Nu ji zhong ying

Big budget exploitation effort from Shaw Brothers is a little too sloppy to be praised, but it's a decent time waster. It is bizarre to see softcore Scandinavian sex siren Birte Tove ("Bedroom Mazurka", "Bedside Dentist") in a key role as prisoner/Red Cross envoy Jennifer. Ms. Tove gets beaten around a lot in this violent WIP (Women In Prison) flick and reveals more than her fine legs.

In fact, director Chin Hung Kuei appears to be obsessed with women's legs and underthings. Hardly a moment goes by that we aren't looking up a fallen prisoner's dress or watching another poor soul have have clothing torn off by an evil Japanese officer.

There is a confusing plot concerning hidden gold and some anti-Japanese propaganda, but the main focus of this exploitation epic is rape, beatings, catfights, escape attempts and torture. It's all done with tongue in cheese at times and is usually too extreme to be taken seriously. Though the film does have a TF Mous vibe at times (reminding this viewer of "Lost Souls" in particular), Mous's shocking exploitation classic didn't hit cinemas until 1980, six years after this was produced.

The film's scope is quite wide and events in the third act move to rural and coastal locations outside the central prison set. The climax is rather ludicrous and totally illogical, but by then, exploitation fans will have gotten their money's worth, if not any food for the brain.

I bought this film on DVD (from xploitedcinema.com) and expected an over-the-top, Women In Prison exploitation ride that would have me guffawing and slapping my knee as I had a good old time watching the girls get taken advantage of. It's a guy thing. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that BHOD kept me glued to the screen from beginning to end. It's an exploitation film no doubt, but it's done very well!

Even if a story is just loaded with plotholes, it's still a good movie if the characters are enjoyable. The female prisoners are very attractive, and the actors portraying the villains are really digging into their roles - you can tell they're having a good time. The sex scenes, when violent, are choreographed very well, and are done tastefully. Many of the erotic scenes have a comedic nature, and are welcome pauses in an otherwise non-stop action fest.

Though this film is now 30 years old, it looks like a recently-shot film. Hairstyles look fresh and modern, and there aren't really any props or items that mark this as an early 70's film. Very nice attentions to detail, even if it was unintentional.

What makes this film great is that its appeal is a lot broader than one might think. I love exploitation films and tend to watch them by myself, as my friends are into mainstream movies. But House OF Dolls is captivating enough to be watched all kinds of movie buffs. Just warn them of the impending nudity and enjoy the show :)

During World War 2 a group of Chinese and American (Red Cross) woman are put into a Japanese military prison camp. They are sometimes made available to Japanese officers. A group of them seek a way to escape.

WIP (Women in Prison) films were very popular worldwide in the 1970's. Some were excellent, some awful and this one falls in the middle. Nudity & violence was required. This includes some torture and explicit violence by the Japanese soldiers. Chinese films used to show how violent the Japanese could be as memories of the war still was in the Chinese consciousness.

This could have been named House of Breasts as the first three-quarters have plenty. But they were just on screen a lot usually in long shots. There is a story and it evolves over the course of the movie which is good. Good special effects for it's time and set design at Shaw Brothers studio.

The problems include some scenes that didn't lead to anything going on way too long. They could have been edited down without losing anything. The second problem is sometimes characters do things or don't that didn't make sense. That's when I yell out "Oh, C'mon!" The third problem is the acting was very mediocre. The exception is Terry Liu who played the female head of prison security who was outstanding. A couple of continuity issues round out the problems.

It wasn't the worst movie of its kind. It just wasn't very good either. It wasn't even worth watching for the breasts.

Bamboo House of Dolls (1973, 1974 or 1977, various years are given for this title) is a Hong Kong veteran Chin Hung Kuei's (Killer Snakes, Boxer's Omen, Payment in Blood etc.) women in prison flick produced by the legendary Shaw Brothers. Yes, even they got their hands into low exploitation sickies like this, and Bamboo is definitely among the worse attempts of the whole genre, even when compared to the Western attempts that usually pale in comparison with the Eastern films!

