Reviewed by: ewaffle Date: 06/08/2014 Summary: Sadistic violence On one side is Dr. Lamb the cab driver from hell. He kills young women, brings their bodies home to typically small multi-generation Hong Kong apartment, keeps them hidden until the rest of family goes out and then poses the bodies for photos before dismembering them. Hardly a master criminal, Lamb drops off his film as a local processing shop--the proprietor calls the police when sees the horrifying subject matter although it seems from the dialog that he had developed and printed some similar images for Lamb in the recent past. On the other side is Detective Li and his squad of thuggish and brutal policemen who arrest Lamb and beat him until he confesses. They beat him some more the convince him to tell them where evidence of murder and mutilation can be found. Then they beat him more because it's just what they do. The movie begins with scenes from Lamb’s past that show his psychosexual compulsions may have been present in his youth. However the leap is so great from a puberty ridden kid who peeks at his father and stepmother having sex to an adult who enjoys unspeakable crimes against women that the filmmakers could have skipped the backstory without weakening the narrative. A saxophone wails as a cab glides slowly through a typical (in movie terms) rainy late night urban wilderness lit by blinking neon signs. This isn’t “Taxi Driver” or “Night on Earth”, though; in both of those films it was essential that the protagonist drive a cab. In “Dr. Lamb”, Simon Yam’s job is incidental—he is mobile and is able to meet women in an anonymous but seemingly benign environment. Simon Yam’s portrayal of the demented killer has all the subtlety of a falling safe. He goes from insane but controlled to frothing at the mouth frenzy without missing a beat. He is sane enough to clean up the gore in the apartment (although unable to completely cover the stench of blood and viscera in the close quarters of the bedroom he shares with his brother) and to get out of the apartment with a box full of bloody body parts which he dumps from a bridge. The pre-handover Hong Kong Police are depicted as corrupt, misogynistic, lazy, incompetent as well as vicious. Emily Kwan plays Bo, the only woman officer on the crew—she is the victim of a particularly ham-handed “recreation” of the first murder in which she is shut in a coffin-like bureau even though she is claustrophobic. Parkman Wong is Bully Hung the chief thug on the squad, taking the lead in beating Lamb. Kent Cheng is Fat Bing who seems to be second in command and who spends his time avoiding work. There are enough “what the hell?” moments in the film to detract from the overall sense of horror and disgust. The main one for me was when Lamb was dissecting the second corpse—cutting off a breast, as I recall, and the blood flowed freely from the cuts. Dead men tell no tales and dead women don’t bleed. Worth watching for fans of Simon Yam and for aficionados of sadistic violence. Reviewer Score: 5

Reviewed by: Tonic Date: 06/22/2007 Summary: Urgh A fairly pointless exploitation film. Simon Yam's acting is like a yo yo - I thought he was excellent in some parts with his smile (right near the end), but otherwise poor. Having the whole story 'framed' makes it even more pointless, the DVD cover was far more entertaining to look at than watching the film.

Reviewed by: dandan Date: 07/28/2006 Summary: taxi? nah, i'll get the bus... billy tang and danny lee direct a notorious catIII police drama that is supposedly based on a true story. lam goh yue (simon yam) is a taxi driver who is arrested after he attempts to have some dodgy looking photographs, of a woman who looks dead, developed. inspector lee (danny lee) and his team soon discover that lam is responsible for the murders of several missing women. what follows is a strange mixture of genuinely tense police drama, exploitativly detailed depictions of lam's crimes and an uneasy dose of slapstick that rears it's head from time to time... the film does fall down at a number of points, due to it's exploitative nature, the inappropiate humour and yam's performance slipping, here and there, into the absurd. it does, however, create an atmosphere of unease and tension that you imagine was it's intention.

Reviewed by: mrblue Date: 09/25/2003 Supposedly based on a true story, Dr. Lamb tells the tale of a mild-mannered taxi driver (Yam) who also happens to be a serial killer. Lee plays (you guessed it) a cop who tries to unravel the mystery of Lamb's reasoning after he finally confesses. A truly disturbing movie along the lines of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Dr. Lamb is one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen. I don't scare that easily, but some of the images in Dr. Lamb (which include graphic buzz-saw "dissection" and necrophilia scenes) are truly shocking, made all the more so by Yam's eerie performance as the "good doctor." If you think movies like Scream are scary, then you'd better stay far, far away from Dr. Lamb. It's a film that truly deserves its Category III rating.

