Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Great Film overall

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

"A Chinese Torture Chamber Story" is one of the more inexplicable movies I've seen from the Asian continent. It's not so much balls out weird, like "Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead" or "The Eternal Evil of Asia", as it is hard to explain. Is it a porn film? Torture porn? Or just a light comedy? The only thing consistent about it is the comedic tone, which you may find doesn't sit well in scenes of graphic torture and exploding penises.It's not really that graphic, though. Most of the torture scenes are played for laughs, and if you're familiar with Category III films, you know "The Untold Story" makes this look like Sesame Street. These scenes are nowhere near as intense as you might expect; there's nothing on the screen to make you cringe.So it doesn't really work as torture porn. What about regular porn? It doesn't really work in this regard, either. There's some sex but it's not erotic, and there's very little full-frontal nudity. While there are at least a couple of beautiful actresses, they mostly only bare their breasts to have some weird sex/torture toy attached to their nipples. We aren't given any opportunity to admire their bodies.I think the problem is that the direction is dull. The filmmaker knew what people wanted to see so he showed it. But we're never given any idea how we're supposed to feel about any of this stuff, so we don't really feel anything.The plot is something about a princess married to a man who tries weird (though not interesting) methods of pleasing her, like potions and stuff. She is observed by a young servant girl called Little Cabbage, who is then sold to another man. There's a bit of torture to work out who is having sex with who, or something. The plot surely didn't need to be this obtuse, but aren't they always?

To be very honest, I've watched this movie just to see Yvonne Ying Hung. It didn't matter what role she played. I think she was one of the outstanding star that can carry a lead role. She didn't disappoint here. She was beautiful, and even showed some skin. The movie is in the style of many Cat III movies of the early '90s. The bluish lighting that contrasts with the red clothing of the actresses, humor mixed with sex, and few odd twists to the story (this one is the torture angle). The extra bonus is that Wong Jin was the producer of this movie, putting in his extra spice of entertainment that made the movie a delight to watch.Loved the movie, and I wish Yvonne Yin Hung will come back to the screen even in a cameo role one day. This was also one of the better Cat III movies of the time too. Production quality is very high.For entertainment, this movie is highly recommended for viewing.

For fans of mind-bogglingly bonkers cinema, the weird and wonderful world of Category III is a veritable gold-mine, and with endless scenes of sheer lunacy, bizarre sex, and sadistic violence, A Chinese Torture Chamber Story is like hitting the mother-lode!!!Totally mad and breath-takingly inventive, this erotic martial-arts/fantasy/horror comedy, from writer Bing Cheuk, director Bosco Lam, and prolific producer Wong Jing, opens by graphically depicting a variety of nasty torture methods, which include being forcibly held against a red-hot brazier, castration, being chopped in half (although this seems like less a method of torture and more a means of instant death!), and skin removal. If you make it past these scenes without switching off in disgust (in particular, the image of the castration victim's bloody junk being slung into a metal dish), then you're exactly the kind of twisted deviant Cheuk, Lam and Jing had in mind when making this movie, and you'll have an absolute blast!The story revolves around the trial of a beautiful young maid known as Little Cabbage, who is accused of murdering Got Siu-Tai, her well-hung husband, via an overdose of aphrodisiac (which caused his penis to explode—and not in a good way!). Also implicated in the crime is Little Cabbage's boss, Scholar Yang Ni-mu: he is in love with Little Cabbage and had hoped to make her his concubine—until his jealous wife sold her to Got in order to get rid of her.Little Cabbage and Scholar Yang continually protest their innocence, even after they are viciously tortured in a variety of nasty ways, but their judge will not accept their cries of innocence. Perhaps this is because he already knows who was really responsible for Got's death: his own son, who has been secretly having an affair with Scholar Yang's wife!During the course of the trial, we get to see, via a series of flash-backs, the events leading up to the exploding donkey-schlong incident. Including tales of adultery, lesbianism, mid-air kung fu sex, and invisible rapists, it's the kind of salacious case that would evoke gasps of disbelief and shock from the jury—if there was a jury.Finally, broken, battered, and missing a few finger nails, Little Cabbage and Yang are tricked into pleading guilty by the corrupt judge, and are sentenced to death. Fortunately, however, their crack legal team (which consists of Yang's tasty sister, a pair of sex-mad martial artists, and a flat chested nanny who yearns for bigger breasts) do not give up hope, and discover, in the final hour, a vital piece of evidence. Yang's sister convinces a supreme judge to arrange a re-trial (proving her sincerity by rolling on a bed of pins), and wins the couple their freedom.Meanwhile, the real guilty parties are punished for their crimes: the judge is exiled, his son is sentenced to drowning, and Yang's wife gets to ride a wooden horse with a particularly uncomfortable looking saddle.With tons of hot Asian women in various states of undress, steamy soft-core sex aplenty, ejaculation jokes, and that unbelievable shot of poor old Got's pecker erupting blood over his bare-breasted wife, A Chinese Torture Chamber Story is an extremely entertaining example of Asian sexploitation.8.5 out of 10, rounded up to 9 for IMDb.

My favorite part of this bizarre movie, aside from the graphic violence and sex, was the poorly translated and wholly inappropriate sub-titling. The entire film already had me precariously balanced between disgust and hilarity, but the way they presented some of the dialogue pushed me over the edge into falling-out-of-my-chair laughter. What sticks in my mind the most (apart from the exploding phallus and aerodynamic coitus) was a scene where a woman in the midst of seriously pounding and fairly graphic sex moans something that was translated as "So comfortable... so comfortable..."