Bat sin fan dim ji yan yuk cha siu bau (1993)

Directors:

Danny Lee
Herman Yau

Writer:

Law Kam Fai (writer)

Release Date:

13 May 1993 (Hong Kong)

Genre:

Comedy | Crime | Drama | Horror | Thriller

Plot:

Cops investigate a criminal running an unsuspecting restaurant, while trying to trace the steps back to how he ended up running it suddenly.

Plot Keywords:

Restaurant | Beach | Police | Torture | Murder

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Emily Kwan	...	Bo
Danny Lee	...	Officer Lee
Julie Lee	...	Pearl
Tony Leung Siu Hung
Fui-On Shing	...	Cheng Poon
Anthony Wong Chau-Sang	...	Wong Chi Hang
Parkman Wong	...	Bull

Also Known As:

Ba xian fan dian zhi ren rou cha shao bao (Hong Kong: Mandarin title)
Bunman: The Untold Story
Human Meat Pies: The Untold Story
Human Pork Chop (USA)
The Eight Immortals Restaurant: The Untold Story (USA)
The Untold Story (Hong Kong: English title)
The Untold Story: Human Meat Roast Pork Buns

Runtime:

96 min

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

English | Cantonese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Taiwan:R-18 | Singapore:(Banned) (uncut version) | Australia:R | Canada:18+ (Quebec) | Canada:R (Manitoba) | Canada:R (Ontario) (cut version) | Hong Kong:III | Singapore:PG (heavily cut) | South Korea:18 (heavily cut) | USA:Unrated | Norway:(Banned) (video rating)

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Company:

Cinema City Film Productions

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Wong Chi Hang kills the first child, you can see that the cleaver travels through the child (positioned on the right side of the scene) and the blood splatter spurts on Wongs face directly from the underside, nowhere near where the child was positioned earlier.

Quotes:

Officer Lee: [while interrogating Wong, who has been drugged] You threw away the dismembered bodies as rubbish. How about the flesh?
Wong Chi Hang: [with an evil smile] It was used to make those buns. The ones in which they loved eating and didn't pay for.
[as Wong laughs evilly, Lee's fellow officers run to the hospital room sink and throw up]

Movie Connections:

References King Kong (1933)

A brutal, nasty film to test your tolerance.

I watched The Untold Story purely based on the fact that it contained some extreme violence, but was really not prepared for what it contained. Whether the acts of violence were an exaggeration of the facts (it is supposedly based on a true story) is irrelevant. Hong Kong film-makers are not known for their subtlety, and they certainly live up to this expectation when depicting violence.

The story is not a complicated one - a demented chef (Anthony Wong) is interrogated by some irritating police officers about the disappearance of the family who owned the Eight Immortals Restaurant. It is not necessary to identify the killer - we already know. What we do not know, however, is how he killed the family off.

The murder of the family is a most distressing, explicit sequence of violence. The children acting in this sequence, who were eventually murdered with a meat cleaver, appeared to be truly traumatised and distressed while watching the simulated murders of their parents. One wonders how the film-makers were even allowed to subject the children to these acts.

Another sequence depicts the rape and murder of an innocent woman, and it is depicted in a most inhumane manner. It could possibly be one of the most violent, prolonged rape and murder sequences ever seen in film. The brutal violation of the woman with a handful of chop-sticks eventually kills her, and is a most cruel, disgusting act.

How this film managed to pass the relatively conservative Australian censors is truly astonishing. It can be difficult to source, but is worth a look, if only to test your tolerance levels in depictions of screen violence.