Ebola Syndrome (1996) March 24, 2008
Posted by Cal in : Horror, Exploitation , trackbackDirector: Herman Yau Cast: Anthony Wong; Angel Wong; Lo Meng; Vincent Wan Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Jing’s Production Ltd
There’s a good chance that the Ebola virus will wipe out humanity at some point. It’s highly contagious, incurable and has a ridiculously high mortality rate. Which makes for potentially shocking and inevitably sensationalistic movie material. If the virus does break out on a large scale, though, it’s unlikely we will see the events of Herman Yau’s cult exploitation movie Ebola Syndrome played out for real. At least, I hope not…
Anthony Wong plays Kai, a psychotic rapist and murderer from Hong Kong, who flees the police to make a new life for himself in South Africa working in a Chinese restaurant. His boss (former Venom Lo Meng) has trouble finding merchants to sell him meat, so he does a deal with a local tribe suffering from an outbreak of the Ebola virus to seel him cheap pork. Kai comes into contact with the virus when he casually rapes an infected tribeswoman and becomes a carrier for the disease, which he starts to spread – at first unwittingly, and then deliberately.
Ebola Syndrome is sleazy as hell and pretty much unforgivable on any level. There’s always something nasty being done to someone or something either living or dead (there’s a shot of a dead mouse getting run over which is particularly gratuitous and pointless, and do we really need to see Wong slice up three frogs in one prolonged shot?). All of the characters are inherently unlikeable – even Kai’s boss (the most “normal” of the bunch) only hires him because he’ll work for low wages as he’s a wanted criminal. Oh, and let’s not forget Lily (Angel Wong), who very nearly became one of Kai’s victims in Hong Kong and who accidentally stumbles on him again in South Africa. She can’t be near him without vomiting as she claims she can “really recognise his scent of smell”. Yeah, all right…
With such a crew of amoral and unsympathetic characters, there is little drama. There is, however, what appears like an attempt at gross-out humour throughout the film (Wong Jing is the producer, after all) which, if you like that sort of thing, might raise a few laughs. And fans of Yau and Wong’s previous collaboration The Untold Story are treated to another “human flesh served to restaurant patrons” subplot.
It has to be said that the depiction of the symptoms of the virus are fanciful at best and don’t seem to bear much resemblance to the real thing. The sufferers have a tendency to be right as rain one minute then suddenly fall to the ground in spasms, making for some unintentional hilarity. Later on in the movie things are taken in a more serious direction with the introduction of Sergeant Yeung (Vincent Wan) and his team as they try to track down Kim and evade the virus, and the focus shifts away from Kim for a while.
I can see why Ebola Syndrome has such a cult following, with its gross comedy, gore and so forth, but there is just too much nastiness in there that just put me off – and animal violence in movies is a complete taboo for me (live chickens are killed on screen). I understand that the current Hong Kong version is as uncut as it’s likely to be, but it is clear that some scenes have been trimmed for violent content and the part where Kim slices off a woman’s tongue is quite obviously cut. If a fully uncut version becomes available, I think I’ll pass…
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Animal violence I think is one of the very few things that’s unacceptable on film - I’ve seen a few examples that are pretty horrendous (usually watching cannibal movies years ago) and it’s a poor excuse for attempting to shock the audience without any real skill being necessary. It seems to be decreasingly common now thankfully. Anyway, if it weren’t for that I’d have possibly given Ebola Syndrome a go. Dread to think what the ‘uncut’ version would be like!
I see what you mean about the comments being erratic - this was in my spam box. It’s lucky I checked before throwing everything out - God knows what other comments I’ve missed in the past few weeks while I haven’t really been paying attention!
The animal violence could have been worse (most of it happens to animals that are already dead), but the chicken thing was pretty gratuitous. I don’t know if you ever saw ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPOOKY KIND, but there’s a very similar scene in that but this goes much further. Ironically, I think the bits that WERE cut were all faked violence - the tongue cutting bit definitely, but there’s also a scene where a woman pees on a bloke and that seemed truncated too.
In reality, Ebola is not very contagious at all. It’s a bloodborne pathogen, like HIV, and can only be spread in the same manor (latex gloves and a mask should adequate protection from a victim). It it true that it takes less of the virus to cause infection, and the most lethal strain (called Ebola Zaire) has a 50 to 90% fatality rate.
Early on, the infection is easily mistaken for a simple flu, with the first symptoms appearing about a week after the initial infection. As time progresses, a terminal patient will rapidly degenerate, as the virus infests and destroys every tissue type (which is unusual, since most viruses only target a specific type of tissue); Ebola has a particular “taste” for the gonads and eyes, reducing the gonads to swollen black mush and clouding the eyes with blood. Most viruses force human cells to manufacture hundreds of virus copies before this mass of viruses ruptures the cell like an over-inflated balloon, but Ebola is small, and cells will make many thousands of viruses before exploding. Thus, the virus spreads throughout the body quickly. The indiscriminate cellular destruction continues into the bloodstream, reducing the blood into a gloppy blackened slime of dead cell fragments and virus. The mucous membranes break down, allowing blood to flow freely out of every orifice. Death is usually by exsanguination (bleeding out), but sometimes the virus mercifully destroys the brain before the rest of the body, resulting in coma and death.
Not a pretty way to go.
Thanks Bob. I once read “Hot Zone” by (Richard?) Preston (Douglas’s brother) and although it was obviously sensationalised to some extent, it scared the hell out of me! I kind of got the impression that Ebola was more contagious, but either way, the film’s depiction is WAY off the mark!
Ebola IS an airborne virus, just generally not in humans. Of course, this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have the potential to mutate to become more communicable in this manner. I believe Crisis in the Hot Zone deals with this somewhat.