power Steering gets diarrhea from eating undigested noodles. No big deal, right? Diarrhea happens. Yeah, but not that many people get diarrhea from eating noodles that had just oozed out of the gaping metal pipe wound located near the abdomen of Hisiang Tsu (Shing Fui-On), the "blue jean monster" of the film's title.

Is he monster, though? I'm not entirely sure. A zombie? Perhaps. A vampire? Nah. Other than shirking the light, he doesn't strike me as a vampire. A demon? I'll have to admit, his eyes did scream demon possession on several occasions. How 'bout a ghost? He could be, but who knows. Well, whatever he is, he's determined to be around when his son is born.

How did Tsu end up becoming a monster, you ask? Well, that's simple. After being killed by a gang of bank robbers at a construction site, lightning strikes the debris that crushed him. (Hold up, why did the bank robbers kill Tsu at a construction site? Don't bank robbers usually kill people inside the bank they rob?) Huh? Oh, I see. Acting on a tip from Power Steering, Tsu, who's a cop, a cop who plays by his own rules, chases a gang of bank robbers. And that chase leads him to a construction site, where, after a prolonged shootout, Tse gets crushed by a pile of building material.

Left for dead by the bank robbers, Tsu bemoans the fact that he'll probably miss seeing his son being born. However, seconds after he expires, the debris on top of him is struck by lightening. Now, I'm not entirely sure if the guy on the motorbike was a bank robber coming back to look for a missing bag of money (Gucci, who was taken hostage during the robbery, managed to snag some money for herself) or just some random dude. Either way, the guy on the motorbike stabs Tsu in the stomach with a large metal pipe. Of course, the pipe has no effect on Tse, who returns the favour stabbing the guy on the motorbike with the very same pipe.

Even though the pipe wound doesn't hurt, Tsu covers it nonetheless with one of his wife's tampons. When he notices the noodles he had for dinner are oozing out of his pipe wound, he replaces the tampon with cookie dough.

"Replaces the tampon with cookie dough"? What the fuck, early 1990s Hong Kong?

To makes matters even weirder, Power Steering not only eats the undigested noodles, he eats the cookie that Tsu's pipe wound creates after the cookie dough has been baking on it for a few days. He definitely got diarrhea from the undigested noodles; just ask Tsu's wife (the radiant Pauline Wong Siu-Fung), the smell of liquid fecal matter is stinging her pregnant nostrils. But I'm not sure what effect the pipe wound cookie had on Power Steering's digestive system.

Anyway, it would seem that Tsu's body needs a heavy dose of electricity every so often to stay animated. He learns this hard way when he is declared dead at a local hospital. Reviving himself using a defibrillator, Tsu gets up and leaves in a calm and rational manner.

(Does this "calm and rational manner" you speak of include putting aside some time to admire the black nylons attached to the legs of Nurse Ho? No? Well, that doesn't sound very rational, does it?) I guess you're right. (Of course I'm right. To not admire the black nylons worn by Carol Lee Yee-Ha, the name of the actress who plays Nurse Ho, is the epitome of irrational.)

Okay, we get it, he's not exactly rational when it comes to leaving hospitals. In case you haven't noticed, Tsu is slowly falling apart. In other words, he's got more important things to worry about. Hell, he can't even get an erection anymore. Instead of sulking, Tsu vows to make use of what little time he has left. Which reminds me, in-between all the jokes about the handicapped and AIDS, the film actually has a pretty profound message. (And that is?) Oh, it's to live life to the fullest and always take the time to appreciate sexy nurses in black nylons.

It's a good thing Tsu can't get an erection, as the sight of Amy Yip prancing around his flat in a red bunny suit would no doubt cause his penis to tear a hole in his blue jeans. (Um, how is that a "good thing"?) Oh, yeah, that's not a good thing at all.

Nevertheless, Pauline Wong Siu-Fung's best friend, the alluring Amy Wu Mei-Yee, tells her to hire Death-rays (Amy Yip) to placate what she sees as the wandering nature of Tsu's increasingly bi-curious penis; she thinks Tsu is having an affair with Power Steering.

(Was it common for pregnant women to hire bunny suit-wearing prostitutes to service their sex-starved husbands?) I have no idea, but according Amy Wu Mei-Yee, it totally was. But then again, the only reason she gave for this being an acceptable course of action was that it was "the nineties." I don't know how many people remember this, but shouting the name of the current decade was quite the effective tool when it came time to convince those around you who were reluctant to engage in certain activities.

Since it is the 1990s, the sight of Amy Yip's Death-rays straddling Tsu in a red bunny suit (her black pantyhose making mincemeat out of luscious thighs and mouth-watering hips) while Pauline Wong Siu-Fung and Amy Wu Mei-Yee listened outside was completely okay as far as social norms go.

Unfortunately, Tsu's undead penis is as useless as an escalator to nowhere, and he is unable to take advantage of his pregnant wife's bosomy gift.

As the truth about his condition slowly gets out, Tsu must act fast if he wants to achieve his two goals: #1: Make sure he's alive when his son born. #2: Bring the bank robbers who killed him to justice. Well, he's going to get the chance to complete both goals simultaneously when the bank robbers kidnap his wife and Gucci. Culminating with a warehouse shootout, The Blue Jean Monster mixes absurd humour with John Woo-esque action scenes to create a bizarre mishmash that will appeal to almost everyone in the audience; those who have an aversion to shapely Chinese chicks who dress up like bunny rabbits might want to skip this one.