Dr. Lamb

Dr.Lamb's narrative structure bears more than a passing similarity to that of another infamous category III shocker, The Untold Story. Both deal with 'true-life murders', both show the police investigation and apprehension of the murderer, the subsequent interrogation (ie. beating) of the prisoner, and the retelling of the crimes in shocking flashbacks. And both have seemingly out of place comedic moments.

But where The Untold Story was unashamedly OTT sleaze and gore, Dr. Lamb is a more stylish affair. The cinematography is beautiful (maximum use is made of creative lighting with many scenes swathed in blue and red), the acting is great (Simon Yam and Danny Lee give solid performances and even the actresses playing corpses are convincing) and the direction is well handled by both star Lee and Billy Tang.

Simon Yam play serial killer Lam Gor-Yu, who prowls the streets at night in his taxi, looking for 'bad' women (mostly foul mouthed drunks) to strangle, dismember and then photograph. After he takes some of his more 'risqué' snapshots to the equivalent of his local Boots Chemists, he is arrested by the police, who wish to know the truth behind the disappearance of several women who they suspect Lam of reducing to a pile of spare parts.

30 minutes into the film, and Lam confesses all, finally giving fans of Cat III horror what they were waiting for – well almost...

I know that Dr.Lamb has suffered at the hands of the censors, and that the Winson Entertainment DVD I saw is missing some seconds of strong gore, but I was surprised at how relatively bloodless this film was, especially considering that it is often mentioned in the same breath as The Untold Story and crazy shocker The Ebola Syndrome. Blood is sprayed around during the first dismemberment and we get the odd severed breast thrown in (quite literally during one 'funny' moment!), but I had been hoping for a higher 'yuck' factor.

As if to make up for the lack of gore, we get a fair amount of unsavoury action in the form of Lam's predilection for messing with the bodies of his victims, prior to cutting them up. Lam poses them for photos, uses them like puppets, and in the case of the final victim, he 'marries' her and then humps her corpse for a solid 40 minutes in front of a video camera.

For me, Dr. Lamb's mix of classy production and lurid subject matter is its main stumbling point; is this meant to be a serious study of a psychotic killer or an exploitative sleazefest? The film ends up being an uncomfortable mix of the two – too much sleaze for those wanting a stylish thriller and not enough sleaze (and gore) for those wanting a memorable slice of extreme cinema.

Dr. Lamb is directed by Danny Lee (co-star of The Killer and the cop in The Untold Story) and Billy Tang (director of Red to Kill and Run & Kill) and this film is one of the earlier Category 3 movies with Sentenced to Hang and Story of Ricky. After these films, brutally violent and sexually explicit horror thrillers began to be made and that highest age limit was invented.

Dr. Lamb is not as superb as The Untold Story or Run & Kill but it is still very chilling and stylish true crime film but I don't know how close this is to truth. Anyway, a disturbed young man drives a taxi in Hong Kong and he has very bad traumas from his childhood. Murdered and mutilated women start to appear and the police investigation begins..The horrific truth is about to be discovered..

Simon Yam is among the greatest psycho actors in Hong Kong (and world!) and only equivalent for him is Anthony Wong. The acting in Lamb is once again very professional and unforgettable, and when he "freaks out" it sure is scary and horrific to watch. At times, it makes me wonder how these gentlemen can act like that, no matter how professionals they are! Yam's motif for these killings is that he is on a mission from God and he has to kill all the bad women. Prostitutes and addicts are for instance "bad" women and due to his traumas and awful childhood he thinks that he has to purify and clean the streets out of this scum. But the main point and theme in Dr. Lamb is exactly the same as in The Untold Story: the power and behaviour of police. How far can police go in order to get info and answers? The police no longer is the "good" guy and they are no better than the victims. The message is not as powerful as in Untold Story which is at times almost unbearably hard to watch due to the acts police commits. But the same problems are discussed in Dr. Lamb and this can be described very important issue and no-nonsense film.

