Love to Kill

As Category III sleaze goes, this may be Anthony Wong's finest hour, if not his second finest. Perhaps his finest is "The Untold Story", perhaps not. I loved him in Ringo Lam's "Full Contact" and the recent "Infernal Affairs", but "Love To Kill" occupies a special place in my dark heart because it's so unrelentingly grim and nasty.

Wong plays a violent, jealous husband (and father) who treats his wife like crap and rapes, assaults and humiliates her constantly. He also incarcerates her in her own apartment and forbids her to have any friends. His son isn't treated any better and is witness to much of the defilement his mother bears.

Danny Lee ("The Killer"), a local cop (what else?), befriends Wong's wife after learning of her predicament and hatches a plan to save her from her brutish husband. Naturally, Wong is at odds with Lee's good intentions and a bloody confrontation looms. When said confrontation occurs, the gore flies and the corpses crash to the floor. Even Wong's son gets the sharp end of his father's stick.

"Love To Kill" is sensational exploitation, a film that goes all the way and keeps going until it becomes repugnant and has alienated most reviewers... and that's what makes it so admirable. Several versions exist, and the version I caught has an end credit roll over shots not appearing in the movie. These shots feature Wong's wife in a graphic bondage scenario and wearing a long chain as she clutches the bars of her front door.

Wong is hissingly convincing and the music score insinuates itself into your soul.

Add it proudly to your vile collection.

Anthony Wong brings the madness again here in Love to Kill. He plays the sexually deranged husband who suffers some from serious sexual and past issues. His poor, cute wife is the victim of his sexual desires (reading sexy talky to him and acting like she's getting all hot and bothered, while he roughs her up in more ways than one), and she's had enough. Bring in the cops, whom one ends up falling for the lass, and a kinda game of hide and seek for Anthony so he can get his wife back. End with your classic CATIII over-the-top last act and you have a pretty solid flick.

Love to Kill was a pretty good CATIII flick. It had the manic acting job by Wong, some choice sleaze scenes that would haunt any girl's dreams, and a cool and violent ending. But there were some lulls in this flick. Any scene with the cops girlfriend, or with any cops for that matter were pretty boring, and didn't bring much to the table. And I was kinda surprised in the lack of nudity. The actress who played the wife, the lead victim, doesn't even show her goods. Not even a nip. And the chances are numerous. You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal, which it normally wouldn't be but with a CATIII flick, it is. You normally bask in the nudity, but here you only get a couple boobs shots which were more for comedic effect than anything else.

The flick itself did have that classic dirty CATIII sleaze feel, but ultimately didn't really end up delivering the goods until the final act. Kinda disappointing. But luckily the story delivered with Wong, the non-nudity sleaze, and a pretty realistic approach to child-hood trauma. Without the trauma aspect, this would be a CATIII to possibly pass on, but with it, it's one any CATIII lover should definitely see.

I just happened to see that there are two versions out there, one with subs and one without. I hear the one without is the true Uncut version. I guess it really just depends if you want a tad more sleaze. I'd say pass on the unsubbed one, cause I don't think the leading lady is showing any of what she's got.

"Love to Kill" is directed by Billy Chung and it also stars Anthony Wong as a sadistic husband that tortures and abuses his wife and this leads the thing into a typical hyper strong HK terror cinema climax that is filled like the whole film with extreme violence and brutality.This film is easily among the most outrageously sick Cat III films ever made as it features plenty of misogynistic violence and several nasty rape scenes.Like my friend Bogey Man noticed there are two versions of "Love to Kill":the pretty rare Taiwanese DVD with subtitles and the unsubtitled HK DVD which turned out to have longer and nastier rape scene of Julie Lee on the table,near the end.There is also an insanely bloody axe decapitation that left me stunned.I think that the whole film is redeemed by a gritty performance by victim Elizabeth Lee as well as the dependably creepy Anthony Wong.The climax is brutal and horrifying but it never reaches the levels of intensity of "The Untold Story" finale.Still this film is so extremely rare that I'm glad to have it fully uncut in my collection.7 out of 10.

Billy Chung Siu Hung's (the bloody swordplay film Assassin from 1993) film Love To Kill (Hong Kong, 1993) is among the strongest products of the Category III boom that inhabited the HK cinema in early nineties. It consisted of films with strong sex, nudity and violence, more or less gratuitous and shock valued only. Love To Kill definitely belongs to the "more" category with some unforgettable ideas and pieces of celluloid sickness.

