Women of Desire
The trailer for this 1974 Shaw Brothers film looked
kind of naughty and with a title like “Women of Desire” I expected there
would be some racy fun and games within, but it turns out that on the titillation
scale this was on level with a night out with Al Gore – and as with most
politicians there was lots of promise but in the end no execution. For
the most part in fact, this was a dull trudge that made staying awake a
chore. It’s a shame because it begins enjoyably enough with a big nightclub
scene that has a few songs, some intrigues and hints of things to come,
but it just never goes anywhere interesting after that.
It may be a possibility – though I don’t know,
as I have never seen any other version of this film – that this version
may be slightly edited and that some of the more risqué scenes were
cut out if only slightly. There have been a few other Celestial releases
in which this seemed to be a possibility – Human Lanterns and Intimate
Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan – but all evidence seems to point to
this not being done by Celestial but simply due to the print they received
for the DVD mastering. Shaw Brothers often used to make a few versions
of their exploitation films in order to meet community standards in differing
markets in South East Asia. I only think this may be a possibility because
the film is surprisingly bereft of nudity beyond a brief glimpse – even
though the film was marketed as a sexy tale and it stars Chen Ping who
was only too willing to display her charms in other films. Beyond this
there are a few instances in which the film looked to be abruptly edited
right on the verge of something interesting happening. Not that all the
nudity in the world would have helped this film, but it would have made
staying awake a lot easier!
Just trying to keep track of all the characters
in this film is as complicated as remembering the Roman Emperors post Nero
(Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian to get you started!) and one needs
an AAA road map to figure out who is married or going out with whom and
who is sleeping with whom. The film becomes a roundelay of couples jumping
into bed with one another and after a while those squirming bodies started
all looking the same to me. The main problem with the film is that it was
in such a hurry to get the action started that it never bothered to make
any of the characters distinct or at all sympathetic. In deed, by the end
of the film you realize that this was intended as a morality tale of sorts
because nothing good comes of all this fooling around.
Lets see if I can get this straight – why I bother
I don’t know – but here goes. In all begins as I said before in a nightclub
where nearly all the main characters are taking up space. Thankfully, the
film identifies all the actors as they are initially brought on. There
is Maggie Li who is a publicist for a slimy singer and she doesn’t really
have a lot to do in this film – but I mention her because she later went
on to marry David Chiang a few years later. Over a few tables is Chen Ping
who is married to the creepy Wang Jung – who explains to his friend the
singer that having sex with Chen is like “squeezing the fruit of all the
juice”. Now oddly this isn’t registered as a compliment, but as a complaint
– because after being squeezed he has no juice left to fool around. In
particular, he wants to share his juice with another singer – credited
here as Elaine Chin Yen-ling but now known better as Elaine Kam (the gun
smuggler in Wild Search and the mother in Tempting Heart). She doesn’t
seem very interested in him though and so the friend suggests that old
fallback – knockout pills – and Wang assures him that he never leaves home
without them. In fact, everyone in this film seems to have some sort of
pre-Viagra chemical solution to either wield you unconscious or make you
horny. Chen Ping though it turns out is very interested in her husband’s
friend so there is clearly opportunity for mutual fruit squeezing here.
Then there is sexy Tina Chin Fei who wears red
flashy lipstick like a battle ornament – even to sleep. She has a husband
at home (Lui Kei, who also directed this) but he is a cripple and so she
has begun an affair with a stockbroker who enjoys nibbling on her ear when
he isn’t showing her how much she has excited him in cheap hotel rooms.
She seems to enjoy the hotel rooms primarily for the vibrating beds. Throw
into this rowdy mix Woo Fung who is a respectably married doctor but is
seduced by siren Wong Ping-ping with the help of some of that love potion
that she slips into his tea after he has changed into a negligee and seven
pairs of different colored panties. Of course, the fact that she decorates
her bedroom with stuffed toys and posters of naked women should have clued
Woo into realizing that something wasn't quite right here. If you already
own this film and have no intention of really watching it – you at least
have to go to the seduction scene and Woo Fung’s strip tease – it is the
only highlight of this film and is very funny. Of course, the fact that
a Woo Fung strip tease is the highlight in a film populated with a number
of attractive women may be more than a little scary to some!
With all this going on you would think that this
might be fun, but it is poorly paced and just feels so painfully slow.
The film jumps so quickly back and forth between different characters that
you feel like you are on a merry-go-round and none of the stories seem
to really matter – it only gets mildly interesting in the end when things
start falling apart for everyone and a lesson is taught to all of us about
the evils of messing around! The director Lui Kei has a very lengthy filmography
as both an actor and as a director – but his latter duties seemed to have
been focused on films with at least erotic titles – The Seductress, Sexy
Career Girls, The Stud and the Nymph, The Foxy Ladies, Starlets for Sale
and Girls for Sale among many others. I can’t say there is much here to
want me to run down his other films – but I have to give him credit for
at least attempting to film things from odd positions – he seems to love
filming through lampshades, legs and circular art to give his films a real
avant-garde edge!
My rating for this film: 4.5