Suburb Murder: Descending into the Abyss of Exploitation and Transgression – A Scuzzy CAT III Film Recounting the Shocking Braemar Hill Murders!

Throughout the years of exploitation and horror cinema there have been films that have been regarded as button pushing and of course exploitative. I feel like that’s why we all journey deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of disturbing and transgressive filmmaking. There are movies out there that I have seen that do make you question how or why was this even made? A damn near perfect example of that is Suburb Murder, a Hong Kong Category Three (CAT III) film that isn’t seen very often but is undoubtedly one of the scuzziest films ever made.

To truly understand how exploitative this film truly Suburb Murder, we need to go back to 1985 to one of the most infamous crimes in Hong Kong history. On April 20, 1985, a British teenage couple, Kenneth McBride and Nicola Myers were brutally murdered on Braemar Hill, Hong Kong. McBride’s body was found bound and beaten, and the autopsy showed his body had suffered over one hundred different injuries before he was strangled to death. Myers was found nearby, and her body was in terrible condition as well. She had been partially stripped nude, raped, and sexually assaulted with a stick and bottle. Her jaw was broken, and her left eye had been pulled or had popped out of its socket. With no leads except some fingerprints and some traces of semen during the infancy of forensic science the case went temporarily cold. For brevity’s sake, I will skip over a lot of the investigation details, however, what needs to be known is the couple were killed by a group of five Triad members (Hong Kong’s version of the mob and Yakuza). What began for the gang, was a simple attempt at a robbery that escalated into a horrific crime scene.

Now if you have seen the film Suburb Murder with a small fraction of knowledge about the story, you may be thinking this sounds familiar. Well, it absolutely is, as the film is the sleaziest retelling of a crime you’ll ever watch. There is a scene during the film that says there is no connection from this film to any real-life story which is of course complete and utter bullshit. Suburb Murder is literally just about as exploitative as a movie based on real events could possibly be. So, let’s get into the film itself.

Suburb Murder sort of loosely, yet accurately, follows what I described earlier. There are of course some things here and there that are added for shock value and to merely be horrifying. For example, the beginning of the film has a female jogger and her grandfather going on a run when she finds the bodies. She never existed in the real story. They put an attractive woman in that place to have the film’s story be more compelling, I guess. I don’t really know why they did it, it’s not like it adds anything to the film proper. Then there is the main character Ching (Lam King-Kong) who is a psychopathic man with a short temper. His backstory is that his family were abusive, and his mother is a prostitute, and I can’t verify if that’s “accurate” to the real story or not, but I doubt it. The film has tons of sex scenes and some truly awful rape scenes, including the one at the film’s climax that’s of course based on true events. The best way to describe this film is scuzzy. Suburb Murder is vile, it’s violent, horribly exploitative, yet very entertaining unfortunately.

Despite some leaps in logic and horrible exploitation, and just ridiculous shit, Suburb Murder is (as aforementioned) remarkably entertaining. It’s completely morally bankrupt, with some pretty racist shit in it towards foreigners of Hong Kong but you will never be bored watching this flick. Is it good? No not really. At least this writer didn’t think so. Was I thoroughly entertained by this fucked up little flick? Absolutely. And as a final question: can I recommend this to literally anyone? Fuck no! Watch this one at your own risk. Once again though, I would like to thank the Show Me Something Wrong Podcast for making me aware that this film exists.

AKA: s, Xiang Gang jian sha ji an, Heung Gong gan sat kei ngon, The Legend of Bremar Hill, Xianggang Baomashan – Luo shi qi an

Directed by: Kin-Ping Cheng
Written by: Chui Leung (Script Supervisor)
Produced by: Keung-Fu Lau
Cinematography by: Chuan-Li Chen
Editing by: Keung Cheng
Music by: Unknown
Special Effects by: Ming-Fai Tsang
Cast: King-Kong Lam, Shui-Ting Ng, Teddy Lin, Bik Wing Chung, Feng Ku, Ling Ga
Year: 1992
Country: Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese, Mandarin (English Subtitles)
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 1h 20min

Distributed by: Mei Ah Entertainment