Line #26 Film/TheUntoldStory


1	[[quoteright:272:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bun_6861.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:272:You are what you eat.]]
3
4	A nasty, CultClassic UsefulNotes/HongKong movie from 1993 directed by Herman Yau and produced by Creator/DannyLee (of ''Film/TheKiller1989'' fame), starring Creator/DannyLee and Creator/AnthonyWong, and [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory supposedly based on true events]].
5
6	A severed hand washes up on a beach in Macau. The local cops, led by Inspector Lee (Danny Lee), investigate, eventually leading to the Eight Immortals Restaurant, which is run by the polite and nerdy Wong Chi Hang (Creator/AnthonyWong). Mr. Wong cannot provide proof of ownership for the restaurant, which has a really high turnover rate in employees who always seem to leave abruptly. The police soon find that the restaurant once belonged to a family who was nowhere to be found. The cops know something isn't right but they don't have proof of anything. Eventually, they resort to extreme methods to force a confession from Mr. Wong.
7
8	What they find is far more disturbing than they could have ever imagined.
9
10	[[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies Whatever you do, don't try the dumplings.]]
11
12	Also goes by the following names: ''Bun Man'', ''The Eight Immortals Restaurant'', ''Human Meat Pies: The Untold Story'' and ''Human BBQ Pork Buns''. Two loose sequels followed, the first in 1998, and the second in 1999.
13
14	Not related to the 2021 fantasy novel ''Literature/TheUntoldStory''.
15	----
16	!!This film provides examples of:
17	* AnArmAndALeg: We are not talking about the prices in Wong's menu, here.
18	* AssholeVictim: Wong suffers A LOT in the second half of the film, but no one can say it wasn't well-deserved...
19	* AxCrazy: Wong.
20	* BeAWhoreToGetYourMan: Lampshaded and averted. The lone female cop dresses in a slutty fashion in order to impress the men in the precinct. They are impressed but the chief tells her she "looks like a whore". She replies with "But this is the way your girlfriends dress." He quickly responds with [[HypocriticalHumor "But they are whores, my dear"]].
21	* BerserkButton: Wong will chop someone into pieces if they (intend to) tell everyone that he cheated in a Mahjong game; one of the waiters, Cheng and his family learned the hard way.
22	* BigBad: Wong Chi-Hang, a SerialKiller who [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies turns his victims into pork buns]] and feeds them to his customers.
23	* BlackAndGreyMorality: The cops are brutal, unethical, and rather lazy, but when you're up against someone like Wong...
24	* CensoredChildDeath: Shockingly averted and played straight at the same time. Wong's murder of four children are shown graphically, even a decapitation. The last child's death is off-screen.
25	* DismemberingTheBody: The VillainProtagonist Wong Chi-Hang is a chef who murdered his employer's entire family after his boss [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies caught him cheating at mahjong]]. Taking over the restaurant, Wong then had his victims' remains butchered into itty-bitty pieces and dumped into Victoria Harbor, while having the extra meat [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies baked into pork buns]]. The film is kicked off when a curious child playing at a beach uncovers a garbage sack and sees a severed hand inside.
26	* DisproportionateRetribution: Someone wants to expose you for cheating at mahjong? Better kill his whole family then.
27	* ExcrementStatement: Cheng Boon urinates on Wong after putting him face down in a prison latrine.
28	* FauxAffablyEvil: Wong acts polite and friendly in order to cover up his crimes and draw suspicion away from himself.
29	* FourEyesZeroSoul: Wong during his days in Macau when he's not in prison and hospital.
30	* {{Gorn}}: It's considered one of the goriest Asian movies.
31	* GroinAttack:
32	** A rare female example - a fist full of chopsticks. Ouch!
33	** A straighter male example during the prison beatdown scene, when Cheng Boon, the lead prisoner, attacks Wong by grabbing his crotch.