The film is also pretty stylish and professional, as we can expect from these film makers. The use of blue and dark colours and light is gorgeous and the film looks fantastic. The rain is always there and so is depressing atmosphere. This looks as wonderful as the finale in Billy Tang's Red to Kill. Dr. Lamb is almost hypnotic at times, so this is once again unforgettable cinema from the great Hong Kong and has no equivalents in Western cinema. The music is also important element here and I can't point out many technical flaws in the film. There are couple of "funny" scenes which should have been left out, but fortunately they are only very few.

The violence and sex is always the thing which alienates people from this kind of cinema and Dr. Lamb is not easier to watch than any other of its kind. The violence and gore is not as extreme as in Untold Story but it is still too much for mainstream audiences. Dead bodies are abused and body parts are cut off. The imagery is occasionally off-putting, but then we have to remember, what actually led the protagonist to commit these horrific acts. The difference between Western and Orient (horror) cinema is as clear as crystal: subject matters and imagery which is definitely a no-no in West (necrophilia, brutality towards women/children etc.) are by no means taboos in Orient. I am not too familiar with the Chinese culture, but watching Chinese films definitely shows that there are many cultures in the world and our Western is just one of them. And when the Chinese/Orient film makers show in their films such a horrific acts mentioned above, it definitely means NOT that they accept these things and don't think they're bad. They are bad and the Orient films say they're bad, so only thing the viewer has to be able to do is to INTERPRET these difficult films and see though them and analyze them. This is too much and too hard for most of the people and that's why the films are considered just sick, disgusting, pointless and so on. Orient films as seen through Western eyes are difficult and require a lot from the viewer, and I like difficult cinema which require brains.

Dr. Lamb is one of the greatest achievements in this field and absolutely worth seeking out for Hong Kong fanatics. Too bad that the newly released DVD from Hong Kong is cut for violence and reportedly the uncut print doesn't even exist anymore, or at least is not likely to be released anywhere. The Spanish VHS tape is the only uncut version I know but it is dubbed into Spanish. Some old HK versions may be uncut too but I don't know about them. But the new DVD is still OK because the cuts are not as bad as possible and there are no any substitutes, especially for English speaking people.

8/10 and recommended for the lovers of Eastern cinema.

"Dr. Lamb", despite being one of the better known Category III movies, is actually pretty tedious. It is a movie made for one reason: to show the graphic mutilation of dead women's breasts. It does this in detail, so if that's what you're looking for, look no further.

All the movie has to offer besides that are some scenes with hilariously inept policemen, who manage to make torturing a suspect look funny, so ineffectual are their torments. And when the suspect finally confesses, they throw their hands up and say, "It's useless! We need evidence!" If they knew they needed evidence, why did they bother with all the police brutality that led up to it? It seemed to bother them worse than it did the suspect/victim.

The rest of the movie is just Simon Yam sitting in a taxi on rainy days giving lifts to women he then murders in a surprisingly non violent way for a CAT III flick - he strangles them. As has been said, the only real nastiness in the movie happens after the women die.

Also, the only sense of dramatic tension happens there as well, leaving little doubt that the filmmakers' intentions were simply to shock and titillate the audience, with the stuff with the police and Yam's family just serving as padding. The funny thing is, though, that this dubious "tension" gained from the increasingly graphic mutilation scenes actually fails to pay off: the climax scene shows an act of necrophilia which is handled so unconvincingly it fails to be shocking at all. The actress does a pretty good job of staying still, but someone should have paid a makeup artist to actually make her look like a corpse.

There are a couple of other inexplicable details I'd like to add: for one, the movie begins with a head-scratching flashback scene which shows the killer as a child, spying on his sister having sex. That he was a peeping tom at this age is mentioned constantly throughout the film, as though this fact is in any way relevant to his later activities; are the only facts the filmmakers gleaned from the life of the guy the movie is based on that 1. he drove a taxi, and 2. he spied on his siblings? It seems like it. The movie does nothing with either.

The other thing is that the movie is called Dr. Lamb, which is weird because 1. he's not a doctor, he's a cabdriver, and 2. his name is spelt Lam, not "Lamb".

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 ;)

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.