Moon ching sap dai huk ying

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.

My favorite part of this bizarre movie, aside from the graphic violence and sex, was the poorly translated and wholly inappropriate sub-titling. The entire film already had me precariously balanced between disgust and hilarity, but the way they presented some of the dialogue pushed me over the edge into falling-out-of-my-chair laughter. What sticks in my mind the most (apart from the exploding phallus and aerodynamic coitus) was a scene where a woman in the midst of seriously pounding and fairly graphic sex moans something that was translated as "So comfortable... so comfortable..."

The title says it all.

A woman is accused of the murder of her husband. In order to extract a confession the court subjects her to a series of violent methods of torture. Most of the story is told in flash backs, recounting how the story leads to the ultimate gory death of her poor husband (his penis explodes). Along the way we found out about sexual martial artists, lesbian frolicking, adultery, lost love, back stabbing and a very potent aphrodisiac.

The torture scenes are appropriately brutal, but generally short. There is nudity aplenty and some sex, but it never gets excessively graphic. Also there is an odd unbalance of dead serious scenes and goof-ball humor; half the film is comedy. Genre fans familiar with exploitive flicks will likely find this a tad prodding and slow, all others will sit slack jawed muttering "what the hell..."

It may be a little too violent for some viewers and not sexed-up enough for others, but those willing to take a shot might enjoy it. Maybe...

5/10

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.

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