So I've decided to ease myself slowly and carefully back into cinematic hell (I'm not well enough to view my new Jess Franco 8 disc box set in one sitting) and what better way to start than with this sweet little story about the ups and downs of life in a women's prison.
Imagine Porridge but with big 70's bushes and a guest appearance by the monkey faced Scandinavian sex kitten, Brite Tove.
Nu ji zhong ying (AKA Bamboo House of Dolls. 1973)
Dir: Chih-Hung Kuei.
Cast: Lo Lieh, Brite Tove, Wang Hsia, Li Hai-shu, Terry Liu, Niki Wayne and Roska Rozen.
It's sometime during the long hot summer of 1942 (but by the state of the lead actresses hair and make up it's more like 1972) and the world is at war, somewhere in Asia (my geography is very rough - a bit like your mum) a crack squad of hardened Japanese soldiers are in the midst of a battle to the death against a gaggle of sandal wearing, knee revealing Chinese resistance fighters in a red cross hospital.
Well as Davey Stott said, there's nothing like starting with a little explosion.
Officially looking for a downed American pilot but obviously out for revenge against the creepy communists for daring to rip off Ultraman with the abysmal Shaw Brothers travesty Inframan, our Japanese chums begin their copyright controlling assault by first shooting the lovely Hong Yulan's husband in the arse before bayoneting all the injured and old folk, finally standing over a pile of corpses lustfully gazing at all the sweating, shot to fuck Chinese ladies left cowering in a medical cabinet.
Whilst all this butchery is going on, Mr. Yulan, with his dying, fish smelling breath has managed to pass a secret message to his wife.
The whereabouts of his secret schoolboy porn cache however he takes to the grave.
Whilst carrying off the screaming Chinese ladies the Japanese troops hear a faint crying noise from behind a big beefy curtain, and on parting the beef curtains are amazed to discover a handful of huge breasted European nurses in torn uniforms all huddled together in the dirt.
The quick glimpse of big pants is too much for the token Bald of head but magnificently moustached Japanese captain, who orders his men to take this group of second rate Europorn starlets to the local prison camp too.
The weekly Belsen knobbly knees contest was
always a hit with the under 12's.
always a hit with the under 12's.
On arriving at the prison (which bares a scary resemblance to Maplin's holiday camp from top Brit shit-com Hi-De-Hi!) the women are called to attention by the evil camp commander Inoue (Hsia, Mr. Wang from A Better Tomorrow), it appears he has something special to show then to get them all into the holiday mood.
What a thoughtful man.
He orders his men go and fetch a poor unfortunate prisoner he keeps in a corrugate metal shack know as 'the box', you see it appears that this woman was caught trying to sneak copies of Heat Magazine (or something) into the camp and, being an Take A Break reader the warden wants to make an example of her.
He orders his men to string her up by the wrists and (slowly) remove her dress in preparation for he punishment.
Enter (yes please) the foxy, tight uniformed and knee-high booted Mako (slinkily smoothed thighed Liu, the star of Concubine and The Girl With Long Hair - worth a look for the cinematography alone), the whip wielding lesbian warden who angrily orders one of the other prisoners to beat the gossip rag reader to death.
At this point I had to pause the movie to check the heating as it appeared to be getting uncomfortably hot in my house.
Being a weak girlie, the other prisoner refuses so Mako (whilst licking her full, red lips) gives her a good beating until she breaks down in tears and decides to go along with the whip-based fun, which is all well and good till the unfortunate girl dies.
Oops.
Overcome with grief (either that or the actress is having a stroke) the whipper (is that even a word?) starts crying and with the snot bubbles running down her face, runs off before throwing herself onto the electric fence, putting a damper on the whole affair.
There's always one who takes the joke too far.
After witnessing this vile scene the rest of the ladies (and most probably the crew) are increasingly desperate to escape from this living hell, except for the odd few who fancy a wee bit of dirty girl on girl action obviously.
"And that's Numberwang!"
Forced to work in the blistering sun sorting out stones into big plastic buckets whilst wearing shite covered mini-dresses and skimpy pants, it's not long before our cute captives begin plotting an escape but, being girls any chat relating to this soon degenerates into inane talk about make-up and idle gossiping as to who's going to get voted out of The X Factor.
But the girls' frustration soon comes to a head when during lunch they discover that the canteen is all out of those Skinny Latte things that they drink in Sex and The City turning a silly girlie strop into a full-blown, food based brawl.
Luckily for the cleaners commandant Inoue has just the thing to calm the prisoners tempers.
You see a group of Japanese soldiers are soon to arrive at the camp for some well deserved rest and recreation and it'll be the prisoners job to look after their every need during their stay.
Cue twenty minutes of family friendly rape based hilarity as one Japanese soldier, waving his his samurai sword around like a mentalist chases a poor unsuspecting barefooted girl around a (hellishly patterned) carpet covered in broken glass whilst another of the prisoners (Wayne in her only film role, pity) is so up for a bit of man loving she ends up being pleasured by a whole gaggle of greasy, tomb-toothed extras after her libido scares her original suitor away.
Just in case you were under the misapprehension that this was, in some way making light of sexual violence, one unfortunate lady just lies there, stiff as a board whilst wee Jimmy Japman grunts like an asthmatic pig and wiggles his tanned, peachy arse.
And my word what a great arse it is.
Whilst this saucily speeded up shagfest is taking place, blonde bombshell Mary (Rozen) is hand picked by Mako to be her special love slave.
Mary however doesn't seem that pleased and needs to be held down as Mako, wearing nothing but a pair of shiny boots and a smile (oh, and a huge black leather strap-on) slinks towards her.
