Gwong Chow sat yan wong: Yan pei yat gei

Nutter Lau Shu Biu (Kwok-Pong Chan) kills and mutilates prostitutes believing that he is helping them to be reincarnated in a better life.

Inspired by the real-life murders of thirteen women committed by serial killer Li Wenxian, Diary of a Serial Killer is extremely reminiscent of earlier Cat III shocker Dr. Lamb. Like that film, the grisly events are recounted by the perpetrator while in police custody. And, as with Dr. Lamb, I can't say I was overly impressed, finding the killer's activities rather mundane despite their obvious abhorrent nature.

Part of the problem is the film's blossoming romance between Lau and Jade (Yuk-Mui Yeung), the sexy 'grand-daughter of 12th auntie', which interrupts the dicing and slicing. Yes, we get to see the actress in the altogether, bumping and grinding with the killer, but the lovey-dovey stuff seems out of place and causes the pace to lull. Also serving to weaken the film's impact is the lack of decent gore: Lau removes body parts and skin from his victims, but the acts aren't very graphic and lack the power to disturb (although I might be a bit jaded, having watched a lot of these films).

Like many a Cat III film, there's also some misplaced humour and general implausibility to ruin the overall effect: Lau drops a piece of flesh from his loft and has to go looking for it in the kitchen below, while the disposal of a body in a cabinet is just plain silly, Lau easily explaining away the corpse to his wife (he tells her it was a hit and run, so she helps him dispose of the body), and convincing Jade that a pool of blood is rusty water.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb. Twisted it may be, but it's far too similar to Dr. Lamb, a film that didn't impress me greatly in the first place.

Otto Chan's film Diary of a Serial Killer (1995) tells the story of a man (Chan Kwok-Bong), who has very serious traumas when he was sent to prison and after that, he's become a brutal killer who hates "certain types of females" the most, as he says it himself. He hates prostitutes and kills them in order to reincarnate them and thus let them born again as better human beings. He thinks that being a prostitute is the lowest form of life and all those have to be killed in order to being able to be reincarnated. Soon he is captured as he accidentally falls in love with one of his potential victims and the film is told (again, like Danny Lee's Dr. Lamb (1992) and Herman Yau's The Untold Story (1993)) as a flashback when the killer has already been caught. The film is pretty long (2 hours) but never boring or tired, there's always something going on, but what this film concentrates on to show, are brutal rapes, murders and mutilations in the tradition of Dr. Lamb, which means that the mutilations are done to dead corpses.

This film is okay film if one likes these often very sick films. They may have some themes and real message in them (like masterpieces Run and Kill by Billy Tang (1993) and The Untold Story have), but films like Diary, Herman Yau's Ebola Syndrome (1996) or Ivan Lai's Daughter of Darkness (1993) concentrate more on the display of nasty acts of violence, sleazy sex and perversions. Fortunately Diary has some great visual touches like the menacing cinematography during the scenes in which the killer rapes and mutilates the dead girls in his attic, but it is obvious these scenes are taken straightly from Lee's Dr. Lamb, which has identical scenes and was done 3 years earlier. That proves again that Diary is more a cash in than an ambitious piece of work. Still, the creepy lightning and atmosphere is effective and alongside the very erotic and warm love making scene, it proves the talent of director Chan.

The scenes which give this film Cat 3 rating are pretty powerful, too, to turn one's stomach. When the killer abuses and slices the dead bodies, they still spurt blood on his face and body even though they have been dead for hours or even days! So don't expect this to be a realistic film in this department. It is just because of the fact that the film makers wanted to throw some blood to amuse the audience which watches these films and made the whole CAT 3 boom so potential in the first place. The scene where the killer cuts the dead girl's vagina and takes it to himself as a "souvenir" is very sickening and makes some viewers to throw up, because even I felt very sick in my stomach during that nasty short scene. There's also plenty of nudity and sex here, and many times we get to see pubic hair and women's genitalia, so this film won't be too popular among the Japanese censors.

