As soon as I laid eyes on the nutter that was in Ebola Syndrome I knew this was going to be something, well, ‘different’. Anthony Wong Chau-Sang is, quite possibly, the sleaziest, creepiest, person ever… but I mean that in a good way, it shows that he’s a top notch actor, and he’s on TOP form in this film!
The plot is as thus: In 1978 in Hong Kong, a grisly murder takes place. Eight years later, on a Macao beach, kids discover the severed hands of a fresh victim. A squadron of coarse, happy-go-lucky cops investigate, and suspicion falls on Wong Chi Hang, the new owner of Eight Immortals Restaurant, which serves delicious pork bao. The hands belong to the missing mother of the restaurant’s former owner; he and his family have disappeared; staff at the restaurant continue to go missing; and, Wong can’t produce a signed bill of sale: but there’s no evidence. The police arrest Wong and try to torture him into a confession. Can they make him talk? (from IMDb.com)
Right from the get-go you can tell that Wong Chi Hang (Anthony Wong) is a sleazy piece of work, killing his employer for money then taking over the business.
Then we see a mother and kids finding body parts on a beach. The cops turn up and are completely incompetent and act like the Keystone Cops, they provide the comedy element, and this is something that no-one in the West can do, provide comedy within a really dark horror/gore movie without going too far one way or the other.
Wong then hires a cook, who catches him cheating at gambling and already has a cashier who’s pretty terrified of him anyway. Needless to say, both of them cop it.
But it’s the prolonged rape and torture of the cashier that is just vile, vile, vile! Not content with scalding her hands, he binds her, rapes her then rams a handful of chopsticks up her vag (below)! The actor looks totally serious, completely off his trolley, and really looks the part. Which is quite worrying!
Now remember, between all this evil carnage the Keystone Cops are cracking one liners and being completely incompetent, so one minute your laughing next you’re watching a violent rape, a very odd position to be in, mentally.
So the cops are after Wong, they’re pretty sure he’s been on the rampage but need to get a confession or something.
I won’t spoil the last quarter of the film as it’s actually pretty well written with an good (?) ending.
The first quarter of the film is kinda slow, second quarter it picks up, but it’s the last half of the film where we see the cops trying to get a confession, Wong trying to get off scot-free, a ton of gore, and only at the end do we find out what will happen to Wong.
Definitely not for those looking for a comedy, as it has gore. Definitely not for those looking for gore only, as it has comedy. So, really, you need to be in to gore and have a bit of a sick sense of humour to watch this one.
It’s a brutal film and you certainly won’t walk away from it feeling happy, but it is funny in places. It’s a hard one to recommend as anyone you recommend it to probably won’t speak to you ever again…
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