wong turn.

Yi boh laai beng duk (AKA Ebola Syndrome 1996)
Dir: Herman Yau
Cast: Anthony Wong, Yeung Ming Wan, Fui-On Shing, Wong Tsui-ling, Miu-Ying Chan and Meng Lo.

In the back room of a fashionable Hong Kong restaurant, Kai (Wong), ne'er do well employee and general sleazy man spends his off work hours shagging his boss's sexy wife over the uncooked shrimp whilst sweating a fair bit and grunting loudly.

In Cantonese of course.

Not too surprisingly it's not long before his boss catches Kai with his trousers down (and his wife with her arse in the egg noodles) and, like any normal jealous hubbie administers a severe beating upon the bad boy whilst angrily shouting at his unfaithful spouse.

Again in Cantonese.

However, after about the fifth kick to the nads and general pointy fingeredness, Kai goes completely mental killing his boss and wife in a pot noodle of blood and sweat, leaving only their young (Cantonese speaking) daughter alive.

Wife Swap with Rose West went horribly wrong....

Coming to his senses Kai decides the best course of action is to quickly leg it out of Hong Kong and try to start a new (and quieter) life somewhere else.

Grabbing his passport and kiss me quick hat he reckons the best place to lay low would be sunny South Africa.

Ten years later and Kai has carved out (tho' not literally) a nice life for himself in South Africa, working in another restaurant and still filling his days off by masturbating with sides of beef whilst watching his new boss and missis shagging on the tables.

Well at least he's not killed anyone yet.

Hearing that a local village does a great line in cheap pig meat, Kai and his boss decide to hit the great outdoors for a nice picnic and the chance to buy some inexpensive meat product for the restaurant's best selling hamburgers. Unfortunately on arrival they descover that the entire tribe is suffering from the infamous Ebola virus.

How's yer luck?

Grabbing their hankies and quickly covering their mouths our intrepid duo complete the purchase and beat a hasty retreat back to the car but, on along the way, they happen upon a woman lying prone in the grass and having a seizure.

Ever that or she's a Gregory's Girl fan.

Kai, almost hypnotised by the unfortunate woman's (admittedly bouncy) breasts , runs over to give them a bloody good squeeze before sticking it in her.

The romantic devil.

And before you can say John Leslie Kai is pulling a truly terrifying cum face whilst the woman spews blood and dies.

"Oooh Vic...I've fallen".

Returning home poor old Kai develops a fever (and an embarrassing itch) so decides to visit his local GP. The doctor immediately recognizes that Kai is showing the symptoms of Ebola (surprise, surprise) and prescribes plenty of bed rest and weak lemon drinks.

Or something.

In a bizarre quirk of fate Kai begins to feel better and within days his fever has cleared up entirely (tho' not the itch) and, deciding to celebrate his new lease of life and good health decides to rape and murder his pals wife before bludgeoning his boss to death.

But can you guess how Kai decides to dispose of the bodies?

Yup in a masterstroke of unhinged genius our mentalist mate begins to sell a new dish, African Buns, thru' the restaurant.

And (as if you hadn't guessed) African Buns are (albeit very tasty) hamburgers made out of the by now Ebola infected folk that Kai has killed.

Translation: "Shite in mah mooth!"

It's not long before a large part of the populace of Johannesburg are writhing about on the floor foaming at the mouth and pissing blood leaving Kai no choice but to sell up the restuarant and head back to Hong Kong on the next available flight.

But who should he meet on the way but the daughter of the couple he killed ten years earlier.

What are the chances of that?

Being a model citizen she rushes to tell the local authorities but much to her dismay they send her packing thinking she's imagined it.

Taking the law into her own (very delicate) hands she follows Kai back to Hong Kong where, upon confronting him she has the choice of:

A. Telling the police.

B. Giving him a damn good kicking.

C. Running away screaming.

Or

D. Biting him.

She decides on the latter, which is a wee bit silly when you take all the facts into account.

"Fiona! where's mah lunch?"

After a few (well a lot) more killings, sexual shenanigans, murders and a little bit more shagging (really I don't want to spoil it for you) the police finally decide that this Kai bloke is possibly a bit loony and that maybe, just maybe that they should really bring him in for questioning.

When the officers turn up to ask him a few things (just minor stuff like "Are you an Ebola infected multiple murderer with a penchant for shagging bits of meat?") Kai loses the plot even more and escapes into the street before taking a cute wee Chinese a girl hostage, daring the police to shoot him and risk his blood infecting everyone in the surrounding area.

The rotter.

Devo and John Leslie always enjoyed their

weekly game of 'What's the Time Mr. Wolf?'

When the small child (understandably) starts crying for her mum, Kai reckons he'd have a better chance of evading capture on his own, so he bumps her off before running (like a big girl I must admit) thru' the busy streets spitting on passers by and hollering "I have Ebola and now so do you!"

Will Kai be captured before he infects the world?

Will the girl from the start turn up again or just disappear completely from the film?

And will I ever recover from seeing the great Anthony Wong slaughtering a frog in extreme close-up?

The infamous Mr. Sausage Fingers was dismayed

to discover that The Cheeky Girls would

never reveal the whereabouts of his car keys.

On paper Ebola Syndrome sounds as if it should possibly be one of the most offensive films ever conceived, from it's tragedy exploiting plot thru' to the constant on screen barrage of murder, sexual violence, swearing, more sexual violence and gore.

But bizarrely enough it isn't.

Somehow director Herman Yau has managed (by accident or design, who knows?) to give a skewered sense of quality and credibility to the whole thing, partly thanks to an amazing turn from Anthony Wong as ker-razy Kai.

The magnificent Wong, a mainstay of Hong Kong cinema for the past twenty years has made a career playing damaged characters in films of wildly varying quality, flitting happily from such critically acclaimed fare such as Infernal Affairs to (enjoyable I'll admit) dreck like Raped by An Angel IV.

Here Wong manages to makes Kai the film's most interesting (if not most sympathetic) character, the rest of the (admittedly great) cast all just fade into the background when the great man is on screen.

"It's Cccccchhhhrrrriiissstttmmmaaasssss!!!"

If any criticism can be leveled at the movie it has to be the completely gratuitous (and unnecessary) scenes of animal slaughter, a throwback to the worst of the 70's Italian exploitation era and, while it may only be a few frog guttings and the beheading of a couple of mangy chickens, it's still enough to taint the viewing experience somewhat.

"Oh no! it's the Ninky Nonk!"

But don't let that put you off experiencing such a sleaze-tastic epic that for all it's shocks is a lot less vile and infinitely less hard going than the earlier Wong-Yau masterclass in bad taste, Baat sin faan dim ji yan yuk cha siu baau.

But then again, what film isn't?

This is why your girlfriend didn't
return your calls last Saturday.

Great as a first date film or a even a quiet Sunday afternoon with the family, Ebola Syndrome has everything you could ever want from a film about restaurant employed sexual deviants and is far more fun than any number of editions of The F Word.

Buy it now.