A Chinese Torture Chamber Story (1994)

"A Chinese Torture Chamber Story" is one of the more inexplicable movies I've seen from the Asian continent. It's not so much balls out weird, like "Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead" or "The Eternal Evil of Asia", as it is hard to explain. Is it a porn film? Torture porn? Or just a light comedy? The only thing consistent about it is the comedic tone, which you may find doesn't sit well in scenes of graphic torture and exploding penises.It's not really that graphic, though. Most of the torture scenes are played for laughs, and if you're familiar with Category III films, you know "The Untold Story" makes this look like Sesame Street. These scenes are nowhere near as intense as you might expect; there's nothing on the screen to make you cringe.So it doesn't really work as torture porn. What about regular porn? It doesn't really work in this regard, either. There's some sex but it's not erotic, and there's very little full-frontal nudity. While there are at least a couple of beautiful actresses, they mostly only bare their breasts to have some weird sex/torture toy attached to their nipples. We aren't given any opportunity to admire their bodies.I think the problem is that the direction is dull. The filmmaker knew what people wanted to see so he showed it. But we're never given any idea how we're supposed to feel about any of this stuff, so we don't really feel anything.The plot is something about a princess married to a man who tries weird (though not interesting) methods of pleasing her, like potions and stuff. She is observed by a young servant girl called Little Cabbage, who is then sold to another man. There's a bit of torture to work out who is having sex with who, or something. The plot surely didn't need to be this obtuse, but aren't they always?

As a native Cantonese speaker, I found this film hilarious with its over the top depiction of Qing dynasty court procedure, Taoist sexual practices and Confucian moralizing.I have watched this film with some Chinese people who were very westernized or Chinese who were very uptight. They were offended as much as some Western viewers. Other Chinese have found it just as funny as I did.There is a lot of very fine dialogue that unless you are a Cantonese speaker you cannot appreciate it. The acting is modern and naturalistic. It does not appear stylized or affected in a manner that a historical costume drama would suggest.The voice over narration at the beginning and end of the film was also hilarious in putting a pseudo scholarly & historical tone to the proceedings.This is a must see if you have any serious interest in Hong Kong films. Top notch entertainment if you are into this stuff. 10/10

I've seen so many Hong Kong movies now that when I eventually came to watch this notorious Category III melodrama I took it all in my stride, but thinking back on it now, it has to be one of the most startling viewing experiences available to any viewer unfamiliar with HK cinema. Its part of a string of CAt III movies seeking respectability through use of historical settings (Sex and Zen, Sex and the Emperor, Lover of the Last Empress etc.), and for all its horrors, its not as sickening as Escape from Brothel or Eternal Evil of Asia. Yvonne Yung-Hung has perfected a set of wounded facial expressions that render her a perfect victim/fantasy figure, and feminist critics will find much to deplore in films like this, finding as they do eroticism in sadistic beatings of defenceless women - when one couple is executed, we only hear about the man's horrible death, but we see a graphic depiction of the woman's killing by wooden horse/dildo contraption. This movie is packed with ideas of how to find sexual grotesquerie in contortions of the human body, and the motif of escalating levels of torture is perfectly apt for Wong Jing's style of producing imaginative variations on his favourite preoccupations of sex and violence. He's only the producer, but his presence is tangible - I guess his closest Western equivalent might be Roger Corman. Fans of historical Cat III films will be pleased to see that the great Elvis Tsui once more steals the show with some spectacular sexual wirework.

I saw this singular film double-billed with The Naked Killer (one of my all time favorite movies). Chinese Torture Chamber is weird through and through.It takes place sometime ago in China's glorious past, when the courts utilized Spanish Inquisition-like techniques to get the truth out of defendants. The opening scenes are a fairly graphic, though oddly funny, demonstration of ghastly tortures.Then, we are taken to the estate of a rich prince, married to an insatiable princess. He tries to please her by employing exotic "marital aids", but to no avail. She seeks fulfillment through another man. Sexually curious housemaids secretly watch their trysts through holes in the rice paper walls. One is caught, and becomes the subject of the wrathful princess' ire.Throughout the rest of the movie, as told in flashbacks, this poor maid must prove her innocence of murder (by exploding penis!). The court systematically tortures her and the prince (a suspected accomplice) first by spanking, then through more excruciatingly depicted techniques.What's odd about all these precedings is that they are simultaneously horrifying, erotic and funny. Kind of like the Japanese film Tokyo Decadence.Oh yes, there is one sequence that totally blew my mind: The prince spies two heroes flying through the trees, fighting each other kung fu-style, ripping each others' clothes off (ends up being a man and a woman), and then f***ing while still mid-air!Only Hong Kong could come up with a "porno/horror/fantasy/comedy".