In 1970, 18-year-old Li Xiuxian entered "Shaw" and has since embarked on the road of film.
Because of his handsome appearance, Li Xiuxian won the love of Shaw's great director Zhang Che, and stabilized his audience market with works such as "Five Tiger Generals", "The Great Robbery", "Lawless Flying Car Party", "Assassin's Legend", "Mu Wu Wang Law", "Shanghai Beach Thirteen Taibao" and other works.
In the mid-1980s, Shaw abandoned the film business and began to transform into the television industry. At this time, Li Xiuxian also left Shaw and joined Chen Xunqi's "Yongjia Pictures", and in the form of self-directing and self-acting, filmed police film classics such as "Public Servant" and "Royal Meal" for "Yongjia Pictures".
Among them, the work "Public Servant" also allowed Li Xiuxian to win two film emperor trophies and received two nominations for best director.
Independently developing their own film career is the dream of many filmmakers. In 1987, Li Xiuxian also tried to be independent in his career, he left "Yongjia Pictures", formed his own "Universal Pictures", and opened his own independent production path with a "Predatory Mounted Police".
Because of the influence of Hong Kong film classics such as "Provincial Hong Kong Flag Soldier", "Police Story", "Hero's True Colors", etc., film works with police and bandit themes were very popular in the late 1980s.
At that time, Li Xiuxian saw the opportunity and led "Universal Pictures" into the box office market of police hong Kong films. The "Thunderbolt Pioneer", "Blood Double Hero" and "Top Gun", which were invested and filmed by "Universal Pictures", have also become the classics of Hong Kong films of an era.
However, the good times were short-lived. After entering the 90s, nonsense comedies became the hard currency of the box office market, and the decent traditional police films quickly lost their audience groups.
The changes in the audience market have made Li Xiuxian's "Universal Pictures" face a development crisis. In order to eliminate the crisis and get rid of the predicament, Li Xiuxian also decided to lead the "Universal Pictures" to open up a new blue ocean at the box office.
At the end of the 1980s, the Hong Kong film market officially implemented the "film classification system", and many filmmakers began to show their hands and feet in restricted film works in order to compete for positions.
Mou Dunfu's "Black Sun 731", He Fan's "Three Degrees of Temptation", and Yang Zhijian's "Qingben Beauty" also achieved excellent box office results in the restricted Hong Kong film market at that time.
In the face of this situation, at that time, Li Xiuxian also led the "Universal Pictures" to enter the box office market of restricted Hong Kong films.
In 1992, Li Xiuxian recruited Ren Dahua and Deng Yancheng and invested in the filming of the restrictive strange case movie "Doctor Lamb". In this issue, we will talk about this "Doctor Lamb" adapted from a real case.
In the early years of "Universal Pictures", it has been committed to the shooting of police films, even if it has entered the box office market of restricted Hong Kong films, Li Xiuxian still hopes that "Universal Pictures" can adhere to the shooting characteristics of police films.
In 1989, Director Ma Dangxiong's "The Strange Case of the Three Wolves" caused quite a stir in the Hong Kong film market. Therefore, Li Xiuxian also wants to emulate Ma Dangxiong, put the real case in reality on the big screen, and at the same time restore the case, let go of the film's performance scale, in order to meet the audience's curiosity.
Therefore, Li Xiuxian focused his attention on the "Rainy Night Butcher Case" in 1982, which was adapted from this sensational and strange case.
It is worth mentioning that when filming this "Doctor Lamb", Li Xiuxian found Deng Yancheng and completed the film's directing work with himself.
In his early years, Deng Yancheng was a TV drama director for tv stations. At the end of the 1980s, Deng Yancheng transformed into a film director, and also filmed "Angel in Blood" for Guan Zhilin and Xia Wenxi, and "Dragon in the End of the World" for Stephen Chow and Jet Li.
However, the market performance of these works is not ideal, and Deng Yancheng has not been able to make a name for it.
Although the market response of "Angel in Blood" and "Dragon in the End of the World" was flat, Deng Yancheng's bold and unrestrained lens language in these two works surprised many colleagues in the industry at that time, including Li Xiuxian.
In 1992, when "Universal Pictures" filmed this "Doctor Lamb", Li Xiuxian also pulled Deng Yancheng into the behind-the-scenes production team, hoping that his arrival would bring some impactful changes to the audiovisual language of the film.
With the addition of Deng Yancheng, the story of "Doctor Lamb" is also on the big screen, glowing with different colors.
At the beginning of the movie, Li Sir, played by Lee Seo-hyun, received an alarm from the owner of the photo studio and immediately led his subordinate "Fat Bing" (played by Zheng Zeshi) to the scene.
It turned out that a customer came to the photo studio to wash the photos, and the photos were full of images of some "corpses". The owner asked the guest where the photos came from. The guest said that this was a prop used by the film crew to shoot the scene, and urged the boss to wash it out quickly.
After the guest left, the more the boss thought about it, the more wrong it was, so he called the police.
Sir Lee is investigating a "serial murder case", and the "corpses" in the photo are the victims of this "serial murder case". Sir Lee arranged for his men to deploy controls around the photo studio, and as soon as someone came to take the photo, he would take it down.
Not long after, the taxi driver "Lin Guoyu" came to get the photo, only to be caught by the agents who were ambushed around.
After his arrest, Lin Guoyu said that he was only helping his friends to get photos, and these photos were not his own. Fei Bing took Lin Guoyu to find this so-called friend. However, Lin Went around in the rain and never pointed out the friend's residence.
