Directed and written by Philip Chan, this is about Detective Steve Chan (Phillip Chan! Hey — you’re doing it all!) and his new partner, Porky (Patricia Ha), who are looking for Detective Bobby Wong (Melvin Wong), Chan’s old partner, who has been taken by a serial killer.
Yet what’s exciting about this is that it begins with a black-gloved murderer who wouldn’t be out of place in a 1970s Giallo. That murdered model, Jessica, leaves behind a six-year-old daughter who watched her mother die from a closet and has since lost her ability to speak.
Chan was a former police inspector, so at some point, we move away from the yellow influence, and it becomes a procedural drama.
If, like me, you make strange lists of one on Letterboxd, this could fit into “Movies with a Chuck E Cheese location outside of the United States” and “Giallo movies with “Mickey” by Toni Basil on the soundtrack.” It also has movie trivia as a detective skill, and it’s a holiday movie too.
Between this and He Lives By Night, I think Hong Kong really loved Tenebre. I wish this had stayed Giallo, but it’s still a decent movie.
You can download this from the Internet Archive.
