A CHINESE TORTURE CHAMBER STORY (1994)
Directed by: Bosco Lam
Produced by: Wong Jing
Starring: Yvonne Hung, Lawrence Ng, Tommy Wong, Elvis Tsui, Julie Lee
Running through the halls of cinema history and breaking all the antiques, A CHINESE TORTURE CHAMBER STORY is one of the most graphic, tasteless, and sexually exuberant movies ever made. A landmark in trash, and the most inappropriate date movie conceivable, it splits its screen time between serious contemplation of the true meaning of Justice and the logistics of airborne sex. An adults-only fairy tale set in ancient China, it manages to pull off graphic penis explosions, tortures, castrations, and rapes by invisible men without having a mean bone in its body. It's the fresh-faced, dewy-eyed ingenue with a potty mouth and no pants on — an imp of the perverse who's about to goose you with a chain saw.
Directed by Wong Jing protege, Bosco Lam, this sexploitationer has Jing's greasy fingerprints all over it. A bubbling stew of every possible element that could conceivably appear in a movie, all thrown against the screen. Whatever didn't slide down and puddle on the floor got filmed.
Little Cabbage (Yvonne Hung) is a delicate and petite maiden. When we first see her she is looking scared and upset because she is dripping with the blood of her recently dead husband's recently exploded penis. Dragged into court she declares she's been framed, and the viewer relaxes knowing that in the court justice will prevail. Little Cabbage is so cute — surely she could not explode her husband’s penis. Unfortunately for her, this is Ching Dynasty court and as we've seen in the documentary footage that opens the film, cross-examining the witness usually consists of flaying him alive. Fortunately for Little Cabbage they just spank her bare bottom with giant wooden paddles…at first. Unfortunately for Little Cabbage they soon move on to the finger racks. Then Little Cabbage sings. And the tale she tells is a tale of woe. It is the tale of the Four Lustful Instruments and powerful sex stances. It is a story of flying heroes who have supernatural sex while bouncing from treetop to treetop in a forest. It is a medley of graphic torture, softcore porn, and a man whose penis is so equine that when he ejaculates he kills his partner. Early breast augmentation techniques, invisibility spells, and an all-traditional-instrument version of "Unchained Melody" that swells on the soundtrack when silk robes hit the floor and nasty scholars and their naughty maids hit the hay provide the counterpoint to graphic tortures outlined in gleeful detail. A deft parody of the Mainland Chinese legal system (well, as deft as being hit on the head with a salami) as well as a cinematic freak show and softcore tickle, A CHINESE TORTURE CHAMBER STORY will stuff your head so full of weirdzo sights & sounds that it might just explode.
Amidst all the debauchery, watch for a guest appearance by Julie Lee, playing the wife to the flying hero she spends her screen time stark naked and zooming through the air. Julie Lee is a sex film legend in Hong Kong. Heiress to a vast public transportation fortune, she became a softcore actress known for her three husbands, one of whom died in a hotel room in an S&M accident. She later directed sex films notorious for depicting real sex onscreen and is Hong Kong's only female sex film auteur. She hit hard times in the late 90's and attempted suicide. In A CHINESE TORTURE CHAMBER STORY she's at the top of her mondo game, so step right up and see the woman about whose nude photo book the Hong Kong press sniffed, "...besides revealing various sexual perversions she posed totally nude in a temple, and was criticized for blasphemy. Besides this, other perversions like stuffing a banana up her butt made everyone sick."
Well, that doesn't make ME sick. And if you buy a ticket to A CHINESE TORTURE CHAMBER STORY you'll be saying to the world, "That doesn't make me sick, either."