Fei Bing suspected that Lin Guoyu was teasing everyone, so he took him back to the police station.
At the police station, Lin Guoyu refused to say anything. There is no way, Li Sir and Fei Ping can only start from his identity and carry out a thorough investigation.
Lin Guoyu works for a taxi company, and after visiting, Fei Ping found that there are some special marks on Lin Guoyu's work log. Coincidentally, the dates marked coincided with the date of the crime.
Fei Bing led people to search Lin Guoyu's residence, and found a large number of "corpse photos" in his residence, through background comparison, Li Sir found that the location of these photos was the hut where Lin Guoyu lived.
In the face of the clues investigated by Li Sir and Fei Bing, Lin Guoyu bowed his head and confessed his guilt and told his own story.
It turned out that when Lin Guoyu was young, his mother died of illness, and his father married another wife. However, this stepmother was not very kind to Lin Guoyu and often scolded him. This experience of growing up made Lin Guoyu's heart gradually become distorted.
Every rainy night, Lin Guoyu will unconsciously remember the scene of being beaten as a child, and his emotions will become very irritable.
A few months ago, Lin Guoyu carried a female passenger on a rainy night. The female passenger had just lost love and was not in a good mood, because of the verbal conflict, she quarreled with Lin Guoyu.
The emotionally grumpy Lin Guoyu killed the female passengers in the car, and then took them back to the residence to "crush the corpse", and then used the convenience of work to "throw the body" around.
After experiencing this crime, Lin Guoyu felt very happy in his heart. Therefore, whenever the rainy night comes and the mood becomes violent, Lin Guoyu will look for a victim, "kill" him, and then take him back to his residence to "split the body".
Excited Lin Guoyu will also take pictures of the victims when "splitting the body", and these photos found by Li Sir were taken by Lin Guoyu himself when he committed the crime.
Listening to these words, Li Sir only felt creepy and creepy, but Lin Guoyu said plainly that the objects of his hands were some bad women, they were all "call girls" who were active in the party, and they were just "for Skywalker".
However, Sir Li found that the victim in the fourth case was a 17-year-old female college student who had no bad living records. Lin Guoyu said that the fourth case was just an accident.
At that time, Lin Guoyu took the girl to the destination, because he was attracted by the girl's simple temperament, Lin Guoyu drove the car to the suburbs and wanted to chat with the girl. However, when the girl saw the driver change course, she was terrified and struggled for help on the way. In order to stop the girl from calling for help, Lin Guoyu lost his hand for a while and killed the other party.
This accident caused a certain blow to Lin Guoyu's heart, and then he stopped committing the crime.
According to Lin Guoyu's description, Li Sir re-sorted the case and found that the confession and the clues of the investigation basically coincided. Therefore, Li Sir took Lin Guoyu to identify the crime scene. In the end, the court tried Lin Guoyu and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
In this "Doctor Lamb", Deng Yancheng restores the whole process of the murderer's crime through a large-scale lens picture, and in the form of memories and interpolations, he performs the story content and portrays the past and growth of the characters.
Such audio-visual expression methods, from the current point of view, may be commonplace, but in the market environment at that time, it seemed extremely avant-garde.
With the release of "Doctor Lamb", this set of "unique strange case film shooting methods" has also influenced a large number of Hong Kong film creators.
In 2015, Weng Ziguang's "Treading Blood and Finding Plums" allowed Aaron Kwok to successfully win a film emperor trophy. In terms of story structure and expression method, this "Treading Snow and Finding Plums" almost copied the framework design of "Doctor Lamb".
In this "Doctor Lamb", the unique narrative method makes the story of the film compact and orderly. The lens with great visual impact also satisfies the curiosity of a large number of viewers. Ren Dahua's excellent character modeling ability has also played a role in icing on the cake, greatly improving the quality level of the film.
In October 1992, "Doctor Lamb" was released and won more than 12.7 million at the box office, becoming the first box office in the "restricted Hong Kong film" market that year.
You know, 1992 was a year of explosion of "restricted Hong Kong film works".
Fan Shaohuang's "Li Wang", Qiu Shuzhen's "Naked Lamb", Ye Yuqing's "Dancing with Ducks", Chen Baolian's "Grass Lantern Suitable", Liu Jialing's "Modern Call Girl", and Huang Xia's "Big Salty Wet" all entered the big screen of restricted Hong Kong films in this year.
However, in the midst of brutal box office competition, these works have lost to "Doctor Lamb", which shows the strength of the film.
The box office hit of "Doctor Lamb" allowed Lee Xiu-hyun's "Universal Pictures" to gain a firm foothold in the restricted Hong Kong film box office market.
After the film, "Universal Pictures" also invested in the filming of "Eight Immortals Hotel", "Thief King", "Killing Boy" and other works, and all of them achieved good market response.
Ren Dahua, who starred in the film "Lin Guoyu", also embarked on a special performance path because of his wonderful performance, and became a professional household of "tyrannical murderers" on the big screen of Hong Kong films. Later, in "The Secret File of the Black Rat", "Shocking", and "Night and Fog in Tin Shui Wai", Ren Dahua's portrayal of this type of character is also more and more amazing.
Of course, the biggest influence on "Doctor Lamb" is Deng Yancheng, who is the executive director of this film.
Before the filming of the film, Deng Yancheng was just a small director in the Hong Kong film market. However, with the success of the film, Tang Yancheng also became the "first director of Hong Kong crime films", and then he directed "Dark Rat Confidential Files", "Weak Killing", "Black Hell Broken Intestine Song", which also became a Hong Kong film classic in the hearts of a generation.