White Slaves of Chinatown

The Olga movies have a place in exploitation cinema history as being some of the first successful 'roughie' films and they gave us one of the first demented female icons of the grindhouse era. I decided to start out with this flick as it is the first of the series and I have to say that I was underwhelmed. Maybe it is because I have already seen the Ilsa flicks (which were obviously inspired by the Olga series) as they were way more offensive and explicit thereby making White Slaves of Chinatown quite tame in comparison. This resulted in a tedious movie that consisted of narration over various scenes of women becoming addicted to drugs and being tortured for not submitting to Olga's demands. I'm sure that these scenes were offensive back in 1964 and would probably still offend many today (especially in an abortion scene) but I guess I have become quite desensitized to this kind of material. There is an extremely annoying score that consists of an endless loop of Chinese music, some hero-like jazz, and rendition of "Night on Bald Mountain" that kept making me think of Fantasia and took me right out of the picture. This movie hasn't aged well and reminded me more of Reefer Madness than the sexploitation classic it claims to be.

White Slaves of Chinatown (1964)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Olga (Audrey Campbell) returns to Chinatown where she sets up shop to look for some prostitutes. She begins by throwing pot and opium parties to where she kidnaps the girls and forces them to do her dirty work. If they refuse to do it? The girls are then sent to the torture chamber.

WHITE SLAVES OF CHINATOWN is a film I really hated the first time I watched it. In fact, I hated the entire Olga series but I decided to revisit them and I must say that this one here worked a little bit better on a second viewing but at the same time there's no question this is still a pretty bad movie. As was the case with a lot of low-budget movies, the film was shot silent with added voice-over narration and to me this is never a good way to do your movie.

With that said, there are some entertaining moments early on as I thought that this film has a bit more story to it than other entries in the series. I liked how we got to see the various New York City and Chinatown streets. That was certainly a major plus and we also had some great scenes dealing with the drug parties as well as the torture chamber. The film actually gets off to a very good start but around the forty-minute mark the film pretty much runs out of gas and it really becomes boring.

Campbell is a good figure for the Olga character but I'm not sure I'd say she gave a "good" performance. This film has become a cult favorite over the years and I guess I can understand that. The B&W cinematography is good and there are some good elements to this "roughie" but at the same time there are too many flaws that keep it from being better.

Basically, Olga's a bad person who likes to turn girls into drug-addicted prostitutes, which involves a lot of torturing them into submission. In 1964 I'm sure the torture scenes and all-but-shown lesbianism would have been shocking, but today it won't even raise an eyebrow. Acting is extremely poor--the vast majority of the girls supposedly being horribly tortured look more put out and bored rather than in pain, and the plot is nonexistent. There is no dialog, just voice-over narration, with a few comments from Olga but mostly by an upright male who is incensed at her methods. The musical score is extremely annoying, especially when it consists of "Chinese" music that the filmmakers must have only had about two minutes of, forcing them to loop it over and over. Oh and speaking of Chinese, this movie is pretty overtly racist, underhandedly blaming the Chinese for a lot of society's woes, even though there is a grand total of one Asian character (a nameless henchman who is in maybe two scenes) in the entire film.

It was interesting to see where the genre came from, but I'm only giving it as high as a four for unintentional hilarity and some wonderfully ridiculous overacting by Olga.

Having just been released from prison, a young woman named "Lola Wong" (Mitzi Meer) is met almost immediately by sinister woman named "Olga" (Audrey Campbell) and subsequently taken to a building in Chinatown which exists for the sole purpose of reconditioning unsuspecting females into a life of drugs and prostitution. But before that happens, Olga tortures her victims in order to break them to her will before eventually sending them to various cities across the United States to serve the sexual appetites of rich and powerful men. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was one of those cheap sexploitation films which sprouted up in the early 60's and helped to launch a number of similar low-budget movies of that type, to include "Olga's Girls" and "Olga's House of Shame" among others. Quite frankly, except for this particular picture, I haven't seen any of the other movies in this series--and neither do I really care to see any of them as I found this one to be rather boring, to say the least. For starters, there was no real acting involved as a narrator pretty much read his lines while, at the same time, 2 or 3 songs played in the background throughout the course of the film. Again, it was really boring, and I have rated it accordingly.

Fascinating Audry Campbell leads the way in first Olga-flick. We're in the opium infested Chinatown where Olga's crime syndicate turns innocent girls into hookers and/or junkies. Hey, she's just trying to make a buck! Unique early S&M sleaze epic with racist voice-over instead of dialogue and annoyin' "chinese" music that get played over and over. Take the pain with the pleasure. High culture that will change your life (the Ilsa character of the 70's seems to be inspired by Olga). RECOMMENDED! Check out the other mad Olga flicks, daddy-o!