"Dr. Lamb", despite being one of the better known Category III movies, is actually pretty tedious. It is a movie made for one reason: to show the graphic mutilation of dead women's breasts. It does this in detail, so if that's what you're looking for, look no further.
All the movie has to offer besides that are some scenes with hilariously inept policemen, who manage to make torturing a suspect look funny, so ineffectual are their torments. And when the suspect finally confesses, they throw their hands up and say, "It's useless! We need evidence!" If they knew they needed evidence, why did they bother with all the police brutality that led up to it? It seemed to bother them worse than it did the suspect/victim.
The rest of the movie is just Simon Yam sitting in a taxi on rainy days giving lifts to women he then murders in a surprisingly non violent way for a CAT III flick - he strangles them. As has been said, the only real nastiness in the movie happens after the women die.
Also, the only sense of dramatic tension happens there as well, leaving little doubt that the filmmakers' intentions were simply to shock and titillate the audience, with the stuff with the police and Yam's family just serving as padding. The funny thing is, though, that this dubious "tension" gained from the increasingly graphic mutilation scenes actually fails to pay off: the climax scene shows an act of necrophilia which is handled so unconvincingly it fails to be shocking at all. The actress does a pretty good job of staying still, but someone should have paid a makeup artist to actually make her look like a corpse.
There are a couple of other inexplicable details I'd like to add: for one, the movie begins with a head-scratching flashback scene which shows the killer as a child, spying on his sister having sex. That he was a peeping tom at this age is mentioned constantly throughout the film, as though this fact is in any way relevant to his later activities; are the only facts the filmmakers gleaned from the life of the guy the movie is based on that 1. he drove a taxi, and 2. he spied on his siblings? It seems like it. The movie does nothing with either.
The other thing is that the movie is called Dr. Lamb, which is weird because 1. he's not a doctor, he's a cabdriver, and 2. his name is spelt Lam, not "Lamb".
All the movie has to offer besides that are some scenes with hilariously inept policemen, who manage to make torturing a suspect look funny, so ineffectual are their torments. And when the suspect finally confesses, they throw their hands up and say, "It's useless! We need evidence!" If they knew they needed evidence, why did they bother with all the police brutality that led up to it? It seemed to bother them worse than it did the suspect/victim.
The rest of the movie is just Simon Yam sitting in a taxi on rainy days giving lifts to women he then murders in a surprisingly non violent way for a CAT III flick - he strangles them. As has been said, the only real nastiness in the movie happens after the women die.
Also, the only sense of dramatic tension happens there as well, leaving little doubt that the filmmakers' intentions were simply to shock and titillate the audience, with the stuff with the police and Yam's family just serving as padding. The funny thing is, though, that this dubious "tension" gained from the increasingly graphic mutilation scenes actually fails to pay off: the climax scene shows an act of necrophilia which is handled so unconvincingly it fails to be shocking at all. The actress does a pretty good job of staying still, but someone should have paid a makeup artist to actually make her look like a corpse.
There are a couple of other inexplicable details I'd like to add: for one, the movie begins with a head-scratching flashback scene which shows the killer as a child, spying on his sister having sex. That he was a peeping tom at this age is mentioned constantly throughout the film, as though this fact is in any way relevant to his later activities; are the only facts the filmmakers gleaned from the life of the guy the movie is based on that 1. he drove a taxi, and 2. he spied on his siblings? It seems like it. The movie does nothing with either.
The other thing is that the movie is called Dr. Lamb, which is weird because 1. he's not a doctor, he's a cabdriver, and 2. his name is spelt Lam, not "Lamb".