Untold story
Apparently based on a real-life murder case in Macau, Anthony Wong plays a crooked mah-jong cheat who kills a family of seven after being caught out. He carves them up and puts them in Pork buns which he serves to the public. While trying to claim legal ownership of the business, which is proving tricky given the owners 'disappearance' (Macau has a legal system based on Portuguese law given its status up until 1999 as a colony of Portugal) he proceeds to murder any employee who gets suspicious, throwing in a bit of rape for good measure when said employee is female. Once again, any meat is used in Wongs famous Pork buns! Meanwhile the police are closing in after some remains not suited for the buns washes up on the shore. Eventually the police capture Wong and the final third is devoted to him getting pretty much abused and beaten repeatedly until he confesses before topping himself.
Untold story is pretty much a definitive Cat 3 film. Some of the scenes are still pretty shocking today. It was apparently a big hit on release and spawned a sequel and numerous imitators. Future Tony Wong classic Ebola syndrome borrowed a bunch of stuff from it, especially the enforced cannibalism and rape, though Ebola is actually a more outrageous and over the top picture. Behind some of the sensationalism and over-the top violence, Untold story is a pretty decent true crime picture. If you can get it its worth a watch. The american DVD is pretty dear right now but the Thai release was £7.99 on ebay and is decent quality and english friendly.
Helter skelter
Continuing the evenings true-crime theme comes the TV movie account of the Manson murders, still one of the definitive accounts of what happened. The film starts with the Tate murders and continues on through to the capture and ultimate trial of manson and his family for multiple murders. The film is based on the true crime classic book which it gets its title from the Beatles song which one of the family wrote in blood at a crime scene. The closest film I can compare it to is Finchers ZODIAC which I consider to be one of the all-time great true crime pictures, along with Charles B pierces TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN.
I'm not really a big remake fan but another adaptation of this, with a Zodiac like approach to the material might be petty good. The only real difficulty would be finding someone as terrific as Steve Railsback as Manson, still THE greatest depiction of the cult leader and killer on screen to this day and never bettered.
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