The story is about a Japanese war camp in which the Chinese women are brutalized, abused and raped by the bad Japanese (what else?) during the World War II. The girls also know a secret place in which a box full of gold is hidden and also learn that a Chinese military officer raised in Japan (Shaw veteran Lo Lieh) is actually now an undercover agent among the other Japanese and naturally helps the girls escape the hell. What follows is sequences full of gratuitous nudity, female kung fu, some nasty torture, gore, sleaze and extremely offensive anti Japan attitude that make this film pure and honest garbage that doesn't even try to be more than it is.

There are hardly any interesting elements in Bamboo House of Dolls. The occasional photography especially at the end looks nice with its sunbeams and beautiful nature but that's about it in the merits department. The fight scenes are plenty and always include half naked females hitting and kicking each other. The violence overall is quite nasty at times with several bullet wounds, misogynistic torture scenes (for example, one poor girl is brutalized on the floor filled with broken glass etc.) and extremely repulsive ending and moral behind it. Of course it is stupid to talk about "moral" when writing about this kind of film, but still there are elements I won't accept to be found from any film.

The film has also some enjoyable turkey elements for sure! For example, the gold box, filled with heavy gold, seems suspiciouly light as the weak and suffered girls don't seem to have any problems lifting and moving it, not to speak of throwing it! Also those numerous "skin fight scenes" make this quite smile inducing for fans of trash cinema. I have seen the same director's Killer Snakes (1973) which is ten times more noteworthy as a piece and even though it has many alive snakes killed for real, it is also visually more interesting and shows us some nasty sides of the other side of the big city and society. Also, it is a must for those who fear snakes.

Bamboo House of Dolls has suffered some censorship, too, which isn't a surprise considered the subject matter. The uncut version, (dubbed into a non-English language) released in Europe at least in France, Italy and Switzerland, runs 104 PAL minutes while the cut, English dubbed print released in Holland, Belgium and Greece runs only 84 minutes in PAL. From what I've heard, the cut scenes are not only violence or other graphic stuff but also dialogue and "plot development" and the like.

Bamboo House of Dolls is garbage cinema in its most trashy form and definitely something I wouldn't have liked to see from the Shaw Brothers or Hong Kong in general. Some of the Italian exploitation films of the same subject matter are much more interesting and noteworthy than this quite ridiculous, calculated and worthless piece of cinema exploitation. 2/10

Hong Kong's legendary Shaw Brothers studio, best known for its classic martial arts movies, jumps on board the women-in-prison bandwagon with Bamboo House of Dolls, an entertaining exploitation effort that, although not as sleazy as a Franco, as sadistic as an 'Ilsa', or as stylish as a Female Prisoner #701, still offers fans of dubious film everything they could ask for from one of cinema's most disreputable sub-genres.

Set during WWII, the film opens in typically tasteless WIP style with a group of sexy nurses being violently accosted by the evil Japanese army (in a cool slow motion credits sequence, the action freezes whenever a bare breast or panty gusset is exposed); these women are taken to a concentration camp where they are abused, raped, tortured and occasionally killed by the camp's sadistic guards and the sexy, lesbian head of security, Mako (Terry Liu).

After loads of delightfully depraved action, including girl-on-girl shower sex, forced strap-on-action, cat-fights, and sadistic punishment, a small band of plucky prisoners make a bid for freedom, led by Hong Yu Long, the wife of a Chinese partisan (and the only person who knows the whereabouts of a secret stash of war gold) and the camp's interpretor (played by Lo Lieh), who has fallen for tasty blonde prisoner Jennifer (Danish softcore sex star Birte Tove).

Once the action moves from the camp to the countryside, Bamboo House of Dolls becomes a far less sleazy affair, with the concentration being on bloody sword and gun battles between the nasty Japanese and brave Chinese guerillas, and unimpressive martial arts fights on barren hill-tops.

Rather surprisingly, the whole film has a very polished look that suggests rather a lot of money was spent by Shaw studios, and the cinematography is quite beautiful at times (although I wish director Chih-Hung Kuei hadn't used his 'starburst' filter on EVERY shot!); it also benefits from a pretty snazzy soundtrack, which adds immensely to the overall 'coolness' of the film. If only Bamboo House of Dolls had managed to maintain the amazingly trashy vibe of its first half for the entire running time, then it would have easily have ranked as one of the best of the genre (but even though it loses some momentum towards the end, it is still well worth checking out).