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The Peeping Tom (1997)

Dir: Kai Ming Lai

Hong Kong is being terrorised by a serial killer/rapist (named Chen, played by Mark “Chinese Torture Chamber Story 2” Cheng) who kidnaps women, molests them and then saws off their legs to add to his growing collection of shapely pins!
Ken Chang (Michael Tse) is the Cop on the case, but so far he has no leads despite the naked, legless remains of 7 victims being found.

Cheng Hsuen (Jade Leung) is a gun toting Police Woman and Ken’s girlfriend and while helping to escort a witness from the Police Station she and her colleagues are fired upon by a gang trying to kill the witness.
A shootout commences (with Chen Hsuen in a suitably short and tight skirt to ensure lots of essential to the plot shots of thigh) and during the chaos Hsuen notices a strange man filming the action. The man is Chen and in the confusion he’s swiped Hsuen’s handbag!

Now besotted with Hsuen and her legs (told you that skirt was essential to the plot!) Chen proceeds to stalk her, as well as her Sister, Kelly (Miho Nomoto, “Fudoh“), and soon a very dangerous game is being played out. A game that will put Hsuen through hell…..

 

If only this slice of CAT III sleaze had kept up the intensity of it’s opening sequences we could have had a bonafide classic on our hands.
An excellent minimalist Industrial tinged score accompanies the abduction of a young woman off the street, which then leads us to a typically nasty rape scene as Chen (in his ever-present orange, wraparound, shades) abuses her before tying her down to a table and getting his circular saw ready!
In delightfully gratuitous detail we see him mark a dotted line around her thigh (with her pubic hair constantly on display) before slicing the leg off. We don’t see this but there is plentiful blood spilt and spattered.
Next day her legless corpse is found in a freezer on a rubbish tip as the camera lovingly pans across her entire blood streaked, naked form. It’s nasty, it’s crude, it’s trashy, it’s gratuitous…it’s what we’re here for.

Things still seem to be going well when Director Kai Ming Lai (“Daughter of Darkness”) then decides to move from all this (and stop the plot dead) for a spot of close up (and rather pleasing) shower based masturbation, as Kelly makes sure she’s washed all those hard to reach places!
Then it’s time for the pretty well staged and very bloody gunfight as Jade Leung (once a hot tip for future stardom after her appearance in the “Nikita” knock-off “Black Cat ”) leaps over car bonnets, flashes lots of leg, looks lovely, throws grenades, looks lovely, shoots a few people and looks lovely.

All well and good I hear you pant. Sadly though the film then turns into a rather stodgy, very silly, Cop/Stalker drama with only the odd diversion into more sleazy rape and a few bloody, rubber legs to stop us nodding off.
The biggest pain here is that Hsuen and Ken are so damn useless! At one point Chen enter the Police Station to ‘play’ with the unsuspecting Hsuen and proceeds to not only act very, very creepy, sinister and generally unhinged but also makes it clear he has an unhealthy obsession with her. Yet she does nothing but chat with him and only when he’s high tailed out of there does she make any move to do something.
We then have a few of those annoying ‘he’s trapped, he’s free, he’s trapped, he’s bloody well free again’ sequences as Ken shows us he’s Hong Kong’s most stupid Cop and Hsuen shows us that her aim suddenly goes to shit at all the wrong times.

More silliness arrives in the shape of the World’s most unrealistic news reporter who proceeds to shout, scream and generally make most unsuitable comments while the victim’s remains are being removed. The guy would be hard put to find a job cleaning sewers let alone one in front of a TV camera.
A bit of silliness that’s at least entertaining pops up when Chen watches Hsuen’s apartment and does a funky dance in the road in the pouring rain!
One (I hope) unintentionally funny aspect that was out of the maker’s hands are the subtitle translations. A couple of gems are when one of Hsuen’s wounded colleagues has a turn for the worst in Hospital and the nurse shouts out “Doctor he’s having a twitch” (!) and a bizarre moment when Kelly gives Hsuen a gift:
Kelly - “I adore you too”
Hsuen - “You do, bitch? Thank you .” (!)

It’s not all bad though. Again the rapes are shot in such a way that would have the British censor reaching for the scissors as the victims are shot from the rapists point of view as they are stripped and pawed. All suitably sleazy.
Gore is mostly off screen and mainly spraying blood (a cut throat is especially poor, being simply a tiny line of blood) but there are a couple of severed legs on show and a room full of hanging limbs is suitably macabre. The cinemtography and lighting on this scene (in fact in all of the more sleazy sequences and the night scenes) is very effective as well.

Performances are pretty average. Jade does a little bit of high kicking in a couple of scenes and handles the shootout well but her character is far more a victim than an ass kicker. She also avoids nudity, being seen only in her sporty underwear. But a sequence of her in said underwear strung up in bondage straps has more than a certain charm to say the least!
Miho Nomoto has little to do but get naked, feel her self up and scream a bit. But hey, she does them all very well!

Mark Cheng has a few effective moments as the killer and is obviously enjoying himself. But he falls between two stools, being neither outrageous and hammy enough, or serious and scary enough. Certainly his performance is a long way from the great turns by CAT III loonies in “Red To Kill” or “Run and Kill”.

So then we have a pretty obscure CAT III entry that shows how far Jade Leung’s star had fallen (though she does okay here and looks marvellous), is full of silly moments, dull padding and (except in the opening murder) also fails to make the most of it’s initially gruesome idea of a leg sawing rapist.
One for CAT III completists only and at least it’s been given a good transfer on a nicely cheap DVD.