A Chinese Torture Chamber Story (1994)

Rating: D+

Dir: Wong Jing
Star: Yung Hung, Lawrence Ng, Tommy Wong, Ching Mai

Great title, fabulous cover, but trashmeister Wong doesn’t quite deliver the goods here. Sure, there are some tortuous moments, but it’s more of a whodunnit, even if Miss Marple never had to solve a case where the victim’s penis exploded. It’s told mostly in flashback, with the various threads unravelling slowly, in a welter of comedy and soft-porn which is certainly unique — the nude sexual kung-fu was particularly impressive.

The problem is that it lurches around wildly from genre to genre, flailing wildly away like a genetically modified octopus, neither fish nor fowl. Interrogation scenes which border on the sadistic mix with Ghost parodies: rather than making a pot, imagine Demi Moore jerking off a hugely endowed Patrick Swayze. That’s the kind of level you’re at here, dull it ain’t, but neither is it anything except a total mess, where you don’t give a damn about anyone involved. Rarely has a star been so appropriately named.