The Peeping Tom

A sadistic killer with the penchant for female legs is murdering women.A female cop Cheng Hsuen(played by Jade Leung)becomes the killer's unwitting target after he catches her(or more precisely,her legs) on camera during a gun battle.The murderer boldly enters her life,stalking her at work and hiding out in her home,before eventually kidnapping and assaulting her sister.A distraught Hsuen is forced to take the law into her own hands and sets out for justice,using the killer's infatuation with her as bait to lure him in."The Peeping Tom" is a fantastic HK Cat.III fare filled with sleaze and brutal violence.The rape scenes are quite unpleasant to watch,but the film is stylishly made and twisted enough for my liking.There is also a fair amount of nudity on display,including an incredibly long shower scene,so I wasn't disappointed in that aspect too.Give this one a look.

Ival Lai's (Daughter of Darkness 1-2) Peeping Tom (1997) stars Mark Cheng as sick serial killer rapist Roy Chen Chih-Lai who not only rapes and kills his female victims, cuts off their legs as he seems to have some fetishism towards them. He does this by a handsaw and then gets rid of the rest of the body. Jade Leung (the lead actress in Stephen Shin's Black Cat, 1991) plays police detective Cheng Hsuen who gets during one spectacular shootout on the top of the killer's hunting list. She has also a sister Kelly played by Japanese Miho Nomoto and they both are cops. Michael Tse plays Jade's boyfriend and a police chief so they all are trying to capture this nasty killer on the loose.

This film suffers from things which are hard to take seriously and the script is almost laughably bad at times. HOW on earth the police cannot do anything to get the killer as they know his face and the red glasses he wears and the white van he drives, and as he appears everywhere all the time?! This kind of stupidities make me almost angry when seen on film. Also, the motives of the killer are more than ridiculous as he finally tells them to Jade. This is, in fact, pretty bad film, but as a Hong Kong cinema lover, this is little easier to sit through and watch.

The cinematography tries to be ultra stylish but fails. It is not stylish to keep the camera twisted and moving all the time. Clarence Fok's Naked Killer is stylish film because it doesn't sow these camera techniques everywhere but uses them more restrainedly and in right places to create the crazy atmosphere for the film. Peeping Tom looks occasionally nice and has some distant atmosphere or even suspense, but otherwise never achieves what it tries.

There is one very well done gun play sequence in the beginning and that's about the only really fast moment in this film. It is pretty violent and reminded me of such brutal Hong Kong classics as The Big Heat and Requital. The violence is pretty strong throughout the film, but the leg sawing at the beginning is the goriest part there is and it seems to be there just to grab the viewer's attention for the rest of the film. There's plenty of sex and nudity, too, and one amazingly long and detailed scene in which Kelly masturbates in a shower and that scene is definitely more than explicit! The film isn't too strong compared to other CAT 3 films, but it has enough nasty moments and sleaze elements to achieve the CAT 3 rating.

I can't say this is too great film, but it is much more watchable than some Daughter of Darkness 2, which is horrible example of CAT 3 junk. I give Peeping Tom 4/10 and "recommend" it for Asian buffs only.

The movie is about a manic rapist and murderer who falls for a female police officer and stalks her and her family members. Acting of Mark Cheng who plays the role of rapists/murder is superb. Screenplay is ok. Acting of the support staff is ok. A good c grade thriller

Director Ivan Lai, who has helmed his share of sleaze classics (DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS 1 + 2), tries real hard to exploit maximum capital from every gory, perverted, bullet-ridden moment of this highly recommended thriller.

It's a fetishist's wet dream. The gorgeous women of the cast all wear short skirts and we get plenty of opportunities to see up them. The rape scenes are as graphic as possible within the rating category. The opening sequence, in which a pretty young maiden is kidnapped, raped and dismembered, is a real keeper. Also worth noting is the music and sound design.

There is a gleeful amorality about Lai's films, a nod (intentionally or unintentionally?) to Japanese "violent pink" cinema of the 70's and 80's.

The modus operandi of rapist Roy Chen Chih-Lai does not really wash, but that is not the point of this film. The point is gleeful sensationalism of gutter-level subject matter.

There is a strong erotic undercurrent and leading lady Jade Leung is pretty damn cute and pretty damn feisty as a police detective on the rapist's blood-spattered trail. Miho Nomoto, a Japanese actress who plays Jade's sister, turns in a terrific masturbation scene that pushes the boundaries of the rating.

Although it doesn't maintain the style and pace its opening stanza establishes, it is still righteous, unapologetic sleaze.

I have to admit that I didn't find Jade Leung particularly attractive in her signature role, the assassin Black Cat, but "Peeping Tom" changed my mind: this woman is a goddess. With longer hair than before, a stunningly gorgeous face, and a fit body, she is a thoroughly captivating screen presence - and pretty much the only reason I didn't turn this movie off long before the end. Apart from Leung, "Peeping Tom" has limited artistic or entertainment value: the story is just an amalgam of other HK and foreign serial killer thrillers (hell, it could easily be a sequel to "Naked Killer 2" - it even has the same actor playing the villain!), and it is full of holes, the biggest of which is probably the fact that although the police know exactly how the killer looks like, they DON'T issue a public warning, so he continues to go around luring unsuspecting girls even in broad daylight! The director does manage to work up some suspense at certain points, but most of the time this movie is just repulsive. (*)