Bamboo House of Dolls (1973) — Congrats, Sir Run Run Shaw!
December 16th, 2011 by Mr. C
Director: Gwai Chi Hung
Producer: Shaw Brothers Studio
Stars: Betty Duth, Lo Lieh, Wong Hap
Genre: women in prison, exploitation
What’s up y’all! I’m back from a lightweight bout riddled by a case of the peking opera-holiday blues. A few stomps on some old fax machines and the removal of some flairs proved to be a nice remedy of wonton-noodle soup for the soul! Now, back to the movie un-reviews of trashy hong kong gems to smash any remnants of fake festive cheer!?
First off, congratulations to 104 year old Sir Run Run Shaw on his retirement from Hong Kong TVB at the end of this year! What’s the ancient chinese secret for longevity, Mr. Shaw? Lo Pan (James Hong) from Big Trouble in Little China can probably take a few pointers from you! If you ask me, I think the magic elixir could be traced back to the creation of his Shaw Brothers studio! A nice dosage of sexploitation, kong fu, T’s and “A” , & cute chicks will turn any frown upside down! Ah-hemm, this seems to be a nice segue to drop down mentions about the Shaw Brother film, Bamboo House of Doll’s!
Some say this is a cheap copycat of similiar proportions from the women in prison films by Roger Corman like The Big Doll House starring Pam Grier in particular and they are probably right, but hurt me-hurt me…I still enjoyed it!
The Big Doll House & Bamboo House of Dolls shared the same quality with the women in lockdown theme while being sadistically tortured and raped but Bamboo is centered more towards nationalism and the Japanese troops invading China on a mad hunt to look for this pot of gold. Any guerillas or rebels in china standing in their way would get killed without any rice spilled. Chinese women and a few american red cross nurses would get rounded up and imprisoned into a concentration camp for further pleasure prodding & poking by the Japanese militiary which includes some girl on girl action initiated by Miko, a Japanese lady in command! Even the blind would not be left untouched! In certain scenes, the ladies in prison looked like they were having entirely too much fun for damsels in extreme distress especially during the sensual bathing sequences! Hey, that works for me! Food fights escalating into full blown cat throwdowns dissolving into frolicking & rolling around on the ground with their tops yanked off was pretty festive or cough, cough….horrible!
It wasn’t all fun & games though as the distraught ladies looked for an escape route as the Japanese looked for ways to coerce one of the captives, Hong Yulan into divulging the location of where the gold was. Here’s the kicker – one of the women captives is acting as a spy for the japanese! Another surprise would cast Shaw Brother great, Lo Lieh – playing the role of Cui Guidon, a chinese orphan raised by the Japanese. He would be a very important piece to the story!
Bamboo House of Dolls is every bit as distasteful, gaudy, & sadistic as a Shaw Brother exploitation film can get which makes it all so fun! It was nice seeing Lo Lieh sink his fangs into a white woman as his love interest instead of his usual roles of playing a badass martial arts master like in “King Boxer” otherwise known as “5 Fingers of Death” ! This movie is worth your time if you like trashy & smutty films — Shaw Style!
Tags: mr c, shaw brothers
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