My interest in Hong Kong Cinema is primarily for the action, the wild stunts, gunplay and martial arts. Through that I also grew to love the filmmakers’ willingness to combine genres, going from broad comedy to intense melodrama in the same scene. In Category III movies, they combined broad comedy with gratuitous sex and often sexual violence, and that’s what Golden Harvest Vol. 1: Supernatural Shockers covers.
Sex and Zen is the classic. The name is striking but the movie delivers on both counts. The characters achieve some absurd sexual positions, impressive even with wirework. In fact, in many ways it’s more impressive than doing Kung Fu on wires.
The Erotic Ghost Story trilogy was never for me mmainly because I wasn’t into the regular Chinese Ghost Story. But supernatural magic is a subgenre of Hong Kong Cinema and combining that with a fair share of wild sex makes these noteworthy.
Dr Vampire is about a doctor who goes to a vampire brothel and ends up transforming himself. It’s more of a comedy with him developing vampire traits at inopportune times, but has a wild ending battling the vampires in the hospital.
Robotrix is a female Robocop but anatomically correct for sex scenes. But this one also has robots doing martial arts with visible wires as is tradition in ‘90s Hong Kong cinema.
I haven’t raved about Hong Kong cinema Blu-ray restorations in a while so let me do that again. It’s one thing to finally see martial arts in high definition after VHS. Surely these movies were clear in their initial theatrical release, but after passing around dubbed VHS tapes, seeing the gratuitous sex as clear as arthouse or blockbuster movies is really something. They’re still exploitation, but American exploitation movies are also experiencing new life in high definition.
This lot has a new crop of Hong Kong cinema scholars for commentaries and interviews, though James Mudge shows up again too. Given that they’re talking about sex movies, they keep it classy while addressing the bodies and acts that make these Category III.
The actor and filmmaker interviews discuss practical matters of shooting sex scenes, like temperature control for nudity, dubbing the moaning and staging elaborate sex scenes. It’s nice to know comfort was priority, and many of the talent were very careful about what they did even though they knew what they were signing up for.