Chapter Twelve: Premiere

September 15th, 1984, was undeniably a day worth remembering for Yan Xu. On this day, his very first film finally graced the silver screen. Across the city, four cinemas premiered the movie titled The Hong Kong Mystery: The Rainy Night Butcher. The film had not kept its working title, The Lamb Doctor; the new name was far more direct and evocative.

A week of continuous promotion in those four cinemas had achieved some results, especially thanks to the enormous poster outside the theaters: Yan Xu, scalpel in hand, stood before a table strewn with all manner of human organs, while behind him, a collage of newspaper clippings about the case completed the chilling effect.

Yan Xu bought a ticket and entered alone. At the time, films seldom held grand premiere events, and even if they did, small production companies like his had no funds for such extravagance.

For a film with minimal publicity, a fifty percent attendance rate at the first screening was already considered a success. Yan Xu found a seat near the back, a vantage point from which he could keenly observe the audience’s reactions.

As the scheduled time arrived, the theater’s lights abruptly went out and the projector’s beam illuminated the large screen.

There were no subtitles or introductions—just a scene of children playing. Portraying the young Lin Guoyu, Lee Chun-shen, under his friends’ coaxing, pulls down his little sister’s trousers; later, he secretly watches his father and stepmother’s passions. His performance was convincing, and the once-rowdy theater gradually fell silent.

“Damn, he got caught so soon? How stupid,” someone muttered not long after the film began, as the protagonist Lin Guoyu’s arrest sparked murmurs among the audience. If he was caught so quickly, what was left to watch?

“Didn’t they find the body parts on the beach?”

“The police are idiots too—you can tell at a glance he’s lying, yet they waited for someone else?”

Because of the case’s notoriety, many Hong Kong residents already knew the details from newspapers and magazines, and had vivid pictures in their minds. Small differences from the real events led to scattered complaints and grumbling.

But as the plot thickened, the murmurs faded. The taut pacing drew everyone in. The police’s brutal interrogations—even lashing the soles of Lin Guoyu’s feet—were met with his unflinching silence, his expression unchanged. The audience began to sense something deeply wrong with Lin Guoyu, a chill creeping up their necks.

When the police produced the photo Lin Guoyu had given his niece, the film shed the initial half-hour’s gloom. The first emotional climax arrived: under his family’s curses and beatings, Lin Guoyu’s expression finally changed and his psychological defenses crumbled within minutes.

“What the hell?”

“Jesus, is that even human?”

“He’s a total pervert.”

“They shouldn’t let someone like that go. Not even sparing children—he deserves the death penalty.”

The audience’s voices showed how completely the story had gripped them.

“No wonder he’s so twisted—turns out he’s impotent.”

“I didn’t know Lin Guoyu was so quick in bed, done in seconds.”

“Was that in the papers? I never read about that.”

The scene of Lin Guoyu with a prostitute provided a sort of catharsis—the idea that such a monster would be lacking in some way drew no complaints about the brevity of the scene.

Compared to his impotence, Lin Guoyu’s composure after killing—calmly moving the body, reading the paper in front of his family as if nothing had happened—sent a deeper chill into the viewers’ hearts.

Then the dismemberment scene arrived: Lin Guoyu wielding an electric saw with a smile. The audience was stunned, sickened and terrified, with frightened screams echoing from the women. Yan Xu saw some viewers cover their eyes, while a few girls clung to their male companions. The men, though just as scared, stiffened and feigned composure before their dates, but Yan Xu’s deliberate intensification of the horror left them little appetite for bravado.

Amid the relentless tension, the police searching Lin Guoyu’s home found a trove of human organs. The scene where a severed breast slipped from their grasp added a touch of grim humor to the otherwise cold tone of the film, though for some, it was enough to induce nausea.

This brief levity didn’t last. Two more murder and dismemberment scenes followed in quick succession—not as explicit as the first, but each blow landed hard on the audience’s already frayed nerves.

By the final killing, the audience knew full well how the story would end, yet watching Lin Guoyu happily chatting with a schoolgirl, they couldn’t help but hope he might stop himself.

But that hope was shattered as Lin Guoyu strangled the girl with cold brutality. His obsession with the corpse, and the necrophilic scene—implied rather than shown directly—was enough to push some viewers past their limits. Yan Xu even heard retching in the theater.

Hearing those sounds, Yan Xu couldn’t help but shake his head; people weren’t as desensitized back then as they would be in later years, numbed by countless film images and the omnipresence of the internet. To mitigate the psychological impact, Yan Xu had, as in the original script, included comic relief scenes with the chubby policeman and some transitional segments, but these measures seemed to have little effect.

The film ended with Lin Guoyu’s deep, guttural roar and a final icy glare, sending shivers down the spines of many. Never had the audience so urgently longed for the theater lights to come up.

It was a long time after the lights blazed before anyone stood up. Only then did they realize that their backs were soaked with sweat. The realism of the filming and the relentless pacing had made them feel as though they’d been part of the case themselves.

Despite the fear, the audience also felt a strange catharsis. Unlike ordinary horror movies, which offer only fleeting scares, this terror seeped to the very core. And the film proved that horror could exist without ghosts—its grip was psychological, drawing viewers step by step into its world. Especially since it all occurred in their own city, in taxis they themselves might ride, it made the horror and danger feel ever-present, as if nowhere was truly safe.