EBOLA SYNDROME (1996)

[Update 04/18/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

This movie is fucking nuts! Anthony Wong gets caught banging his gangster boss' wife, so they beat him up, force her to urinate on his face, then tell him to castrate himself. He takes the clippers and starts beating the shit out of everybody: busting out one guy's teeth, stabbing another dude in the dick then finally chopping off the woman's tongue. He goes on the run to South Africa where he gets a job as a cook and continues to be a scumbag: spits in people's food, masturbates into meat, kills people, rapes people, rips out a chick's eyeball, stabs another dude in the eye with a fork. Finally his evil ways catch up to him when he rapes a dying Zulu woman and catches Ebola! As luck would have it, the Ebola doesn't kill him, it just makes him even fucking crazier!!! Next thing you know he's back in Hong Kong, crazy as fuck and spreading Ebola around like wildfire...he even at one point runs down the street spitting blood in people's faces while yelling "E-bowl-i!!! E-bowl-i!!!!" It's fucking great and I laughed for days afterwards.

This movie is a masterpiece of horrible political incorrectness. There's tons of mean-spirited raping, killing, hatred, racial slurs, bigotry, chicken murders, cussing and child killing. It's awesome. If I was able to, I'd buy the rights to EBOLA SYNDROME.  Write a script for a sequel myself, pay Anthony Wong to star in it, director Herman Yau to direct it and then put it out myself. I'd probably lose 100 million dollars or so, but it'd be worth every penny.

The DVD I used for this review has a great looking picture. Way better than I thought I'd ever see it. I first saw EBOLA on VHS years ago, then I bought a bootleg DVD that's has a horribly wonderful shitty picture and the crappiest double subtitles ever plus a double audio track!!!!!!! That's right two grainy subtitles, plus two separate audio tracks, both in some languages I can't understand it! It's terrible, but somehow added to the wackiness of the movie. Whenever I watch it now, I actually use the crappy DVD instead of the better looking one because you can't help but laugh nonstop. I would love to take screenshots, but it's so shitty I can't even get it to work on my computer.

If you love wild, unique movies then check out EBOLA SYNDROME. It's not a masterpiece of film making, but it's damn sure entertaining. "E-bowl-i!!! E-bowl-i!!!!"

EBOLA SYNDROME Drinking Game:

• Every time Anthony says "bully" or "betrayal"
• Every time somebody says "Ebola"
• Whenever Anthony rapes or kills somebody

WHEN LADIES MEET (1941)

[Update 12/03/2023: Need re-watch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Joan Crawford is a novelist who's in love with her publisher even though he's married. She doesn't know the wife, so when her friend Jimmy accidentally meets the publisher's wife and discovers she's a really sweet person, he sets it up that Joan and the publisher's wife will also accidentally meet and become friends before realizing that they are both in love with the same scoundrel.

Good performances, but it's just way too long and sappy. Not to mention predictable. One highlight for me was Greer Garson. She was beautiful, very charming and she wore some great dresses. Overall, it was an entertaining film, but if you haven't already seen 1939's THE WOMEN I say check that one out first. It's a superior film all around.

THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS (2004)

I'm glad I saw 5 CENTIMETERS PER SECOND before I saw this film. Otherwise I might have just skipped over 5 CENTIMETERS all together. TPPIOED is a beautifully animated film, but it's fucking sloooow. 5 CENTIMETERS was light years better.

In an alternate post-WWII universe Japan is divided into two sections. There is this huge tower climbing all the way into the clouds and coming out of that tower is another universe, but Earth is safe because the invading universe is held back by the dreams of a young girl who's been asleep for 3 years. Confused yet? So was I and I'm not a hundred percent sure I even got that right.

There's also two teenage boys who are making their own airplane to go and see the tower up close. They discover the story about the sleeping girl so...ohhhh I'm so confused! The animation is gorgeous, but the script is a mess. After 5 CENTIMETERS I was really excited about this movie, but it bored me to tears. I'll never watch it ever again.

MICMACS (2009)

[Update 10/11/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

From the creator of DELICATESSEN and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN comes a version of YOJIMBO if it was made by, uhhh...well, the creator of DELICATESSEN and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN with a little bit of Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin thrown in.

Bazil is a video store worker who was shot in the head by a stray bullet. He looses his job and his brain is a little scrambled, so he becomes homeless and soon taken in by a "family" in a junkyard. Each member has a different unique semi-superpower. Together they gang up and attack the manufacture of the bullet that hit Bazil in the brain and their rival, a different company that made the landmine that killed Bazil's father. Their plan of attack: pit the two rivals against each other.

Enjoyable film and all of the wacky little inventions made of junk and the bizarre movie making techniques that you've come to expect from Jean-Pierre Jeunet are all here and very entertaining. The story though, was pretty weak and there was no tension. I never had a doubt in my mind that everything wouldn't turn out perfect. All the thousands of pieces of the puzzle would all come together perfectly no matter what. And they do. The time watching the movie flew by and I had fun, but I wish the story had been a little more substantial. Worth watching at least once.

DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974)

Fucking horrible. The first sign that this movie was going to take the cock and suck it was the opening credits were stretched out to 9:53. WTF?! That's 3 minutes longer than even BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL! Now I'm curious as to what's the longest opening credits in a movie ever? Probably THE FUGITIVE. 

Anyway, five little brats (who are all completely insane) escape from a mental institution van on a snow-covered mountain road then crash the vacation home of some adults. Then in an almost anti-HOME ALONE scenario the children start setting up booby traps and killing the adults anytime they try to leave. That actually sounds kinda cool, but it's not. Far from it.

Zero tension, the children are annoying and the adults are all stupid. One of the kids (after killing a few people) actually pulls the "Look over there!" trick on a woman and she falls for it, runs out a door, gets gasoline dumped on her and then set on fire. If this movie was filmed like a super violent live action cartoon or as a HOME ALONE for deviant sadists this would have been the greatest horror movie of all time. Instead it about as exciting as watching a cooking show in a language you don't know on a upside-down TV.

I can't think of one reason to watch this movie, but I can think of a hundred reasons to skip it.