A Chinese Torture Chamber Story

A Chinese TORTURE CHAMBER STORY isn't a great film by any stretch, but it sure has some fun stuff going on... Long and short: a woman goes to work for a rich guy, the rich guy's wife gets jealous that her man is constantly eye-ballin' the hired help, and the wife decides to murder the servants husband and pin it on her husband and the servant-girl. The servant-girl's husband is known around town for having a big donkey-cock, and decides to slip an aphrodesiac in this poor cats medicine, causing his penis to explode (believe me, I couldn't make this sh!!t up if I tried...). Anyway, all goes according to plan until some of the other hired help rat the rich-guy's wife and her lover out.

The torture scenes are relatively tame if your used to this sort of thing, and the sex scenes aren't explicit compared to porn - but there are some truly funny and original things going on in A Chinese TORTURE CHAMBER STORY. The aerial-acrobatic-kung-fu-sex-submission and the invisible-stalker-man-in-the-middle-blow-job scenes were worth the price of admission on this one (not to mention the exploding-penis-hand-job...). The whole film is handled pretty tongue-in-cheek, so the f'ed up subject matter is a little easier to "swallow"...Definitely worth a look - 8/10

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 saw this movie when I was in Hong Kong on business in 1993, it was on pay-per-view in the hotel I was staying in. The movie itself was hilarious. There is a lot of sex and violence but I found it so over the top as to be neither titillating nor disturbing. Some of the other reviewers found it to be too violent or sexist. Hey, people did bad things to each other in the past, get over it, they still do. Anyways, I knew this was a movie I had to show to my friends when I got back, my descriptions could not do it justice. Not being a Chinese speaker, I found the video in HK before I left and took a picture of it. Upon my return to the US, I sought out a Chinese video store and excitedly rented it when I found it. It had Chinese and English subtitles, and the English translation was HORRIBLE. It totally killed the humor in the movie. My friends, whom I had been babbling to about this movie, at this point, all thought I was a complete loon. I found a dubbed copy on DVD and I am awaiting it's arrival. I hope it's the same version I saw in Hong Kong, because the movie does truly rock, with proper interpretation of the dialog.

Not being the typical hong-hong film fan (actually I have seen very few HK films) but having seen many of the world's most extraordinary films, I have to say that I loved "Chinese torture chamber story" in a very special way.

Most reviews here, although not losing the point, are representative of the western exploitation-type-of-viewing, with which I cant't really identify with, at least in regard with this film. I actually thought this blending of comedy, horror & erotica resulted in a most magnificent, poetic, weirdly funny, wildly violent result. This is quite unlike everything I have ever seen - I always had a tension to love any original and extraordinary film.

Okay, I admit, I have seen the majority of violent & strange films, so it's quite understandable that I am not offended or shocked by the bold erotic element or the horrific tortures, and so I could dive in deeper in the films story and concept which is by no means shallow. I have the feeling that it's for the most part the filmmakers craft and smart use of humour and the way the story was presented make the violence & erotica a means to a higher end. Yet, extreme violence is not hidden or implied - on the contrary, it's on display every once in a while.

Go after this film, if you can tolerate some violence, this is one of those one-of-a-kind films which can make the difference....

This film revolves around the plight of the oddly named Little Cabbage, a servant girl who finds herself in a heap of trouble after she takes up voyeurism. Through a series of plot twists too long to summarize here, she ends up accused of murder and facing a judge with some rather unpleasant methods for extracting confessions.

This is Hong Kong Category III cinema at its weirdest, a grotesque mixture of sex, comic sex, sexual violence, torture, and even a comedic rape scene meant to challenge the viewer's limits. It will either have you laughing aloud or running for the bathroom with your hands over your mouth. It also has an ending that will have you pounding the table and yelling "Now THAT'S justice!"

In seriousness, the film does have a certain level of misogyny. The torture scenes involving females are shown very graphically, and there is a somewhat disconcerting theme of sexual pleasure being fine for a man while totally unacceptable for a woman. However, the film itself is so broad and over the top that it is difficult to be too offended by it.