The Untold Story (Herman Yau, 1993)

It's official, Anthony Wong is my new favourite actor. Sure, I've only seen him in Herman Yau's The Untold Story (the film I'm currently writing about), and Herman Yau's Taxi Hunter, but based on the sheer intensity he displays in both these movies, I think I can safely declare that he in fact rules. Now, a lot of you are probably wondering why I didn't open with a bit about the insane amount of leggy floozies that appear in this film, or why I didn't open with a snarky remark about Parkman Wong Pak-Man's San Antonio Spurs baseball hat. First of all, I don't make snarky remarks. In fact, my remarks are, for the most part, completely snark-free. And secondly, why would a gruesome tale about a psychotic restaurant owner who murders men, women and children, chops up their bodies into tiny little pieces and then serves them to his customers have leggy floozies? I'm just messing with you, this film is filled with leggy floozies. And I don't feel guilty at all for calling them leggy floozies. They're leggy, they're floozies and they're ready to party.
 

  
All kidding aside, the inclusion of so many leggy floozies just goes to show why I consider pre-handover Hong Kong cinema to be superior to all other types of cinema. Filled with bizarre shifts in tone, kooky subplots, chopstick rape, unaware cannibalism, highly inappropriate humour and grisly violence (the kind that would make Lucio Fulci stop and say, "Mamma Mia, dat iz, uh, how you say? some really fucked up shit), The Untold Story was able to earn the fullness of my attention with a breathtaking ease.
  

  
I've noticed that my interest in films has been gradually waning over the past few months. Itching for most films to hurry up and finish already, I've been wading through  a lot of dreck that's not even worth reviewing. Some of you might be thinking to yourself: Aren't the majority of the films you review not worth reviewing? Ah, just because a film is awful, doesn't mean it's not worth reviewing. No, the film's I'm talking about are neither good or bad, they're just plain bland.
  

  
Well, long story short, The Untold Story managed to briefly rekindle my love of cinema, as, like I said earlier, it contains everything I like. Of course, I don't mean to imply that I "like" watching little kids brutally murdered with a meat clever. What I think I meant to say is, I like it when movies aren't afraid to show the gory unpleasantness of close quarter child homicide. Yet, as much as I appreciate arterial spray, even I had to wonder if showing a crying five year-old spew neck blood all over his assailant's face was a little too much.
  

  
(Hey, enough about dead children...) Aw, man, some of the kids are doing cadaveric spasms. (What did I just say? Let's get back to discussing what's important, and that is the pantyhose-adorned plethora of leggy floozies Danny Lee hooks up with in this movie.)
  

  
Okay, I'll do that. But first, I'd like to inquire as to why Bo (Emily Kwan), a desperate to please female lady cop who works for the Macau police department, is dressed in army fatigues. I think I just answered my inquiry when I described Bo as "desperate to please." In other words, I think the reason Bo dresses the way she does is because she wants to be taken seriously as a female lady cop.
  

  
You could also say the reason Bo wears men's clothes is because if she didn't, her male co-workers would be hitting on her around the clock.
  

  
Don't believe me? Just ask the armada of leggy floozies who accompany Danny Lee's Officer Lee to the office, as they're inundated with untoward advances. Except, they're not really "untoward advances," are they? Leggy floozies want you to hit on them, it's what they're there for.
  

  
Anyway, Danny Lee's Officer Lee doesn't just bring leggy floozies to the office, he brings them to crime scenes too.
  

  
After some kids discover a bag of severed human limbs washed up on a beach, a group of detectives, the aforementioned Bo (who is wearing, like I said, army fatigues), Robert (Eric Kei Ka-Fat), King Kong (Lam King-Kong) and Bull (Parkman Wong Pak-Man), get in an argument over who's going remove the severed limbs from the beach.
 

  
As their argument is about to come to blows, Danny Lee's Officer Lee shows up, with a leggy floozie in yellow hot pants on his arm, and gets the investigative ball rolling by ordering them to take the body parts back to the lab.
  

  
Meanwhile, at a nearby restaurant, the establishment's new owner, Wong Chi-Hang (Anthony Wong), is cutting up a pig with a meat clever. Hmmm, I wonder if he's connected to the body parts from the beach? What am I saying? Of course he's connected.
  

  
Identifying the people who used to be attached to the severed limbs is proving difficult for the detectives (the limbs are rotten).
  

  
Even if they could get usable fingerprints from the severed hand, it would be impossible for the detectives to concentrate on their work. (Don't tell me, Danny Lee's Officer Lee has brought another leggy floozy to the office?) That's right, he has. And get this, she's a white chick. (All right, it's official, Danny Lee's Officer Lee is a pimp.)
  

  
Noticing that Robert, Bull and King Kong are salivating over the leggy floozy's large tits, Bo starts to feel self-conscious about her lack heft in the bra department.
  

