Green Killer
Champion International Films Co., Ltd.
(1982)
Cast: Simon Yam, Chu Tet Wu, Fan Mui Sang, Pai Ying, Ng Ming Choi,
Director: Lo Kei
Genre: Drama | Action
Length: 89 minutes (uncut)
“In this weird world, one must hold one’s own principles... 
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Ngai Chau Wah, Hon Kwok Choi          Cameo: To Shiao Ming, Shaw Yin Yin
Presented by: Ng Ming Choi
Supervisor: Wong Cheuk Hon
Planning: Fan Mui Sang
This film was made around the height of the Hong Kong “New Wave”, a period following the kung fu craze of the seventies where filmmakers began to film more realistically in modern settings. This spawned a large number of urban crime stories and police dramas, which weren’t necessarily any more original than the martial arts films that preceded them.
     The title Green Killer refers to the influx of Chinese, Vietnamese and other immigrants to Hong Kong and their connection to increased crime and gang activity in the colony. Recquired to identify themselves by carrying green cards, they are known, rather derogatorily, as “green comers”.
Chu Tet Wu and Simon Yam
Chu Tet Wu and Simon Yam
and resist all the outside pressure".
Shu Ping
Ngai Chau Wah as Shu Ping
Pai Ying as Mok Huo Ching
The story follows Tsao Wei (Simon Yam) and Kao Chin Shui (Chu Tet Wu), close friends and police partners who lead a crackdown on drugs, illegal gambling and prostitution in Hong Kong. The film opens with Shui’s assassination by some unknown criminal element he had angered, and subsequently reverts to flashback mode detailing the events leading up to his death. At that point, the story resumes as Wei and the rest of the police squad hunt for the “green killer”..
We see a few examples of the duo’s work as they speedily shut down a bunch of illegal Hong Kong businesses. When the two cops bust an unlawful private casino, the proprietor points to a camera and claims that they’re just filming a movie. Seeing the piles of cash lying around, Simon asks why they are using real money. The guy replies, “It’s a ‘new tide’ (new wave) movie”. Ha ha.
Wei and Shui’s rapid rise through the ranks is largely due to their partnership with Hsiao Fan Li, (Ng Ming Choi) their paid informant and Chu’s close confidante. The three are sworn brothers.
Shui opens a nightclub and appoints nightclub singer Susie (who is also his mistress), as the general manager. But, as Shui discovers from Fan Li, she is also sleeping with Hung Chi Ming (Fan Mui Sang), who leads a group of fellow immigrants in criminal activities such as jewelry theft, arms, and ammunition dealing (accomplished by buying children’s toy guns and modifying them into real weapons, if you can believe that).
While Hung Chee Ming is out of town, his second in charge man Mok Huo Ching (Pai Ying) withholds money from his fellows and even shacks up with that tart Susie. “Your lover was killed. The chief is away... I’m just doing their job”, he says.
Chin Shui and Tsao Wei
Ng Ming Choi as Fan Li
..Returning to the time of Shu’s murder, Wei leads his department to find and arrest the man responsible, who by now has kidnapped his fiancee, bar girl Shu Ping (played by Ngai Chau Wah)..
  I happen to like seeing movies from this era, even if they are cheap and crude (I don’t savor them or anything, I just like to have seen them). With a couple lengthy hand to hand melees, shootouts, some gambling, a mudfight, sampled music from ‘Rocky’ and ‘The Shining’, betrayal, murder, and a police chief with an afro, there was just enough to hold my attention- but then I’m pretty forgiving.
This movie predates Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law by a couple of years by capitalizing on then recent headlines about the rise in immigrant-related crime. Other than that, and the prospect of seeing Simon Yam in an early starring film role, there isn’t anything particularly noteworthy, or good, about Green Killer.
Although the Chinese guy with the afro was pretty amusing.
A note about the film: The only available versions of Green Killer that I’m aware of are two VHS tapes- one being a cropped, subtitled print and the other an English-dubbed, cropped Ocean Shores release.
    Tai Seng’s subtitled print is actually a copy duplicated on a VCR- you can see “record” and “stop” on the screen at the start and end of the tape (despite the company's installation of a toll free number for people to confidentially report info about piracy to them). The price of the tape, by the way, was already outrageous- 40 bucks.
The Ocean Shores tape from 1983 is long out of print, but it actually has additional footage that was cut from the subbed print. The deleted scenes were due to some mild nudity and fornication in a brothel scene (almost 2 minutes) and a cop being strangled with heavy rope and maimed by a pair of icepicks. There’s also a small sequence where a gangster unzips his pants and pisses into a bottle in a nightclub, and tries to make Susie drink it. Wouldn’t want to miss that.
I wondered why the picture was so severely cropped- it looks like their source print had subtitles, so they just recropped the entire picture above the text.
This version also retains the original title screen, which for some reason was replaced with a phony one on the Tai Seng tape. Names have been changed and some of the music has been replaced (including the Bee Gees’ “More Than a Woman”).  The nightclub scenes are dubbed to new English songs in place of the Chinese tunes- strange, since usually this is the one part of a movie that tends not to get dubbed.
Related cheap viewing:
Executor (19??) Danny Lee, Chow Yun Fat, Tien Fong
Related good viewing:
Long Arm of the Law (1984) Lam Wai, Shum Wai
Fan Mui Sang as Hung Chi Ming
Stop! I have a big afro
Yam Tat Wah as Hsiao Wei
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