Dr. Lamb

As with many other viewers who commented here, I have to report a little baffled by the film's ungodly reputation as a virulent, nasty shocker. I was likely treated to the cut Hong Kong version but it's easy to spot out the trimmings: various scenes of our titular serial killer dissecting with a scalpel his deceased victims. We see a breast being surgically removed and stored in a jar. Incisions across different body parts. There is repeated strangulation and a tame bout of necrophilia as depraved closure. Presumably these are extended in the uncut version for added effect.

The point remains however: this is nothing like say The Untold Story if that's what you're looking for. Simon Yam exudes a petulant insanity that veers closer to clingy and pathetic than Anthony Wong's brutal monstrousness. And a lot of the film, given Danny Lee's daft involvement, is another awkwardly comedic policier about unorthodox cops matching the killer in senseless violence.

So if you are in it for brutality's sake, you will know where to find it elsewhere. But if you have cinematic stakes in the films you watch and moreover have been developing an aesthetically preoccupied eye, you may be strangely fulfilled.

Our killer is a night shift taxi driver and every night seems to rain hard, which means we get a lot of latenight city blues played on nocturnal asphalt.

The kills are a treat to watch: inside the car parked nowhere and every glass panel drenched with rain and illuminating flashes from faraway neon, hands and bodies convulsing as though a sexual sauna is going on.

And back in the killer's apartment, rays of light piercing through calligraphy painted on a blue wall.

And once the last victim makes a getaway, a frantic chase through pouring rain across a park like straight from a giallo.

Everything that has to do with violence and dying is sensual blues, purely stylized in a way that is erotic to watch. In film terms, this will remind you of the rain-soaked/ neon-bled yakuza films of Takashi Ishii in Japan. A bit of 80's Mann and Wong Kar Wai, minus too much urbane poetry.

So as far as gruesome nastiness goes, this is Category II at best. Watch as a stylized crime flick.

I have had the pleasure of seeing Simon Yam in more than a few films: My Left Eye Sees Ghosts, Election, Triad Election, Exiled, and more. Seeing him as the psycho serial killer in a Chinese true crime adventure was a real pleasure.

I have also seen many film's with Danny Lee: John Woo's The Killer, with Simon Yam and Kent Cheng in Run and Kill, and with Chow Yun-Fat in Code of Honor. As the detective in charge of this case, he puts forth another very good performance.

Lee also produced and directed this film along with "Billy" Tang.

This is a Cat III film, so the violence is extreme. There is a lot of blood and gore as he dismembers his victims. There is also nudity and necrophilia.

Based upon a real story, this taxi driver, who was excited from the rain and thunder, was a real psycho. Yam was perfect in the role.

DOCTOR LAMB is another HK freak-show - this one is about a sick freak who kills chicks and videotapes and photographs the after-product. That's really all there is to this one. Not as memorable or as sick as THE EBOLA SYNDROME or THE UNTOLD STORY -in fact, DOCTOR LAMB plays out very much like THE UNTOLD STORY as it is told in flash-back sequences, where Yam tells the cops of his "misdeeds" after being caught, interrogated and tortured. Some decent scenes of necrophilia, dismemberment, etc...not a bad film if ya dig this sort of thing, just not as memorable as the aforementioned films. Simon Yam puts on a great performance as a psycho whack-job, but this one left me a little cold, so-to-speak...Worth a look as far as HK Cat III stuff is concerned, but don't expect too much. 7/10

P.S. - thanks to "extreme" film guru EMBALMER for alerting me to my Simon Yam/Anthony Wong mix-up that has since been corrected in this review - I've been watching too much of this stuff lately ;)

Dr. Lamb is CAT III psychological crime horror film, Shot in 1992 by Danny Lee and Billy Tang is a mixture of true crime procedural and gore movie based on the true life murders that took place in Hong Kong during several months. The film follows cab driver Lam Gor-Yu (Simon Yam), who chops up victims and engages in the odd necrophiliac action. He is a twisted psychopath who spends his spare time killing, mutilating, and raping women. The movie is quite different, most notorious films from the golden age of Hong Kong horror than trying to be a "Taxi Driver"-wannabe/rip-off. For those interested to check out Category III rating, which is equivalent to the old X's or current NC-17's in the U.S, then Dr. Lamb is a good start followed by 2 of my favourites Untold Story (1993) and Ebola Syndrome (1996).

In August,1983 a photo lab technician complained to his manager about disturbing photos of a mutilated female body on a customer's roll of film.This was the second time the manager had noticed this particular customer's unusual photos and this time he called the police.The photo was of a severed human breast.This was approximately the 700th such photo his store had processed for this customer.The cops took the customer,Lam Go-wan into custody and after sweating him for two days he confessed to murdering the woman in the photographs.Then he kept on confessing...In 1992,Danny Lee and Kent Cheng Jat-si teamed up to film the true crime biopic of Lam Go-wan,Hong Kong's first and maybe only serial killer."Dr.Lamb" is an excellent III Cat. shocker that offers some gruesome imagery including cold-blooded murder,necrophilia,dismemberment and breast mutilation.I own uncut DVD-R composite with English subtitles that has all the scenes of sexual violence intact,so if you want to see this uncensored try to find ultra-rare Spanish Manga Video release.Simon Yam's performance as the Taxi Cab Killer is truly haunting and out-of-control.One thing that I found pretty impressive were the actresses that played the murder victims,they had to lay around as corpses while the serial killer mutilated them.So if you want to see a chillingly horrific piece of horror give "Dr.Lamb" a look.9 out of 10.