Killer's Nocturne
     
         
Director: Lam Nai-choi
Year:  1987
Rating: 6.0
I am not sure which I will remember more about this Hong Kong film a week from now - the underground fight between a psychotic kangaroo and a man or when an ear is bitten off and spit out.  Much of the film isn't much to talk about but there are a few highlights and a very solid cast though many of them wander into the film like they are looking for the bathroom or are killed in short order due to budget constraints,





Apparently, Mahjong was a very important game in Shanghai in the 1930s. And there is plenty of it played here and even after seeing it in many Hong Kong films I am still completely confused. Eight years before the film starts Yin (Alex Man) lost a game to the King of Gamblers, Law Tin-bei (Patrick Tse), and felt so humiliated that he left the country and went to Japan where he studied the game. Now he is back and looking for Mahjong revenge. He is also a murderous fiend. He takes over all the city's casinos either by sending his hit squad to kill them or by chopping off an arm. Not really a guy you want to have a beer with and watch football. In his casino Miss Cheung is the chanteuse singing old ballads. She is played by Pat Ha who was in the terrific On the Run with Yuen Biao. She is also the girlfriend of Yin who is in the habit of sending everyone out of the room and screwing her on the table in the ballroom. Poor Pat Ha, she got wronged in a number of films. 



Now he wants to face the King of Gamblers who has retired but is forced to play one last game. For his life. It doesn't go well and his son Fung (Chin Siu-ho) pledges his revenge. So he escapes to HK where he learns mahjong from the other dock hands and fighting in an underground anything goes series of matches - one being with Bolo Yeung. He heads back finally and the film ends with an incredibly brutal fight that has blood spraying out like a box of shaken coke cans. I had to flinch a few times. Chin Siu-ho is a fine martial artist who never really got many starring roles in big films but he and his brother Chin Kar-lok can always be called on to do some heavy lifting and getting the crap kicked out of them. This final fight is not so much martial arts as a gang bang of violence. Intermittent action with a chunk of melodrama and sex. Also popping in are Shing Fui-on, Stanley Fung, Shum Wai, Wang Hsieh, Han Ying-chieh, Manfred Wong and Alex To.




The graphic brutality should come as no surprise since it is directed by Lam Nai-Choi, who was the man responsible for Her Vengeance and The Story of Ricky, two films you would never want to show the family over dinner. Unless your family is the Mafia. He also has The Seventh Curse, The Cat, The Ghost Snatchers, Erotic Ghost Story and The Peacock King which are much milder fare.