Dr Lamb 1992

Nowhere in this notorious Hong Kong film is the killer called Dr Lamb. He's not even a doctor. And this isn't truly a horror film. Its in the serial killer genre and deliver the exploitation goods like campy stereotype characters, lurid gore FX, inappropriate sexual titillation & wild expressionistic style. But its really a humanistic character piece that exposes the dregs of Hong Kong's impoverished families and the psyche of the young men in them (the target audience I suspect). The filmmakers condemn but sympathize with him fully and the bureaucratic police force are played as bumbling cowards & equally cruel weirdos with no moral code except the honorable chief. This is a common portrayal of roles in HK cinema in the late 80s/early 90s. Its sympathetic of the people trapped in the hell of Communist China and somewhat disgusted with the Westernized freedom given to HK's Chinese and paints a bond or mirror image between disparate participants but it must side with the law, painfully sometimes.

I have been absent from this blog but I've watched tons of movies. Mostly Hong Kong cinema, Charles Band cheapies & cult films that I finally found access to. I post reviews at letterboxd thinking the reviews will live on & find a bigger audience and I think the platform is awesome for reviewing movies but the membership sucks. Its almost only Millennial hipsters virtue signaling through poorly written "humor" reviews. Its a queasy mix of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes and it seems funded by the major conglomerates because they only push those corporate "indie" films with a phony "liberal" message & veteran bland Hollywood bit players. Nothing international, nothing DIY, nothing by filmmakers outside of LA, nothing made for less than a million.

But they all repeat the same dead-eyes moral of "Made by compassionate capitalists who love our diverse workers and they think should be paid well, but not as much as us... and stay in your tiny mafia-run unions"