Also known as The Eight Immortals Restaurant: The Untold Story, The Untold Story is a Hong Kong crime-thriller directed by Herman Yau and starring Danny Lee and Anthony Wong. The film was giving a Category III rating for its graphic violence which means no one under 18 is allowed to watch this film due to extreme gore. The lesson to be learned is, when visiting Macau, do not eat the pork buns.

Macau police officers Bull (Parkman Wong), Robert (Eric Kei), King Kong (Lam King Kong) and Bo (Emily Kwan) arrive on a murder scene and are joined by their supervisor Inspector Lee (Danny Lee) after they find some chopped up rotten limbs on the beach. All roads after investigating lead to Wong Chi-hang (Anthony Wong) who is working at the Eight Immortals Restaurant. He is running a restaurant that is still legally run by Cheng Lam, who has, along with other family members and other restaurant workers have seemingly disappeared. We then learn of the grisly details of what happened to Lam and others, which involves the yummy pork bao. Lee captures Wong Chi-hang and eventually confesses after being tortured, and reveals his startling, and revolting story.

Based on real-life facts The Untold Story is a nasty, brutal film. This is one of the sickest films that I have ever scene with shocking, repulsive violence. You will see other uses for silverware, chopsticks and other devices that my startle you, unless you have seen stuff like this before. This is strictly a gore-lovers dream come true with so much over the top violence. It makes Lucio Fulci Italian zombie gore films seem tame! But still, this gorefest is a masterpiece! Not because of the strong stomachs required gore, but this has a strong, literate plot. In other words, The Untold Story is not a gore film for the sake of gore with no plot and 100% splatter. The gore is supported by a strong story and great acting, making this nightmarish film nearly unwatchable.

We need to acknowledge Anthony Wong who is absolutely perfect as the psychotic Wong Chi Hang and his evil grin is truly bone-chilling.

The Untold Story is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Unearthed Classics, under the Unearthed Films umbrella, and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a somewhat inconsistent transfer where at times, the image looks rough in certain spots, while at other parts, the video shows some great details to the scenery and characters with bold colors, especially reds. Film grain is often present, preserving the film’s organic appearance. Skin tones are accurate with close-ups of the characters faces having much detail. I seriously doubt this movie could look any better.

The Untold Story features either Cantonese or Mandarin tracks in LPCM 2.0 Mono. Other than the spoken languages, I did not hear huge differences in the tracks. Everything that I heard was crisp and clear, be it the dialog, screams and other action noises.

The Untold Story Blu-ray features a good amount of supplements.

“Category III: The Untold Story of Hong Kong Exploitation Cinema” discusses Category III films.

“Cantonese Carnage” is an interview with Rick Baker who discusses Category III films. This Rick Baker is not the special effects guru.

This release also boasts THREE separate commentary tracks with Anthony Wong, Herman Yau , Art Ettinger and Bruce Holecheck. Each track covers their respective insights to the movie.

The Untold Story has an isolated film score is presented in LPCM 2.0.

A few trailers are also part of this package. There are two trailers for The Untold Story along with trailers for other releases from Unearthed Films and MVD Visual. Rounding out the extras is a Q & A session with Herman Yau.

What more can be said about The Untold Story. This film raises the bar as far as graphic violence goes and will keep you at edge for most of the picture. The audio and video quality are more than passable and with a lot of bonus features, this release is highly recommended!

The Untold Story

Director- Herman Yau

Cast- Danny Lee, Anthony Wong

Country of Origin- Hong Kong

Distributor – Unearthed Classics

Number of Discs – 1

Reviewed by – David Steigman

Date- 2/1/21