The HK psycho Anthony Wong (from the award winning The Untold Story by Herman Yau, from the same year) plays a business man and a husband who likes to torture, humiliate and rape his young wife (Elizabeth Lee Mei Fung) who for some reason doesn't leave him and save herself and their little son from the disturbed tormentor. A policeman (Danny Lee, the famous police character actor from films like Dr. Lamb (1992) by Billy Tang (and co-directed by Lee) and The Killer (1989) by John Woo to name just a few) however sees the problem and starts to protect the wife and the son but Anthony naturally doesn't like this at all, and leads it all into the typical ultra-mean spirited and graphic finale during a rain storm.

The film is almost completely without any serious merits as it's just a piece of exploitation in order to cash in when these kind of films were so popular. The imagery and happenings are something never found in the Western cinema, at least in mainstream, and it all becomes even more mind-blowing when some/most taboos for Westerners, like violence and perversions witnessed by a child, are broken in these films so often that reading the plotlines alone would make most viewers feel sick, and that goes perfectly especially for this film too.

The film still has a rather interesting and creepy soundtrack in the tradition of the mentioned Dr. Lamb which practically started the whole boom in 1992. Usually the music and soundtrack in HK films is interesting and adds to the imagery, especially in these terror films. Also the cinematography is worth mentioning as the film bathes, especially in the finale, in blue colors and camera lenses (as does Assassin, too), and the raging storm is captured nicely on the camera. Otherwise there's nothing that would rate the film any higher other than on the nastiness-meter.

The actors and actresses are talented and professional and so don't make the film any worse with their acting. Still the film has the usual HK humor in it which makes the sick goings-on even sicker as some "humor" is thrown into the soup. That includes some jokes about Danny Lee's erection and so on..Something that could never be found in the Western "serious" films either. And that thing usually destroys mane otherwise noteworthy HK films as the humor is just so obvious way and attempt to entertain the audience and masses.

The film has a very high outrageousness level as it has numerous scenes depicting the abuse of Wong's wife in various ways. She gets raped and molested, beaten and kicked by her husband. We also get to see some flashbacks from Wong's own childhood which turns out to be equally violent as his own father killed too and turned his young son into what he is now. These flashback scenes, mostly at the end of the film, include also some totally unexpected experiences as the imagery is speeded up (for example the hits of an axe) and that creates completely insane and mean spirited atmosphere to the scene. Again something that only HK exploitation makers seem to be able to come up with. The ending itself includes plenty of sudden and shocking gore as the madman wields his axe and meets also some nails, for example, on his furious way.

The film is also genuinely pretty "suspicious" in my opinion as the violence and terror is realistically painful and deals with things that should NEVER be taken as entertainment, mostly I mean rape. The version I saw (I've seen two versions) includes a very long and completely nauseating rape scene that just tries to be as sadistic as possible. I'm not sure does the HK audience really like imagery like this but I think no one with some sense for morality in films/entertainment would never accept or make something like it. Women get brutalized and killed in the most sadistic and low ways so that the fates of the men seem almost tame when compared to the females.

The other version I saw, the newly released DVD in HK (without subtitles) has this "table brutality" scene in a much longer form than the subtitled Taiwanese DVD which is otherwise identical to the HK version. I've also heard that the old HK Laserdisc is different from these two and since the end credits are filled with scenes and images not found in the actual film, it is impossible to say how "uncut" versions these that have been released or shown theatrically are. Obviously plenty of footage has been cut out, possibly even before the theatrical release.

The film is written by Law Gam Fai and Lau Wing Kin, the former having written also films like Dr. Lamb, The Untold Story and Gunmen (Kirk Wong, 1988) but out of his other films that I've seen, Love to Kill is the most gratuitous. Dr. Lamb and The Untold Story both are very brutal and violent but have also some attempt to some criticism towards the authorities and men in general as how it is easy to turn into a beast when chasing or fighting one. The harrowing torture imagery of The Untold Story, the victim being the criminal, is very strong and definitely has its impact to change something that may be rotten in the society and among the police for example. But there's none of this in Love to Kill, it is just honest, calculated and fastly made exploitation which is, by the way, produced by a veteran director Kirk "Organized Crime & Triad Bureau (1993), Crime Story (1993)" Wong!

Love to Kill earns no more than 2/10 from me as I don't have too high appreciation on films like this. (HK) Cinema is meant to be and can be more and films like Love to Kill are only commercial parasites living among the real pieces of the art.