Reviewed by: reuban2 Date: 07/22/2002 Summary: another officer lee procedural This is another Danny Lee directed composite of over-the-top police procedural (the "procedure" consisting largely of torture and oddly translated verbal abuse) and similarly over-the-top giallo-like confession. The formula is almost identical to that used in Untold Story and other films in this genre. However, while US used the convincingly cruel Tony Wong to portray a sadistic but fairly rational murderer, Dr. Lamb decides to go with a much loonier Simon Yam. At times, Yam's wild-eyed howling and feverish necrophelia are genuinely creepy, but he chews some scenes beyond recognition. Like all the characters in this film, he comes as as rather vaguely defined and uneven--alternating between stiocism and raving bizarreness with little dramatic provocation. Officer Lee is back, as are a number of supporting police players, but the inexplicably slapstick scenes don't play as well against Yam's character (who doesn't really interact that much in anything but torture scenes and one later well-done bit in his apartment) as it did with Wong's. Perhaps this film lacks the escalation and tension that made Untold Story so effective. Granted, the final sexual conquest is pretty unsettling, but the character (as another reviewer mentioned), and the crimes are already pretty much set in the first half of the film, making the ending more of an epilogue than climax. For comparative purposes, Untold Story and Remains of a Woman are probably more meaningful and well-done examples of this type of crime drama, and Taxi Hunter is a better film about taxis and killing, but this is a pretty solidly entertaining film is you enjoy the genre or Danny Lee's films. 3.5/5

Reviewed by: Inner Strength Date: 05/24/2002 Summary: Average Strange story of a seriel killer (Simon Yam) who doesn't need to look for his victims, as they come right to him, as he is a taxi driver. Danny Lee is the only person to stop him. Simple plot, entertaining, but some pretty strong scenes that might make some people's stomachs turn! Not sure I would recommend this to most people, but if you like horror and serious crime films then you will enjoy this I would say. Rating: 2.5/5

Reviewed by: leh Date: 12/09/1999 Razor-sharp crime drama about a psycho mass-murderer(convincingly played by Simon Yam), allegedly based on a true case. This movie is extremely gruesome and definitely not for the squeamish. In tone it's closer to, say, the modern crime fiction of James Ellroy or Andrew Vachs, or an American movie like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, than to your standard Hong Kong entertainment. But if you can take it, it is a very well made and very scary modern horror movie.

Reviewed by: hokazak Date: 12/09/1999 Based on the true story of the Hong Kong Cab Murderer.

Reviewed by: hkcinema Date: 12/08/1999 One of the most popular "category III" films ever (at least in Occident). Simon Yam plays a slightly disturbed cab driver who (in order) kills, rapes and chops up some beautiful women. I personally think that in the same genre, "THE UNTOLD STORY" is a more interesting film. The problem with "Dr. LAMB" is that you get the point very early in the film. From then on it gets a little repetitive. Simon Yam's performance is great, although that he does too much mugging in certain scenes. Worth to be seeing, especially the first half. [Reviewed by Martin Sauvageau]

Reviewed by: spinali Date: 12/08/1999 Summary: NULL Lam Gor Yu (Simon Yam) does his "ecstasy of madness" performance yet again as a taxi driver who kills, saws his female victims (usually prostitutes) apart with a circular saw (which, I can assure you, is much more difficult to manage than shown here -- I know), and saves their breasts in formaldehyde bottles as momentos. He rapes the luckier girls while they're dead. Danny Lee's police squadron solves the murder fairly quickly, which means the rest of the movie is just a tiresome series of confessional flashbacks. The movie has loads of Paul Shrader rear-view mirror shots, and since Lam only kills when it rains, we also get lots of Martin Scorsese-style shots of slick city streets. (2/4) [Reviewed by Steve Spinali] Reviewer Score: 5