Director: Michael Mak Tong-kit
Year: 1991
Rating: 7.0
This film is a serious exploration of the relationships
between men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents during the
time of the Ming dynasty (17th century) and delves into the roles and expectations
that each has pressed upon them by societal traditions. Just kidding. This
film is about sex. It is easily the most famous Category III film and made
Amy Yip into an international sex symbol. It’s the reason why a thousand
sex sites come up if you enter her name into a search engine. Her pookie
face sitting on top of a body, that the word voluptuous doesn’t begin to
do justice to, captured the imagination and testosterone of males all over
the world.
The film is derived apparently from a Ming dynasty text and it tells the story of a scholar who intentionally goes against the Buddhist tenets of abstinence and desires to conquer as many women as he can. First he takes out time to marry Amy Yip and though their first night is a bit difficult she soon gets the hang of it. Hard to imagine, but Amy is not enough for him and he wanders elsewhere.
He wants to seduce the wife of the tailor, Tsui Kam-Kong, but one night as he spies on them he notices that TKK has equipment worthy of Dirk Diggler. He becomes very envious because as his friend tells him his own penis “is only good for picking teeth”. So like any of us would, he decides to have a horse’s penis transplanted on him. In this amazingly bizarre scene, Kent Cheng as the surgeon uses a guillotine to get rid of the offending member (ouch!) whereupon a dog gobbles it up and then the horse’s penis is sewn on.
Many sexual situations are covered here. Swinging from the rafters and penmanship take on an entirely new meaning! A little whipping and food tasting is thrown in to complete the picture. The film has sumptuous production values and the softcore sex scenes are filmed in that hazy fuzzy soft lit manner. There is a fair amount of nudity throughout. In this are also Carrie Ng, Isabelle Chow and Lo Lieh.
On the whole though I didn’t really enjoy this
film. The mood of the film and many of the sex scenes stuck me as misogynistic
and mean spirited and everyone seems to come to a bad end. Still this is
considered a classic and every Amy Yip fans needs to see it.
