Another in a string of cheap-o productions cranked out by SF filmmaker Charles DeSantos (nee Charles Webb) around 1976, CHINA LUST ranks on the weaker end of the spectrum. It's so dull, in fact, that it took me half the movie to realize I'd already seen it. Viewed 4 years earlier back toward the tail end of 2013, it (unsurprisingly) left almost no impression on me.
The nominal plot follows a jade dildo from a Chinatown antique store as it's passed from owner to owner. A young couple buys it first and immediately heads home to give it a test run. Two of their servants are next up, nipping the object in the night and using it in a pretty boring lesbian tryst.
Not long after, a pair of men previously seen searching for the dildo shows up and makes off with the object. Heading back to their headquarters, they have an orgy with a couple young women while the dildo sits off to the side, largely ignored.
Despite the fact that the two men are working for Linda Wong, the supposed "true owner" of the dildo (or so its doggerel voiceover narration tells us - yes, the dildo narrates!), one of the young women runs away with the object, leading to a pretty low-impact car chase. In the process, the dildo flies out the window and lands in the car of another couple, who immediately bring it home and put it to use. Conveniently enough, they apparently occupy the same building as Wong, and she grabs it for the film's finale, a mixed combo encounter with a black stud.
Essentially plotless, the film is merely a jumble of confusing and unexplained events. How did the dildo end up in the antique shop? What is the point of Wong's henchmen if the dildo will find its way back to her anyhow? How can a couple with an economy apartment afford both a maid and a chauffeur? DeSantos really seems to have been making things up as he went along here, and the results are as bad as expected. The sex is rote and mechanical, and most of the participants nothing to write home about in the looks department, either. While there is some nice footage of the San Francisco locations, this will probably only really appeal to fans of Wong. Save for her, the entire production is really quite unmemorable - an assertion I can make from experience.