  
Perfectly encapsulating the film's twisted sense of humour, one of the male detectives tells Bo that even if the leggy floozy currently skanking up a storm in the office got breast cancer and had to have half her tits surgically removed, Bo's tiny boobs would still be inferior to that of the mammarily reduced leggy floozy.
  

 
Getting nowhere fast, Bo gets an idea. No, this idea has nothing with tracking down a lead, she gets an idea after watching Danny Lee's Officer Lee leave the office with yet another leggy floozy, a slinky whore in a floral-style mini-dress.
  

  
While Bo is busy noodling with her idea, Wong Chi-Hang is cutting up another pig. Wait, that's not a pig, that's the cook he just hired. After the new cook accuses him of cheating at mahjong, Wong Chi-Hang decides to kill him. However, instead of dumping his body in the ocean (like a normal person), Wong Chi-Hang uses the cook's body to make cha siu bao (buns filled with barbecue-flavoured cha siu pork). Except instead of being filled with barbecue-flavoured cha siu pork, they're filled with barbecue-flavoured cha siu people.
  

  
Seriously, Danny Lee's Officer Lee should really think about leaving the leggy floozies at home. I mean, how is anyone supposed to get any work done? Hold up, that's no leggy floozy, that's Bo!!!
  

  
Wearing a tight mini-dress (covered in a black and purple diamond pattern), Bo wields her black nylon-adorned gams like a pair of shapely batons. Beating the men over the head with said gams (metaphorically, of course), Bo seems to be enjoying her new-found status as a leggy floozy.
  

  
Her enjoyment, however, is short-lived when the detectives get a break in the case. It would seem that the family that used to own Wong Chi-Hang's restaurant have relatives on the mainland. And these relatives are constantly sending letters to Macau inquiring about their whereabouts. Well, this leads the detectives to Wong Chi-Hang's restaurant.
  

  
Told to stop being a leggy floozy, Bo and her co-workers head over to have a "chat" with Wong Chi-Hang.

  
You would think that Danny Lee's Officer Lee would have put a moratorium on parading leggy floozies through the office–you know, since they're this close to catching a serial killer. But no, Danny Lee's Officer Lee brings another leggy floozy to work. Not counting Bo's brief stint as a leggy floozy, he brings a total of four leggy floozies to the workplace.
  

  
Fake bemoaning aside, it's a good thing the film had leggy floozies. Think about it, imagine if it didn't. That's right, if it didn't, we'd be talking about one of the sickest movies of all-time. Don't get me wrong, the film is still sick. It's just that the leggy floozies, and a couple of other factors, managed to mollify some of the film's more grisly aspects.
  

  
Of course, there's no way to mollify the scene where Wong Chi-Hang murders five small children. This sequence has to be the most heinous act ever to be captured on film. I don't know what it is about the Hong Kong sensibility that allows such barbarism to be shown, but there's nothing I think of that comes to topping the gruesomeness of the child murder scene in The Untold Story. I feel bad about ending this on such a dour note, but the last thirty minutes are brutal. Let me put it this way, it makes Red to Kill and Run and Kill look like walks in the motherhumpin' park compared to this.

Run and Kill (Billy Tang, 1993)

You just know something terrible is going to happen to the rotund protagonist at the centre of Billy Tang's excessively grim Run and Kill, yet another entry in my veiled, and some might say, misguided, attempt to seem less lame by watching a shitload of Category III films. Well, for starters, you used the word "grim" to describe it right out of the gate. Yeah, but remember, Billy Tang directed Red to Kill, one of the grimmest movies ever made. In other words, you shouldn't be that surprised that a film he made might come off as a little grim. Oh, man. How should I put this? This film is more than "a little grim." It's bleak, it's disturbing, it's violent, and it's dark as hell. Anyway, since I got sidetracked, I'd like to finish my original point. And, if memory serves me correctly, the point I was trying to make went something like this: I knew a terrible tragedy was about to befall this film's tubby lead judging by the overly good mood he seemed be in when he wakes up. You can just tell that this isn't going to be his day. Wait, "isn't going to be his day"? You make it sound like he's about to get the mother of all parking tickets. I would like to think that someone who is forced to watch their daughter burnt to a crisp would use stronger language than that to describe their day. How about being forced to watch a man get stabbed in the leg with a piece of bamboo? What kind of language would that entail? I don't know, but it sounds like this guy's being forced to watch a lot heinous stuff over the course of a single day. Actually, a lot of it occurs over the period of a couple of days, maybe even a week. Either way, every horrible thing you can imagine happening to a chubby Chinese man takes place in this film. And, yes, at one point he even accidentally knocks off the charred head that was once attached to the equally charred body of his recently flame-broiled daughter.
 