34	* HateSink: Wong Chi-hang is a fugitive working at a pork bun restaurant while in hiding. When his boss catches him cheating a mahjong, Wong massacres his entire family and takes the restaurant for himself, disposing of the bodies by making them into pork buns. When one of his employees considers telling him what happened, he rapes her to death with chopsticks. After being arrested, he tries to weasel his way out of trouble by crying police brutality to the press.
35	* HeroAntagonist: Inspector Lee and the other cops. Though they are [[UnscrupulousHero Unscrupulous Heroes]] at best and [[NominalHero Nominal Heroes]] at worst.
36	* HighPressureBlood: The meat clever scene, especially.
37	* HumiliationConga: Wong, after he's arrested. He's beaten by the cops to force a confession, only to be thrown in jail to be beaten again by prisoners lead by his victim's brother. [[AssholeVictim It's very cathartic.]]
38	%%* IAteWhat: The scene when the cops realise [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies just what kind of meat]] was in the buns Mr. Wong served them is darkly humorous. %%What was their reaction?
39	* ImAHumanitarian: Wong never actually eats his victims. He leaves it up to his customers and even some of the cops who were investigating him.
40	* JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: The cops' methods of getting Wong to talk.
41	* {{Jerkass}}: [[FauxAffablyEvil When he isn't pretending to be a respectable restaurant owner]], Wong is obnoxious and rude to almost everyone he meets.
42	* ManOnFire: A poor guy gets splashed with gasoline and set on fire at the beginning.
43	* MoodWhiplash: The scenes with the cops at the station are jarringly wacky.
44	* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Wong gets hit with a lot of these after he's arrested.
45	* NominalHero: The cops. Most of them (Except for maybe Inspector Lee) seem to be disinterested in justice and are more concerned with [[PunchClockHero finishing work early]] than anything else and pursue Wong merely because their boss tells them to. They're also incredibly violent and torture Wong in increasingly inhumane ways. Despite their laziness and unethical methods however, [[EveryoneHasStandards they are genuinely disgusted with Wong's brutality and sadism.]]
46	* OffWithHisHead: It happens to all of his victims but one particularly gruesome example [[KickTheDog happens to a little girl.]]
47	* PottyFailure: During the family massacre, the eldest daughter tries getting away from the carnage and ends up hiding under a table while watching Wong slaughter her entire family. The poor girl wets herself onscreen moments before Wong kills her too.
48	* TheSecretOfLongPorkPies: Wong gets rid of his victims by turning them into pork buns that he feeds to his customers. Really, this guy is a Hong Kong Sweeney Todd.
49	* TheSociopath: Wong Chi-Hang, who fled China to escape charges of burning a man alive, killed his boss and his entire family to get his restaurant, and kills anybody who upsets him to make them into meat buns.
50	* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: The trailer, box cover, and the opening scrawl all claim it was based on true events. The film is based on the RealLife Eight Immortals Restaurant murders. Huang Zhiheng (alternative romanization of Wong Chi Hang) really did murder a family of ten and run their restaurant afterward, and he really did kill a man in Hong Kong before coming to Macau, but there is no evidence that he cannibalized the victims afterward or put their bodies in pork buns[[note]]It was never conclusively established how Huang managed to dispose of the bodies of some victims (many victims' body parts were never accounted for). As the crime took place in summer, prompt disposal was necessary to avoid the inevitable stench from decomposition. Thus, there were rumours that some body parts were used to make pork buns or made into soup.[[/note]], nor did he kill anyone after the massacre of the Zheng family.[[note]]Due to Huang's suicide, the case was never brought to trial. In addition, due to Huang's age and illness (he was around 50 and had severe asthma), it was reasonable to suspect that he did not act alone, but no accomplices were ever identified.[[/note]]
51	* VillainProtagonist: Wong is the protagonist of this story and is an AxCrazy [[TheSociopath Sociopathic]] SerialKiller who murders and rapes for even the tiniest insult.
52	* WouldHurtAChild: Wong... very much so.
53

Context Film / TheUntoldStory