In 1993, director Herman Yau and actor Anthony Wong got together to make one of the greatest Category III film with “The Untold Story”. The project, despite its rating, went on to be a success at the box-office and even earned its star the Best Actor award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Three years later, the director-actor duo would collaborate once again, this time with Wong Jing as producer, for yet another attempt at a Cat III feature. Where “The Untold Story” took inspiration from a real-life crime, this time it comes from the 1995 ebola outbreak in Zaire.
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Just like “The Untold Story”, “Ebola Syndrome too opens with a crime. Anthony Wong's Kai gets caught having an affair with his boss's wife and, in an enraged state, murders the couple and the husband's friend, while in clear eyesight of their daughter, Lily. Kai manages to abscond to Johannesburg where he starts to work at a Chinese restaurant. On the way back from buying pigs from a remote Zulu tribesmen, the ever-horny Kai rapes a tribeswoman who, unbeknownst to him, has the ebola virus which she passes on to him.
Kai, however, is a one-in-a-million case who quickly recovers from the symptoms but becomes a carrier for the virus. As he goes about killing, raping and serving food, he spreads the deadly virus all over Johannesburg, helped by a “special” hamburger he prepares and serves at the restaurant. Meanwhile Lily, the daughter of the couple Kai first killed, is all grown up and encounters Kai at the restaurant. The police do not take her seriously at first but when Kai causes infections in Hong Kong too after fleeing back there, both the Hong Kong and South African authorities are compelled to seek her help as she is the only one who can identify Kai.
“Ebola Syndrome” feels very much like Herman Yau and Anthony Wong getting together to recreate the magic of their award-winning previous collaboration, with a story that follows a suspiciously similar route to that of “The Untold Story”. Only this time, they push the boundaries of the acceptable as far as they can take it. Right from the murders in the first few minutes and the explicit frog dicing scene shortly after, the production fully earns its Cat III within the first ten minutes of its runtime itself.
But it doesn't rest its laurels there; there's far more gore, violence and nudity this time round. The many scenes of rape, murder and gore, including a very realistic-looking dissection of a human, all add to its restrictive rating. The music, by Ma Chun-hung, heightens the feeling of the dread and horrors that await in the rest of this Cat III production. Also realistic-looking is its depiction of flagrant racism that was existing at the time, not just towards Asians but by them against the South Africans too. Yau opts for a more darker blend of humour this time, which works in his favour, because the slapstick humour that was used in “The Untold Story” proved detrimental to the overall effect there.
Anthony Wong once again is on fine form here, although one can't help but feel that this is a slightly lesser performance to the role of Wong Chi-hang he played in his earlier work with Yau. Right from the very first scene to the infamous final showdown, his Kai reeks of despicability, with no redemption in sight. It is challenging for an actor of his calibre and charisma to make himself so utterly unlikeable, but Wong seems to make an easy task out of it. Vincent Wan Yeung-ming and Angel Wong both register their presence as Officer Yeung and Lily respectively, but this is clearly the Anthony Wong show throughout.
Ultimately, both Herman Yau and Anthony Wong have but one singular goal with this feature: to shock the audience as much as they can with the extremes it will push them to. In that sense, they have largely succeeded, making a film that both disgusts and disturbs. In comparison, it pales a bit against “The Untold Story”, which had a more reigned-in storytelling style and a much superior Anthony Wong performance. Even so, there's not denying that there's entertainment value to this too and fans of both the actor and the Video Nasty sub-genre will find plenty to enjoy here. They truly don't make 'em like this anymore!
