Ancient Chinese Whorehouse

Ancient Chinese Whorehouse
1994
Director: Ivan Lai
Viewed on DVD

Not withstanding the title of Ancient Chinese Whorehouse, this is a fairly benign Cat. III period piece which doesn’t have much of a bite to it especially if compared to Yvonne Yung Hung’s more famous period film that she was in during the same year – Chinese Torture Chamber Story. The resume of director Ivan Lai is littered like a mangy junkyard with many forgettable films, but he did strike gold on occasion with the loony Blue Jean Monster and the unnervingly distasteful Daughter of Darkness. He was also behind the Diana Pang Dan film, The Imp. Unfortunately, he doesn’t bring much of that same perversity to this film, which basically plays it for comedy until near the end.

Siu Ching’s (Ching Suet-aan) family is deeply in debt and so of course they rent their most valuable asset – their demure virgin daughter – to the proprietress of the local whorehouse. By contract, Ching is the property of this abode for five years and is informed by Yat (Dick Lau) that this equates to approximately 5,475 beddings over that period. Not exactly thrilled with the thought of becoming a human mattress, Ching tries to escape but is caught and brought before Madam Ng (Yvonne Yung Hung), who as far as brothel owners go (in movies anyway) is very kind to her staff – but business is business and so to encourage Ching to perform her duties she is put in a vat of squiggling eels who seem to be looking for . . . let us say a warmer climate to move into. This is all the incentive Ching needs to begin working with an auction set up for her virginity disposal.
Other members of this happy household are Sister Bamboo (Yuen King-tan) whose gigantic breasts have frightened off her customers (one bad luck fellow suffocated to death between them) for months and she is desperately in need of business. There is also Kong (the portly Kent Cheng) who is the genius behind all the various sexual devices that the clientele like so much. He also enjoys peeping in on Madam Ng when she is taking a bath. Plot points concern a foreign prostitute adorned in a Madonna like bra who works on a huge stuffed cock (the bird kind of course) and is taking away all of their business with a guarantee to make every man orgasm in a few minutes or money back. There is also a love affair that begins to bloom between Ching and Yat and finally a rapist (Elvis Tsui) begins stealing the girls and has to be stopped by a kung fu Madame Ng. The late Shing Fui-on appears as the Marshall looking for the rapist but is much more interested in looking at Madame Ng. There is a respectable amount of nudity – thankfully not from Yuen King-tan! – and Yvonne has two sex scenes – the one with Kent Cheng being something close to a ballroom dance number - kind of touching and gymnastically absurd at the same time.

My rating for this film: 5.5