The ending is very emotional and touching, and almost made me feel the need to cry! The case is exactly the same as in Ivan Lai's Daughter of Darkness' ending which is very sad and sorrowful, while the whole film before that is just plain sick and graphically violent and exploitative. It feels very strange when these kind of films have actually something emotional in the end and that makes me wonder what did the film makers actually have in mind and want to say? I cannot find any "content" or message in Diary, but still it feels strange that the ending is this powerful without a reason. Some interpretations can be made about the bird the killer watches and the expression on his face during the final images, but it all seems like the film had some great potential to be more than just exploitation and we just get a glimpse of that at the end of the film. Also, the very final image involving a doll is very shocking and creepy and close to William Lustig's Maniac (1980) and Michele Soavi's Deliria aka Stage Fright (1987) and their use of similar "dead but living" dolls.

I give Diary 5/10 and it is not among the greatest achievement of this short lived "genre" in Hong Kong cinema history. This film could have been much more than it now is, but still this is worthwhile for Asian cinema junkies who are interested in these films, too.

This movie is based on the true story of a Chinese serial killer who murdered and then mutilated 13 female prostitutes in Mainland China from 1991 to 1996. In this particular film the murderer is named "Lau Shu Biu" (Kwok-Pong Chan) who suffers from an insatiable need for sex which his wife (played by Farini Cheung) is unable to completely satisfy. As a result he visits prostitutes and subsequently kills them in the insane belief that he is helping them to achieve happiness in another life. Now, whether that was an actual motivating factor on his part is not known to me, but in any case the movie devoted quite a bit of time and effort depicting him slicing off certain body parts afterward to satisfy his depraved urges. Too much time and effort in my opinion. If that wasn't bad enough, this film also lacked any real suspense, mystery or excitement which ultimately resulted in a movie that I found to be rather long and boring. Brutal, raw and disgusting to be sure-but rather tedious all the same. In short, about the only thing going for this movie was the presence of Yuk-Mui Yeung (as "Jade") and the aforementioned Farini Cheung who lent their beauty to an otherwise repulsive picture. But other than that I found very little to commend this movie for and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

"Diary of a Serial Killer" by Otto Chan is based on actual events that took place in Guangzhao's,Wong Po village in 1991-1996.During five years of terror Li Wenxian raped and murdered thirteen women,mostly prostitutes.Li told authorities he was seeking revenge for a prostitute who cheated him.Lau Shu-bill(Chan Kwok-Bong)is a serial killer.He murders prostitutes in very nasty ways.He wants to dispatch these filthy women,releasing them from their misery and giving them a better shot in the next life.This HK sickie is very well-made and has some rather unpleasant scenes of sexual violence and butchery.There is also plenty of sleazy sex to satisfy fans of exploitation cinema.Chan Kwok-Bong is frighteningly realistic as a sicko killer.The film is not for everyone,but if you're into extreme Asian cinema give this one a look.Recommended.

This is the second time I've tapped into one of these Hong Kong slasher movies and I thought I was watching the first one all over again. The murderer is always leaping and rolling around, babbling loudly to himself, shouting the narration, waving his arms, blowing out his cheeks, rolling eyes, and killing women and then manhandling their bodies in the most disgusting ways.

No one has ever called me a bluenose. Psychopath, thief, neurotic -- yes -- but never bluenose. And thank heaven for that, because Bluenose is the name of the ferry between Maine and Nova Scotia.

Yet I thought the chief appeal of the film was to the most base impulses of humankind. A raving maniac inserts a stick of dynamite into the vagina of a beautiful young girl and blows her up. What is that -- funny? And there's no particular reason for it all. There's not even the cartoon simplicity of the explanation behind Tony Perkins in "Psycho." And "subtlety"? Maybe there is no such word in Chinese.

The colors are lurid and drawn mostly from the red end of the visible spectrum, and the English subtitles of the Cantonese dialog flash across the bottom of the screen like lightning bolts. Fortunately for me, but of no consequence for your fortunes, I spent several agonizing months learning Chinese. I remember only two words. "I" and "you". Providentially, these two words were used frequently.

What's most worrisome is not that this movie -- and evidently others much like it -- exist. It's that there's an audience for them. Sex, yes. Torture porn -- why?.

If you missed it the first time around, this is your golden opportunity to miss it again. Watch it if you must but be sure to tell your shrink about the experience and what it meant to you.