Love to Kill (UNCUT) - Siu Hung Cheung, Kirk Wong - (1993) DVD

LOVE TO KILL was made in 1993 by director Kirk Wong, a film-maker with an otherwise respectable body of work under his belt. Anthony Wong, hot off his 'Golden Horse'-winning (HK equivalent of the Oscar) performance in THE UNTOLD STORY, takes up the challenge of another psychotic role, this time portraying the abusive husband in a sleazy tale of domestic violence and devastation. The film remains unfairly neglected amongst many genre fans, even those with a hardcore interest in Cat.III psycho flicks. Yet it is, without a doubt, a classic worthy of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of THE UNTOLD STORY, DR.LAMB, RED TO KILL and RUN & KILL.

As with many Category III films that had gone before during the couple of years previous, this disturbing celluloid assault was duly set upon by the Hong Kong film censor's office, whereby various trims were made for its theatrical release. These trims included footage from the bottle-rape of his wife from the film's beginning, cuts to Julie Lee's rape by Wong (various trims) and his initial pre-rape assault on her. Subsequent video releases that materialised in the wake of the film's cinema release were all cut versions as per the theatrical prints. In Hong Kong (and surrounding Asian countries) the variant releases also yielded variant edits of the film. Two alternate video releases even contained contentious footage missing from each other, causing further frustration in tracking down an uncut version. This turned out to be a lost cause as the film, like other infamous Cat.III films that had suffered before it, never materialised in an uncut version and the footage was probably discarded or lost inside an unmarked can in some murky vault.

The release of a Hong Kong DVD a couple of years back promised much, yet left a bad taste in the mouth. It certainly appears to be uncut as it contains all the footage present in the 2 alternate video releases and splices/audio anomalies are not evident where cuts had been originally made. However, this release was marred by a flat, slightly washed out source and was fullscreen and minus subtitles to boot! A year later, a Taiwanese DVD turned up on the market. This Tai release sports a much better version, with stronger colours, sharper quality and cleaner source being utilised. It was also letterboxed AND subtitled! Finally! Still, there were problems...the only audio option was Mandarin whereas the Hong Kong disc offered up a Mandarin track AND the original Cantonese audio. On top of that, while it was virtually the same uncut version as the HK disc, there was one brief trim present during Julie Lee's rape scene to a shot of Wong tearing off her panties...

The version offered up here ' is a high quality composite createdfor the viewing pleasure of fans of Cat.III atrocities. The choice was made to use the Tai disc as the 'base print' and reinstate the one brief trimmed moment of panty-prying from the HK disc. This, however, had the unfortunate side-effect of offering up only the Mandarin audio rather than the original Cantonese-spoken track. This was deemed worthy in light of the superior source and the fact it was subtitled and letterboxed. The resultant composite was then matted off throughout (closely matched to the aspect ratio present) so that the fullscreen restored footage was incorporated smoothly.

Quality Rating Score:
Questions? Use the Online Information Request feature