General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Lunatics

The Lunatics (癫佬正传, also translated as The Story of Maniacs) is a 1986 Hong Kong drama directed and written by Derek Yee (尔冬升) as his directorial debut, produced by D & B Films, and dealing with mental illness and the people who live with it on the streets of Hong Kong¹^•². Its synopsis describes a social worker who donates his time to help mentally ill street people, accompanied by a reporter who hears about his work³.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	癫佬正传 (Din lo jing juen); also known as The Story of Maniacs²
Release	5 June 1986, Hong Kong; Cantonese language, color, 35mm³^•¹
Director / writer	Derek Yee Tung-Sing, in his directorial debut¹
Production	D & B Films Co. Ltd.; producer John Sham (John Shum Kin-Fun)³
Principal cast	Stanley Fung (Dr. Tsui), Deanie Ip (Tina Lau), Paul Chun (Tsuen), Chow Yun-fat (Chung), Tony Leung Chiu-wai (Doggie)⁴
Awards	Paul Chun won Best Supporting Actor at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards; the film also won Best Art Direction at the 6th Hong Kong Film Awards¹^•⁵
Box office	HK$9.3 million⁵

Spoilers

Story and subject

Stanley Fung plays a social worker for the mentally ill who takes the investigative reporter Yip (Deanie Ip) along on his monthly rounds of the streets². Over the course of this fragmented narrative, the film presents patients surviving and laboring outdoors: an apparently meek elderly woman gathering beverage cans, an unkempt father (Chow Yun-fat) unable to bring up his two kids as they deserve, and a troubled man (Tony Leung) who is a regular presence at the neighborhood fish market.² Fung's one success is a divorced father, Tsuen (Paul Chun), who lives with his mother after a severe breakdown, but circumstances change and events spiral toward a tragic conclusion².

The Hong Kong Film Archive describes the film as confronting the entrenched taboo of mental illness head-on, shedding light on the plight of the mentally ill and challenging common misconceptions about them¹. Yee explained his approach to characterization in an interview preserved by the archive: some characters can be identified as mentally ill at once, which serves the story, while others seem normal and reveal the depth of their psychosis only when they open their mouths, which also serves the story rather than the aesthetics of the film⁷.

A visual note recorded in the D & B retrospective says the entire film is in monochrome, with the only pop of color being Tony Leung Chiu-wai's costume⁸; the Film Archive's own screening listing, however, catalogs the film as color¹.

Production

Derek Yee had worked as an actor from 1975, playing the leading man in more than 40 movies before he ventured into directing with this film in 1986⁶. He was 29 when the film was released⁶.

Casting. Yee had wanted to cast new actors, but producer John Sham felt that the film's dark tone would be better realized by more experienced performers and convinced Chow Yun-fat and Tony Leung Chiu-wai to join the cast¹. The result put two of Hong Kong's most popular stars in supporting roles as cognitively challenged characters, while Paul Chun, better known for supporting parts and villains, played the central role of Tsuen⁶.

The film was one of the productions that D & B placed in a category its producer John Sham defined as "quality films", works that could not easily be classified into any specific Hong Kong film genre and each of which adopted a different approach depending on its subject matter⁷.

Reception

The film was considered a creative risk at the time, and it was not a large commercial success, grossing HK$9.3 million⁵. It nevertheless earned five nominations at the 6th Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film (lost to A Better Tomorrow), Best Director (lost to Allen Fong for Just Like Weather), and Best Screenplay (lost to Chiu Kang-Chien and Lai Kit for Love Unto Waste)⁵. It won Best Art Direction, and Paul Chun's performance as a mentally ill father won him Best Supporting Actor⁵.

Controversy. The violent ending featuring Paul Chun drew criticism, partly for its resemblance to a 1982 mass-stabbing at a kindergarten; Chun's performance was nonetheless compelling enough to win him Best Supporting Actor honors at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards¹.

The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival's retrospective notes that the film, like Boat People (1982) and Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980), had conflicts with the government over censorship issues for supposedly exposing the "dark" side of the city's welfare system, in a decade that marked the beginning of a significant relaxation of censorship in Hong Kong⁶. The same program notes single out the film's capture of rapid development and the image of shanty quarters as particularly impressive⁶.

Place in Hong Kong cinema

The Lunatics is counted among the Hong Kong New Wave films of 1985 to 1997 in scholarly mappings of the city's cinema, listed alongside works such as As Tears Go By and C'est la vie, mon chéri, the latter also directed by Yee⁹. Later films on mental illness in Hong Kong, such as Wong Chun's Mad World (2017), appear in the same lineage of socially conscious local cinema⁹.

Runtime listings vary across catalogs: the Hong Kong Film Archive gives 92 minutes¹, the Bucheon retrospective 91 minutes⁶, and IMDb 87 minutes³.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1980s › Released 1986 to 1989

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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