Cue much groaning and moaning and a fairly arty silhouette sex scene all played out to a soft core jazz score.
Nice.
Anyway, now the sex is out of the way the producers reckon we can get back to the plot such as it is.
Yulan (remember her? - no me neither) has befriended the feisty Jennifer (top billed Tove from such classics as Danish Pillow Talk, Sexy Girls of Denmark, Bedside Headmaster and Swedish Fly Girls amongst others - ask your dad) as well as the whorish Elizabeth, the dirty Mary, ethnic Brenda and a token (yet instantly forgettable) blind bird whose name escapes me.
Being the named cast, our chained chicks battle against bitchy cat-fighting, electric nipple torture and gratuitously soapy shower scenes in order to plan an escape route to freedom.
Or at least to the nearest Butlins.
"Where's the soap?" "It does, doesn't it?"
As luck would have it, one night the camps (big) cook Ben corners Yulan and admits to being a Chinese spy who has actually infiltrated the prison in the hopes of busting her out.
Why? you may ask.
It seems that the secret message her hubbie passed onto her at the films beginning was the location of a load of gold he'd half inched from the Japanese earlier that week and the resistance wants to break her out in order to get access to the bootie so they can all fuck off to Majorca or something.
So, throwing caution (and their dignity) to the wind the ladies decide to mount an escape attempt that very night.
Seducing the guard with promises of sex and chocolate they bludgeon the poor sod to death whilst Big Cook Ben breaks into the power generator room and using only a wooden spoon cuts the wires powering the lights and electric fence enabling them to run off into the night.
"Gun in mah mooth".
Whilst all this escaping is going on, Ben is grabbed by the guards (which is painful believe you me) enabling us to marvel at his close quarter bitch-slapping skills for a few minutes before he too mounts the fence and disappears into the night.
But as he approaches the girls a load of Japanese soldiers jump out of the bushes and surround them.
Ben bravely tries to help the girls but is cruelly gunned down, collapsing in a pool of blood mixed with baking soda and cherries.
Jennifer runs to his aid but it's too late.
As Ben lays there dying he gazes wistfully at her heaving cleavage and whispers that there's another Chinese spy in the camp who's willing to help them but the ladies must be on their guard as he's sure that one of their number is a filthy spy.
Returning to the camp Jennifer (very quickly, tho' to be honest we are halfway thru' the film) discovers that the camp’s ultra cool, aviator shaded, Elvis quiffed second-in-command, Cui Guodong (Hong Kong's answer to Timothy Dalton, Lieh - a man so sexy he could even persuade Nick Griffin to take it up the shitter) is the other spy.
It's not too surprising them when juicy Jennifer and gorgeous Guodong start indulging in a few candle lit sexy scenes under the pretence of planning another escape.
But time is, as they say, running out as the unknown collaborator is slowly but surely bumping off various prisoners in order of attractiveness.
Jennifer should be safe for a while then.
"Careful with Ms. Mako's love egg you little tinker!"
Next day it's business as usual; another escape followed by another recapture and finishing with a wee bit of torture (like a weekend in the West Midlands if I'm honest).
Only this time it's a bit more serious than a quick whipping by a big uniformed dyke as all six girls: Mary the lesbian love slave, Jennifer the chimp, Elizabeth (the nymphette), Yulan, Brenda and the blind one are spread eagled and staked to the ground in the boiling hot sun.
And just to add to their discomforted the other prisoners can see up their skirts.
How evil is that?
As they lie there baking in the sun thoughts turn to who the traitor could be and it's not long before everyone has decided it must be Mary due to her love of ladies (and huge leather strap-ons obviously).
Frankly I find this ludicrous, I mean if a love of anal or vaginal violation by means of a bit of dead cow were cause for suspicion we'd all be locked up.
Especially your dad.
So promising to be good and never to try and escape again our heroines are set free and sent back to work, stopping only occasionally to slap Mary around a bit.
But the commandant has had enough of these fiery fillies and is making plans to off them one by one.
Will they survive till the Chinese resistance arrive to save them?
Griffin: loves the cock.Described as both cruel and demeaning to women (tho' not to the viewers intelligence surprisingly) the late, almost great Chih-Hung Kuei's (of Corpse Mania, Coward Bastard and Enter the Seven Virgins fave) sexploitation classic Bamboo House of Dolls is way too camp and trashy an experience to be offensive to anyone but the most soulless, big booted feminists and their joyless pals.
Oh and possibly your Granddad if he fought in Asia during World War 2, tho' even he might change his mind when the girl on girl action starts.
As an excuse for ninety minutes of in (as opposed to over) your face sex and comic book violence Bamboo House of Dolls certainly doesn't disappoint and what it loses in historical accuracy (huge breasted, curvy Eurostars sporting arse revealing flimsy, blue t-shirts pretending to be starving prisoners and Alvin Stardust-alike spies in tight trousers plus a fantastic Wah Wah jazz score) it more than makes up for with it's speeded up comedy shagging, a uniformed lesbian dominatrix and blood splattered scenes of machine gun action.
And that's just in the first twenty five minutes.
And that feeling of teen boy fantasy gone mad runs throughout the whole movie, packed as it is with shootouts, Kung Fu kicking, pantie wearing girls fighting Japanese soldiers, copious amounts of breasts and overgrown bush and even a slow motion car stunt.
Really, what's there not to love?
"I can't find the car keys!"
The most surprising thing about it tho' is how good the cast are. Simian saucebox Brite Tove is actually not too bad as the strong heroine whilst sexyy action god Lo Lieh seems to be having a ball as the heroic stud muffin of the piece, imagine Big Roger Moore with high hair, sprayed on trousers and a pair of market stall shades and you're halfway there.
Trust me, you need this.
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