Fatal Vacation
Director: Eric Tsang
Year: 1990
Rating: 6.0
Welcome to the Philippines
– the land of sweet smiles, sunny days and getting your head blown off.
My guess is that the Philippine Tourist Board did not put their stamp of
approval on this film – not unless they wanted to keep tourists far away.
The film does not treat the Philippines kindly with remarks such as “You
must have eaten too much Philippino food to be so stupid” or having soldiers
willing to sell the tourists everything they own including the clothes they
are wearing. This film falls into the interesting sub-genre that can be described
as “Go to South East Asia and prepare to be raped, killed or possessed and
maybe all three”.
Many of the films in this category deal with the supernatural – black magic
and witches – but this one takes a different tact. This was made in 1990 a
year after Tiananmen Square and seven years before Hong Kong was to be handed
over to China. The Handover is on the minds of many of the characters as
they talk about emigrating out of Hong Kong before it is too late. Here director
Eric Tsang and writer Nam Yin paint a fearful picture of this future world.
They do so with a film that leaves little to the imagination – subtlety
is nowhere to be found here – this has exploitation written all over it in
big red colors, but as broad and absurd as it becomes I did find it quite
involving and harrowing at times. The film is littered with dead bodies and
their deaths are up close and personal. There are also a couple of rape scenes
that had me flinching.
A tour organized from Hong Kong comes to the Philippines. The group consists
of your usual motley crew of different types. The organizer is Irene Wan and
the guide is Eric Tsang. Among the tourists are two grandparents (Victor Wong
and Dang Bik-wan) who are bringing their grandchild, two cops (Nam Yin is
the older one I believe), three triads (headed by Tommy Wong) two young female
adults (the nice one being Cecilia Yui Ching Ching), a fellow with two mistresses
(Joan Tong is one) and a set of twins. Many of them will be dead by the end
of the film – it sort of becomes a guessing game as to who will be the next
to die.
In Quezon the bus is hijacked by a group of rabid Communist terrorists who
demand that the government release one of their members for the tourists –
and to show they mean business they begin the process of killing the tourists
– two by two. In one gripping scene the Communist leader forces Tsang to take
a gun with one bullet in it and aim it at his group one by one and pull the
trigger until he has to point it at Irene who he has fallen in love with.
Tsang is terrific in this film and in this particular scene he wrenches every
emotion possible out of it.
Eventually, in true Hong Kong fashion they bond together, break out, steal
some weapons and do loads of killing themselves. Fortunately, they must have
seen enough Chow Yun Fat films to know how to handle the automatic weapons!
After watching this I finally realized what was wrong with the US strategy
in the Vietnamese war. Instead of sending well-trained armed forces, we should
have sent busloads of Hong Kong tourists!
