It’s
time for 50 shades of the Shaw Brothers. It might seem pretty tame to us now,
but in its day, this 1972 film was billed as the first Shaw sex movie. When a
resilient peasant girl is abducted and sold into a brothel, she quickly becomes
the star attraction. Bare breasts, floggings, and lesbian make-out sessions
soon follow. She can fight too, but so can her mistress in Chor Yuen’s Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan,
which screens during this year’s Old School Kung Fu Fest at the Metrograph.
Maybe
you could argue Madam Madame Chun Yi is so adept at catering to her pervy old
clients, because she shares their tastes. That is particularly true of her
latest acquisition, Ai Nu, but the trafficked woman is having none of it. She
even tries to commit suicide, but she is saved by “the Mute,” a former bandit
now forced by injuries to toil as a lowly servant. When he is killed during
their escape attempt, she swears to avenge him (and get some payback for
herself), but in the meantime, she pretends to make nice with Madame Chun.
In
fact, she up-manages Chun so well, the Madam will even run interference for her
when she starts killing her creepy regulars. Of course, none of that sits well
with Chun’s partner, who has long carried a torch for her—obviously to no
avail. The honest new sheriff in town also feels duty bound to prevent murders,
but he does not yet understand the full context of her vendetta.
Even
without the steaminess, Intimate
Confessions is a bit of a mind blower. Frankly, it is about as risqué as
Ingrid Pitt’s lesbian-themed Hammer vampire films from the same period, but
Hong Kong was a much different market in 1972 than America or the UK. This is
truly feminism at its most lurid: men are dogs, who deserve to die—and to prove
the point, here’s some skin to ogle. Plus, it has to be conceded: the big
climatic fight sequence is a barn-burner.
Regular
Shaw Brothers leading lady Lily Ho took her career to the next level portraying
Ai Nu a stone-cold force to be reckoned with. However, Betty Pei Ti steals the
show outright as the flamboyantly villainous and recklessly lusty Madame Chun.
She clearly evokes a sense of classical tragedy, but she could also hold her
own against Sybil Danning’s prison wardens.
