-by Ernie Diaz
You want some dirty Asian movies? Keep movin’ buster, this is a respectable site. Classic smut is a blushing maiden next to modern smut, and by modern smut we mean the kind of antics people illegally download Californication and Spartacus for. Both pale next to digital porn, never more than three mouse-clicks away. Puts good ol’ traditional smut in a nostalgic, Norman Rockwell kind of light, doesn’t it?
Sex-obsessed entertainment is one of the hallmarks of corrupt capitalist countries. Inevitably, given too much freedom, the people’s tastes sink low, and they indulge their base desires out of boredom and too much choice. No Red Song singing, no flag waving, just sex-by-proxy and reality shows.
The Chinese were only able to hold out so long against the onslaught of sexy cinema, despite their ancient culture and superior cultivation. As soon as modern Hong Kong cinema grew out of its pre-adolescent kung fu worship, it launched into cushy-soft porn with all the fervor of a thirteen-year-old going through his dad’s stash of Playboys. Now, we’re not saying the following movies are actually classic cinema. Rather, they’re classics by virtue of their mass appeal to Chinas large and small, pop culture tokens in the manner of American Pie. No one’s recommending you rush out and see any of these. Just see if you can get a new view of the West from its reflection in the East.
An Amorous Tang Dynasty Woman
In Hong Kong, skin-flicks are known as “Category III films”. Like our B films, Category III flicks are so abundant and so popular, despite their official low caste, that millions of fans collect posters and argue on forums over them.
In 1984, the West was up to its crotch in teen sex films, each as replaceable and dated now as the Betamax cassettes they came on. The Shaw brothers, who in their heyday produced movies with a regularity the rest of us can only hope for our bowels, knew they had to turn up the T&A. But they were going to keep it in a classically Chinese context. After all, why waste the perfectly good sets they had used for their last 5,000 kung fu flicks?
An Amorous Tang Dynasty Woman was actually the follow-up to 1972’s Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan. But while the latter was only raunchy by title, ATDW had by comparison scandalous levels of nudity, however quaint the idea seems now. Still, the skin was handled with taste, and framed by story and cinematography skilled enough to make it much closer to a true classic than the river of dreck which followed.
CIII staple Patricia Ha plays Yu Hsuan Chi, a famous scholar who is sent to a Taoist nunnery to keep her into the books and out of the sack. But scholarship and shaved head or no, Yu has uncontrollable appetites, proving that the sexy-librarian concept is universal. Stultifying in the rarefied atmosphere of monastic life and literary salons, she finds release for her passions in the arms of a rough-and-ready swordsman (Alex Man). When he’s not around, her maid will do. While modern Hollywood would see Yu leaving the nunnery and palling up with a gaggle of like-minded single women in New York City, the Shaw Brother’s is a karma-based universe. Surrender to her instincts sets Yu’s world spinning out of control. It’s not pretty, but the movie is, as CIII smut goes.
Comparable Western Movie: Emmanuelle
Titillation Factor: Light Tingling
Naked Killer
By the early 90s, kung fu mania in Hong Kong had long since given way to love for crime dramas with more twists and turns than a Kowloon tenement alley. Movies are only as good as the bad guy, and bad girls are rare enough to instantly add a star to reviews. Get the bad girl out of her clothes, using sex as a weapon, and watch the punters queue for tickets.
In Naked Killer, sex-bomb Kitty (Chingmy Yau) launches the whole 90s badass-babe trend with psychotic flare, stabbing bullying boyfriends where it does the most damage. Wouldn’t ya know it, the cop assigned to catch her is a cutie-pie even a castrating sociopath can’t help but love. No love in return for Kitty; said cop is too busy agonizing over accidentally shooting his brother. He can’t even pick up his gun without losing his breakfast.
Kitty makes a pet project out of helping him get his groove back, but gets so caught up in avenging her fathers death and being apprenticed to a lesbian assassin that she barely has time for gratuitous boob shots, and the occasional Cinemax After Dark romp.
Offing Yakuza members, sharpening the kill reflex in basements full of chained pedophiles, Kitty is so caught up in her new advanced-murderess lifestyle she barely has time to get the boys out. It’s as much a surprise to the viewer as to her when the crotch-stabbing case comes back to bite her. The flick ends with poison and a big bang, a noir story outrageous and climactic enough that the copious (for the time) sex is so much flesh-colored icing on the cake.
Comparable Western Movie: Kill Bill
Titillation Factor: Violently Stirring
Cash on Delivery
In the West, we have Midnight Cowboy and American Gigolo; that’s it for hustler – straight hustler – movies. Gigolo flicks were practically a whole subgenre of Category III, a majority of the lead roles played by Simon Yam. Hong Kong hottie Veronica Yip is a rich woman with everything but a husband with working man parts. She hires Yam to deliver the goods, but female nature takes over: she soon starts demanding all sorts of extra-contractual affection and ear-time.
Players want challenges, though, not basket cases, and Yam has a Super Mario level 8 in Miss Koh (Sandra Ng), a straight-laced attorney who buries her attraction for the gigolo under layers of scornful cat-and-mouse. The game goes World of Warcraft when Yam’s patroness decides if she can’t have him, hang him. The movie quickly turns from disturbing sex comedy to courtroom melodrama. The chemistry between Yam and Ng, however, and the elevated levels of explicit-for-the-90s love scenes somehow put Cash on Delivery in the Hong Kong CIII Hall of Fame. Put it this way – if you’re going to see one Hong Kong retro gigolo movie this year, make it Cash on Delivery.
Comparable Western Movie: Duh, American Gigolo
Titillation Factor: Noticeable Swelling
I love the ratings.