Issue #255a            HOME          E-mail: Contact Us        BACK ISSUES           March 14th, 2005

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The Untold Story II
(1998; Cameron Entertainment/Magnum)

Cantonese: Yan yuk cha siu baau II ji tin jue dei mit
Mandarin: Ren rou cha shao bao II tian shu di mie
English: Human Pork Buns II: Destroy Heaven, Exterminate Earth

 

RATING: 4/10

REVIEW:

Perhaps the most infamous Category III film, Herman Yau Lai-to’s THE UNTOLD STORY (1993) proved to be highly profitable, making a sequel inevitable. While this long-in-coming production features Anthony Wong Chau-sang on the poster dressed in a butcher's apron, he has only a co-starring role (and as a bumbling cop, to boot) in director Andy Ng Yiu-kuen's unrelated followup, which owes as much to SINGLE WHITE FEMALE as it does the previous installment. This time, the killer is Mainland resident Fung (Paulyn Suen Kai-kwan, aka Alien Sun) who journeys to HK and sets her sights on nerdy, impotent restaurant owner Cheung (Emotion Cheung Kam-ching, who played the heroic undead sushi boy in BIO ZOMBIE, a far superior mixture of humor and horror). Inserting herself into Cheung's life and transforming from a conservative rube into a sophisticated city dweller, she wins him over and reactivates his dormant desires. She also begins to adopt the dress and appearance of Cheung's unfaithful wife (Yeung Fan) and finally slaughters the woman right in front of his eyes, dismembering her body and feeding the evidence to unknowing diners the next day. The petrified Cheung is soon seeing his wife's ghost, and his inability to stomach (literally) what has happened, and be the perfect husband Fung demands, leaves little doubt that he will be her next victim.

Emotion Cheung Kam-ching Jamie Luk (left), Anthony Wong Emotion Cheung (left), Paulyn Suen

Tamer than the first film, and thankfully lacking its grisly sexual violence, THE UNTOLD STORY 2 is rarely more than fitfully interesting, juxtaposing sophomoric comedy with overly familiar shock tactics. If the original was guilty of going too far in its quest to shock, this sequel can be condemned for not trying hard enough; save for the final few minutes (which finds Wong's slovenly police officer in Fung's clutches), it hardly makes an impression at all. Suen is better than expected in her role, but unable to duplicate what Jacqueline Wu Chien-lien accomplishes in Sammy Tsang Kan-cheung's humorless INTRUDER (Kong bu ji, "Horrifying Hooker," 1997), as another murderous Mainlander looking to establish herself in Hong Kong.

Yeung Fan (left), Paulyn Suen Paulyn Suen Paulyn Suen (left), Anthony Wong


PRESENTATION:

As with most early Mei Ah DVDs, there is slight artifacting throughout much of the running time, but no pronounced smearing, and the picture quality is usually nice; the Cantonese and Mandarin mono tracks are okay. The disc also includes the HK trailer, trailers for CHINESE EROTIC GHOST STORY and TWENTY SOMETHING, an Anthony Wong filmography, and brief interviews with Suen and Cheung (which can be viewed with either English or Traditional Chinese subs).

This DVD is available at:

Images in this review courtesy of Mei Ah. To read captions, hover mouse over image.


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DVD Specifications

  • Hong Kong Release
  • NTSC – Region 0
  • Mei Ah Laser Disc Co. #DVD-184
  • Dolby Digital 2.1
  • Post-synced Cantonese and Mandarin Language
  • Subtitles (Optional): English, Traditional & Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian, Spanish
  • 9 Chapters
  • 4:3 Letterbox (1.70:1)
  • 90 Minutes

Ratings & Consumer Information

  • Hong Kong: III
  • Ontario: R
  • Quebec: 18+
  • Contains brutal violence, nudity, and sexual content

FILM REVIEW RATINGS KEY:

  • 10 A Masterpiece
  • 9 Excellent
  • 8 Highly Recommended
  • 7 Very Good
  • 6 Recommended
  • 5 Marginal Recommendation
  • 4 Not Recommended
  • 3 Poor
  • 2 Definitely Not Recommended
  • 1 Dreadful