 

As I let that mental image sink in a bit; which, I'll admit, it's definitely something you don't see transpire that often. I'm going to try to piece together the events that led up to that shockingly awful incident–shockingly awful even by Category III standards–by walking us through the series of unfortunate decisions made by Cheng Ng (Kent Cheng), or "Fatty," as he is more widely known.
 

 

In case we had any doubts whether or not Fatty was living the good life, the films opens with a shot of a framed photo taken on the day Fatty and his wife (Lily Lee) got married. Smiling from ear to ear, the photo is a reminder of the martial bliss Fatty and his wife experienced on that day. Are things still as blissful? Well, judging by the cheerful demenour Fatty displays as he wakes up, things couldn't better. After taking his daughter, Pinky(!), to school, he heads to work. The owner of a successful petrol station, Fatty would appear to have it all: a leggy wife, a daughter who is too adorable for words, and the respect of the community (his jaunt down the street reminded me of the opening credits of The King of Kensingston). 
 

 

Informed by his mother that today is his wedding anniversary, Fatty grabs a wad of cash out of a drawer. Before heading out to buy a present or some shit, Fatty drops by the apartment to wish his happy anniversary. As he enters, Fatty hears the sound of moaning. In typical Fatty fashion, Fatty begins to mimic the moaning sounds. However, the mimicry comes to screeching halt when he realizes that his wife is the one doing the moaning, and the moans are being caused by another man's cock.
 

 

Obviously depressed by what he just saw, Fatty wanders the nightclub district of Kowloon City in the mopiest manner possible. Stopped on the street by a childhood friend, scratch that, a classmate from school that he barely remembers, Fatty and the former classmate, a bi-curious ladies man, grab a tequila at the '97 Bar. (Quirky fun-fact: Tequila is the nickname of Chow Yun-Fat's character in Hard Boiled.)
 

 

I don't know how to put this, but one of the unexpected pleasures that come from watching Category III films, and Hong Kong cinema in general, are those rare moments when a white person appears onscreen. Spotting a white person standing in the background is one thing, but if they start speaking Cantonese, I lose it. White people who speak Cantonese are awesome. Don't tell anyone, but one of my favourite past times is searching the internet for videos that feature white people speaking Cantonese.

 

After about a dozen or so tequilas, Fatty is clearly drunk out of his mind. Since the former classmate has long since left, Fatty is reduced to mumbling to himself like an imbecile. Enter the alluring Fanny (Esther Kwan), a vision of loveliness in a saucy headband. Sitting on the stool next to Fatty, Fanny humours him by letting him pay for her drinks. Her attitude, however, changes immediately when she spots the wad of cash in his wallet (a wad he was supposed to use to pay for his wife's anniversary gift). Telling him that he should get back at his wife, Fanny grabs 5,000 from his wallet and instructs Fatty to wait here while she summons a friend who knows a thing or two about revenge.
 

 

It turns out that the friend Fanny summons is a low level gangster. And when he approaches Fatty near the john, all he can make out are the words "wife" and "dead." Putting two and two together, the low level gangster assumes that Fatty wants to put a hit out on his wife. Of course, we all know he didn't say that. Nonetheless, the low level gangster grabs 100,000 from his wallet as a down payment, and leaves Fatty in a heap.
 

 

Eventually making his way home, Fatty finds that his wife and her lover are still going at it. Unaware that assassins are about to come crashing through the door, Fatty tries to come an understanding with his wife; one that involves her not using their flat for adultery purposes. In typical Billy Tang fashion, the violence that comes through Fatty's door is swift and merciless. Knocked unconscious by the assassins during the attack, Fatty lies on the floor as his wife and her lover are murdered.
 

 

After being questioned by Inspector Man (Danny Lee) down at police headquarters, Fatty comes home to an empty apartment; oh, and, don't worry, Pinky is staying with his mother. Still oblivious to the fact that he was the one who ordered the hit on his wife, Fatty receives a phone call instructing him to come to the '97 Bar. Slowly but surely, Fatty begins to learn the truth.
 

 

Arson, blood drinking, torture, children set ablaze, impromptu puppet shows that boast puppets that are made from the corpses of charred children, hostage standoffs, porno theatre kung-fu fights (could you guys go kick each other in the face somewhere else, I'm trying to watch The Second Coming of Eva up in this Guangdong smut palace), crazy shootouts, and slit throats (complete with arterial spray) are what Fatty has in his future. Now, I don't know exactly who's to blame for Fatty's unique dilemma. But I do know one thing, a psychotic veteran of the Sino-Vietnamese War named Ching Fung (Simon Yam) is determined to make Fatty's life more of a living hell than it already is. If you doubt his life can't get any worse, than it's obvious you don't know Ching Fung. Blaming him for the death of his brother, Ching Fung does things to Fatty that will leave certain audience members aghast. Luckily, I'm not one of those "certain audience members." That being said, what occurs during the film's final third will shock even the most jaded fans of Hong Kong cinema.

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