12 Trashiest Films Ever Made

5. Ebola Syndrome (1996)

Ebola Syndrome
Wong Jing

Misanthropic, casually misogynist and badly made, Ebola Syndrome is a comedy (it says here) about a loutish brute who, when he€™s not shooting his load onto a steak he allows to be served to a complaining customer, wets himself in public, blows his nose on undergarments in a clothes store and berates hotel employees who€™re unable to procure prostitutes for him.

He also rapes a Zulu tribeswoman (€œthese black babes are great!€), then when he€™s diagnosed as having contracted Ebola, he shrugs it off and casually passes it on to most of Johannesburg and, later, Hong Kong. Eventually, he€™s cornered by flamethrower-wielding cops and, transformed into a human torch, runs down the street screaming, €œHow dare you bully me!€

Any film whose €˜hero€™ sucks out a woman€™s eyeball before grinding her and her family into hamburger (which he allows to be served in his restaurant) could not, strictly speaking, be considered a laugh riot, and the violence is overall too stark to be funny. Then again, when was the last time you heard a film€™s protagonist say, €œYour wife bullied me, so I screwed her€?

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Contributor

Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'