Census Bloodbath: Gland Guignol

Note: The English subtitles that were available to me for this Cantonese-language movie were very poorly translated, so take my review with a huge grain of salt. Also, I do not have access to translated credits, so I unfortunately cannot credit actors for their roles. Though it's worth noting that the cast includes Hong Kong Butcher producer Wai-Leung Cheng, Dress Off for Life star Lau Kong, and Hell Has No Boundary stars Ping Ha and Hak-Shun Leung (the latter of whom was also in the extraordinary He Lives by Night).

Year:
1984
Director:
Dan Pan
Cast:
Wai-Leung Cheng, Han Chiang, Ping Ha
Run Time:
1 hour 23 minutes

Plot: Pituitary Hunter follows, perhaps naturally, the police on the hunt for a serial killer who removes the pituitary glands from their victims, presumably to eat them. While the unnamed (in my subtitles, at least) Inspector is hot on the trail of the killer, hospital janitor Dr. Kwok keeps up a secret medical practice out of his apartment. He was trained in China, you see, and he isn't licensed to practice in Hong Kong. This seems like it might give the movie subtext of some kind, and that is an illusion.

Anyway, after he gives an abortion to sex worker Manna Chan, she begins to fall for him. However, as she learns more about the secretive doctor, she begins to suspect that he has something to do with all the pituitary thievery.

Analysis: Hong Kong's Pituitary Hunter has a hell of a title, and I wish that I could report it was also a hell of a movie. And perhaps it almost gets there? There's certainly enough moments in the movie that, were I to describe them, would sound very bonkers and fun on paper. However, this straightforward story is incoherently told from the jump, and once it gets complicated... woo, it's a toughie.

The subtitles I had are certainly to blame for part of my difficulty. The name Dr. Kwok is also incorrectly attributed to Dr. Ng all the way through the first act up until the latter's death. Also the killer is referred to by two different full names in the subtitles and a nurse is consistently misgendered. So that didn't help, but the movie also has fundamental flaws that are ruinous in any language.

First, scene placement is a nightmare. One scene almost never naturally flows into the next. For instance, let me explain opening. A man standing behind a bush eats a dead rabbit, which cuts to family members loudly weeping over an old man's corpse in a hospital. When they follow the gurney into the morgue, a different corpse in a body bag falls on them, which cuts to the opening credits, which play over a young girl doing a dance routine. If this was meant to set anything up, hell if I know what it was. Though the mourners are weeping so loud that they're annoying another patient, which is a very funny The Host-style gag, though nothing else in the movie is really overtly comic like that, so I don't know if they did that on purpose.

Second, this movie is too damn dark. During the nighttime scenes (aka the kills), it is almost impossible to tell who is doing what, to whom, and where. These are pretty important things to know, I'd say.

Speaking of the kills, they're mostly not bad. They're often weirdly elaborate, and the black-gloved killer is sometimes shown in what looks like an awesome porcelain demon mask. There's also a "killer in the backseat" moment that happens right after a couple hooks up in the front seat, which has an added element of creepiness.

Once the story gets cooking, it also finds a few threads of pathos that are ultimately unusual in this type of slasher. [SPOILER ALERT FROM THIS POINT ON] It turns out that Dr. Kwok has a daughter with dwarfism, Siu-Hua, and he is trying to use a blend of human and animal pituitary glands to "cure" her (paragraphs and paragraphs of text at the end of the movie, as far as I can tell with Google Translate, overexplain that this can't actually be done - thanks, credits! I was about to crack open a few skulls, but now I won't bother!). This makes him a good red herring, because it turns out that he only ever wanted the pituitaries from corpses, and the real killer - a bodybuilder with dwarfism who gets two names but is most consistently called Tsang Kwok On - has gone rogue in an attempt to force the doctor to cure his own dwarfism.

It's not a storyline that holds up super well under an anti-ableism lens, obviously, but the movie has sympathy for Kwok, Siu-Hua, and Tsang in spades. In fact, even when Tsang goes off the deep end and threatens to burn a blind old woman alive, he is given a sympathetic and melancholy death scene à la Frankenstein or King Kong or Rodan. However, while there is some good in Pituitary Hunter, all of this adds up to nothing much, since the bad is so bad and the good isn't great to begin with.

Killer: Tsang Kwok On

Final Girl: Manna Chan

Best Kill: The kill itself is kind of a nothingburger, but I admire Tsang Kwok On's idea to get a victim out of the tent she's in by unleashing a bunch of mice into it.

Sign of the Times: In his bodybuilding lair, Tsang Kwok On has some epic posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

Scariest Moment: We watch a nurse lean a group of corpses against a wall, start commanding them like a drill sergeant, and then bite the shoulder of the one who's "disobeying orders."

Weirdest Moment: The police lure an unhoused man out of a sewer tunnel with a duck, which he wants to devour raw, and as he chases it, they drop a metal cage on him.

Champion Dialogue: “Human's pituitary is useful when he is alived."

Body Count: 9; not including Siu-Hua, who may have died from stress during the final confrontation. That's left unclear in the final moments.

1. Cannibal Nurse dies of fright.
2. Dr. Ng dies offscreen.
3. Junkyard Watchman is lifted into the sky in a burning van, which is dropped and then crushed by the crane.
4. Tent Lady is stabbed.
5. Car Guy is stabbed from behind.
6. Lily is stabbed in the back.
7. Big-Mouth So dies offscreen.
8. Dr. Kwok is stabbed in the side.
9. Tsang Kwok On is shot by the police.

TL;DR: Pituitary Hunter is an incoherent movie that has some sparks of life to it, but is mostly confusing and unsatisfying.

Rating: 4/10