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This scene probably looks familiar. It's a ripoff of that sped-up fucking scene inFuneral Procession of Roses.The same scene that Kubrick admittedly ripped off inA Clockwork Orange.Starring Leslie Cheung, Viva Erotica was actually nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (along with a dozen other categories) at the Hong Kong Film Awards back in `97. The film is basically like a mashup of 8 1/2 and Boogie Nights but with more sex and less Mark Wahlberg. It's one of the more tame examples of Cat-III erotica, but the fact they got Leslie Cheung and a young Shu Qi--both highly acclaimed actors in HK--gives you a good idea of the different standards these films are held to in the region. Hell, even Jackie Chan got downright smutty in the 70s.

I'm becoming sadly desensitized to this movie the more times I watch it. Who would've thought you could get bored of watching a guy catch a severed horse dick in his mouth, chicks scribbling calligraphy with their snatch, or the occasional theatrical horse rape? Sex and Zen isn't very Zen at all, to be honest, but at least they don't make a joke of having your tool amputated and then eaten by a dog.THE FORBIDDEN LEGEND: SEX AND CHOPSTICKS
This was the first Cat-III film I stumbled upon in Chinatown last summer, so it definitely deserves mention. It was sitting unabashedly on the shelf around toddler-eye-level, so I asked the guy at the store what it was, to which he shrugged and said he didn't know in a way that told me he knew full well what it was. It turns out it's based off of a famous 17th century erotic Chinese novel called
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Despite its cheerful title, this movie isn't quite as funny asSex and ZenorSex and Chopsticks. It's not that I don't get a kick out of exploding penises, nympho-nannies getting passed over by rapists, or ejaculatory eruptions of blood--which was surprisingly artistic, now that I think about it. I'm just still trying to work out how ghost-on-man mouth rape got past the brainstorming phase of production. Despite all that,A Chinese Torture Chamber Storyis by far the most infamous Cat-III period piece, and if you don't get off on people being stabbed under their fingernails then at least you can take comfort in the fact that you're not the only person who likes to think their dick makes sounds like a laser gun.MICHAEL BLOOM