Before K-horror, before J-horror, there was Cat III. After Hong Kong cinema built its global reputation on kung-fu flicks, international audiences in the 1990s started tape-trading Cat III films like guilty secrets. The name really just meant the rating, the Hong King equivalent of NC-17, but it became shorthand for the grimiest, grisliest, most graphic horrors. If that’s what you’re looking for, then director Herman Yau’s seedy true crime shocker is unmissable – if your stomach can handle it. It’s based on the infamous Eight Immortals Restaurant murders in Macau, where a petty gangster brutally slew then dismembered the owners and their family over an alleged gambling debt. Anthony Chau-Sang Wong scored the first of three career Hong Kong Film Awards as depraved crook/fry chef Wong Chi Hang, a win on a par with Anthony Hopkins taking home an Oscar for Silence of the Lambs in terms of horror recognition. From the opening incineration through a series of murders that are quite literally butchery, The Untold Story mixes violent crime with comedically inept police work before exploding into one of the most shocking final scenes in cinema history. Just don’t eat the pork buns. – Richard Whittaker