Director: Joe D’amato
Cast: Georgia Emerald, Gloria Chen, Leo Gamboa, Marc Gosálvez, Liezl Santos
One 7 Movies / NTSC R0 / Unrated / 1.66:1 Letterbox / Dolby 2.0 / 88 minutes / PURCHASE FROM AMAZON!
Extras: Deleted Scene
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The quality of Italian exploitation and adult film director Joe D’amato’s movies has always been a little uneven. Like his Spanish counterpart Jesus “Jess” Franco, he has his beloved, often beautiful films like the Black Emanuelle series and nunsploitation classic Images in a Convent (1979). Even the ridiculously over-the-top Porno Holocaust (1981) gets love from fans like me. But his later movies lacked the… charm of his earlier works. His little known, near-XXX bore-fest from 1993 Chinese Kamasutra unfortunately falls into the latter category. But I will add that One 7 Movies’ release didn’t do the film any good.
Joan moves from England to China and finds work as a librarian. While sorting through some old books, she comes across a very old copy of the Chinese Kamasutra and is immediately enthralled by its contents. Her co-worker, who wants to get in her knickers, is walking home with her one day and she tells him that she keeps seeing a strange man in the window of an old building staring at her. Of course the co-worker doesn’t see him so the next day –after feeling the effects of the Kamasutra– she decides to knock on the door of the building. She is greeted by a servant and taken to the man and before long she realizes that she is now trapped in the large house and begins having weird dreams.
The rest of the movie is some shit about the “Kamasutra” cult run by this priest dude who is her lover from a past life or some confusing nonsense. It’s told through dreams and visions that run together intermittently with orgies and whatnot. Normally I would be all over something like this. I love weird nonsense and orgies but shit, even I have standards… sorta. I was thoroughly bored by everything. The naked flesh was plentiful and the lead actress was smoking hot –in fact she was the only good part of the movie– but the story was horse shit and the sexy bits were very, very typical though some were bordering on hardcore via digital vaginal insertion. No violence, no shocks, no hot sex = Yawn-a-palooza.
And to top off the bore-straviganza, the movie looked and sounded like holy hell. It’s a 1.66:1 letter-boxed nightmare. As you can see from the screencaps below, it was off-center and the picture quality itself was average VHS quality at best. The sound was no better. Here is a sample of the English audio: *SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS* “Oh, yes…mmmm, oh…” *SSSSSSSSSSSSSS* “Touch me right there you cult priest pimp daddy… oooh, yeah…” *SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS*. But there is one saving grace (/sarcasm), and I do mean one… there is an extra on the DVD, YAY! A deleted scene… a really shitty looking, irrelevant deleted scene. I was hoping for more from One 7 like Scandalous Gilda, while the movie didn’t knock my undies off, it did pique my interest and the picture quality was fantastic. Well, maybe next time…
