A Chinese Torture Chamber Story Part 1 and 2 (ACTCS1 and ACTCS2) are a pair of movies that use torture as the centerpiece of the film, as implied by the titles. They were Category 3 films made by the Hong Kong film industry, which was a severe rating indicating graphic sex, violence, or triad rituals. ACTCS1 and 2 definitely have the sex and violence covered. Both of them are period pieces, though with drastically different stories, made in the 1990s.
Part 1 tells the story of a woman and a man who are falsely accused of conspiracy, adultery, and murder. When they proclaim their innocence, they are tortured to force a confession. Despite the serious main story, the movie is filled with side-plots and touches (such as silly sound-effects and music) that take some of the brutality out of it. Part 1 sports a strong sense of comedy. The movie is nuts and includes a whole list of insane scenarios. To name a few:
- a subplot of a woman who wants larger breasts
- a tree-top martial arts battle that turns into mid-air sex complete with the man and woman yelling their positions in the style of an anime battle
- a man with a penis so large that the hookers are afraid of him
- a parody of the pottery scene in Ghost that involves a hand-job
- attempted rape by an invisible man
- a naked lady voluntarily rolling across a bed of nails as part of the court’s appeals process
- an instrumental version of “Unchained Melody”plays as a man’s penis explodes
- a woman is paraded through town while riding an automated sex donkey
To say this movie has wild tonal shifts is an understatement. Even more shocking is the fact that this story has been told multiple times and is based on a real 1800s court case. It was hard to take the movie seriously, which made the torture scenes easier to take. No one in the movie seemed to behave like a real person.
ACTCS2 is a very different animal though. Made only four years later, it is a radically changed movie with no similarities to the original outside of being a period piece about torture. There is no silliness to counterbalance the horrific methods of punishment. Brother Ma is a venerated civil servant and local hero that has been murdered. A woman is sentenced to be executed by a method known as “death by a thousand cuts” for killing Brother Ma. In a series of flashbacks, the story unfolds. Brother Ma encounters some bandits and befriends them. Swearing brotherhood, he inevitably betrays them because he wants to sleep with their wives. The movie increases the nudity and torture and the drama but removes any sense of fun. Even a S&M scene that attempts to be erotic fails because it keeps splicing in scenes of the man as a child being sexually assaulted and seeing his parents murdered. There are other disturbing scenes such as death by a red-hot metal dildo and multiple scenes of tongues being pulled out and hot wax being poured into ear canals. Also based on a supposedly true tale, this story has also been previously made into movies. This movie was not nearly as enjoyable as Part 1, mainly because it was an exploitation style flick that took itself seriously.
The picture quality is very good, 2k from 35mm original negatives. Part one and part two have commentary tracks from two different film historians. Part 1 has an alternate Mandarin language edit. There is an interview with the producer of both films, Wong Jing. The is a short documentary on the history of Category 3 films. Additionally, there is a documentary about the historical accuracy of the torture techniques which was both fascinating and disturbing. There were multiple trailers for the films (English and Cantonese). The physical aspects of the release were also very nice. There is a reversible cover and a pretty lengthy booklet with an essay about the films and the culture in the Hong Kong film industry at the time. In terms of a recommendation, the first film was actually a fun watch with some over-the-top scenes that made it a spectacle. The second film was more of a slough, despite escalating the extreme aspects of the genre. It was just too self-serious. The addition of some nice and plentiful special features makes it an overall recommendation, with Part 2 being the only weak spot in this release.