The Bamboo House of Dolls

During World War II, a Red Cross hospital in China was ransacked by the Japanese army, and the female nurses were sent to a concentration camp. While there they are beaten, raped and tortured by the guards. However, the women have found someone to help them escape, and as soon as they get the chance, a small group of them makes a break for it. Unfortunately, things don't go exactly as planned because a traitor within the group has forewarned the beautiful but sadistic female officer in charge of security, named "Mako" (Terry Liu). And now their mistreatment really begins. Anyway, rather than reveal any more of the story and risk ruining the film for those who haven't seen it, I will just say that this turned out to be a fairly good Women-in-Prison movie. I personally liked the luscious blonde prisoner named "Jennifer" (Birte Tove) and the aforementioned Terry Liu, although there were quite a few other pretty ladies in this movie as well. Be that as it may, I recommend this film to those who enjoy this particular genre, and I rate it as slightly above average.

Hong Kong's legendary Shaw Brothers studio, best known for its classic martial arts movies, jumps on board the women-in-prison bandwagon with Bamboo House of Dolls, an entertaining exploitation effort that, although not as sleazy as a Franco, as sadistic as an 'Ilsa', or as stylish as a Female Prisoner #701, still offers fans of dubious film everything they could ask for from one of cinema's most disreputable sub-genres.

Set during WWII, the film opens in typically tasteless WIP style with a group of sexy nurses being violently accosted by the evil Japanese army (in a cool slow motion credits sequence, the action freezes whenever a bare breast or panty gusset is exposed); these women are taken to a concentration camp where they are abused, raped, tortured and occasionally killed by the camp's sadistic guards and the sexy, lesbian head of security, Mako (Terry Liu).

After loads of delightfully depraved action, including girl-on-girl shower sex, forced strap-on-action, cat-fights, and sadistic punishment, a small band of plucky prisoners make a bid for freedom, led by Hong Yu Long, the wife of a Chinese partisan (and the only person who knows the whereabouts of a secret stash of war gold) and the camp's interpretor (played by Lo Lieh), who has fallen for tasty blonde prisoner Jennifer (Danish softcore sex star Birte Tove).

Once the action moves from the camp to the countryside, Bamboo House of Dolls becomes a far less sleazy affair, with the concentration being on bloody sword and gun battles between the nasty Japanese and brave Chinese guerillas, and unimpressive martial arts fights on barren hill-tops.

Rather surprisingly, the whole film has a very polished look that suggests rather a lot of money was spent by Shaw studios, and the cinematography is quite beautiful at times (although I wish director Chih-Hung Kuei hadn't used his 'starburst' filter on EVERY shot!); it also benefits from a pretty snazzy soundtrack, which adds immensely to the overall 'coolness' of the film. If only Bamboo House of Dolls had managed to maintain the amazingly trashy vibe of its first half for the entire running time, then it would have easily have ranked as one of the best of the genre (but even though it loses some momentum towards the end, it is still well worth checking out).

Big budget exploitation effort from Shaw Brothers is a little too sloppy to be praised, but it's a decent time waster. It is bizarre to see softcore Scandinavian sex siren Birte Tove ("Bedroom Mazurka", "Bedside Dentist") in a key role as prisoner/Red Cross envoy Jennifer. Ms. Tove gets beaten around a lot in this violent WIP (Women In Prison) flick and reveals more than her fine legs.

In fact, director Chin Hung Kuei appears to be obsessed with women's legs and underthings. Hardly a moment goes by that we aren't looking up a fallen prisoner's dress or watching another poor soul have have clothing torn off by an evil Japanese officer.

There is a confusing plot concerning hidden gold and some anti-Japanese propaganda, but the main focus of this exploitation epic is rape, beatings, catfights, escape attempts and torture. It's all done with tongue in cheese at times and is usually too extreme to be taken seriously. Though the film does have a TF Mous vibe at times (reminding this viewer of "Lost Souls" in particular), Mous's shocking exploitation classic didn't hit cinemas until 1980, six years after this was produced.

The film's scope is quite wide and events in the third act move to rural and coastal locations outside the central prison set. The climax is rather ludicrous and totally illogical, but by then, exploitation fans will have gotten their money's worth, if not any food for the brain.

During World War 2 a group of Chinese and American (Red Cross) woman are put into a Japanese military prison camp. They are sometimes made available to Japanese officers. A group of them seek a way to escape.

WIP (Women in Prison) films were very popular worldwide in the 1970's. Some were excellent, some awful and this one falls in the middle. Nudity & violence was required. This includes some torture and explicit violence by the Japanese soldiers. Chinese films used to show how violent the Japanese could be as memories of the war still was in the Chinese consciousness.

This could have been named House of Breasts as the first three-quarters have plenty. But they were just on screen a lot usually in long shots. There is a story and it evolves over the course of the movie which is good. Good special effects for it's time and set design at Shaw Brothers studio.

The problems include some scenes that didn't lead to anything going on way too long. They could have been edited down without losing anything. The second problem is sometimes characters do things or don't that didn't make sense. That's when I yell out "Oh, C'mon!" The third problem is the acting was very mediocre. The exception is Terry Liu who played the female head of prison security who was outstanding. A couple of continuity issues round out the problems.

It wasn't the worst movie of its kind. It just wasn't very good either. It wasn't even worth watching for the breasts.

During World War II a group of nurses are captured by the Japanese army and thrown into a brutal internment camp presided over by a cruel Japanese woman (kind of the Nipponese equivalent of Ilsa). There's a subplot involving Chinese spies in the camp and a hidden cache of gold that both the Chinese and the Japanese are after, and there's not one but TWO big "bust-out" scenes.

This seems to be a Hong Kong take-off (produced by the notorious Shaw brothers)of the WIP genre made popular in the early 70's by people like Roger Corman. But since the American WIP films were usually shot in the Philipines and used Asian actors in supporting roles, and this movie cast Caucasian actresses in the lead roles, it isn't on the surface that much different from its inspiration (aside from the historical setting). However,the "American" characters here are actually Danish softcore porn stars like Birte Tove, and the whole thing apparently had to be dubbed clumsily into English, so this film lacks a lot of the character development of American WIP films. But at the same time it also lacks a lot of the chop-socky action sequences that characterized Hong Kong films of that era.

The tone of this film is all over the place. At times it is more serious and brutal film complete with torture and rape scenes. It is somewhat stronger than the American WIP films if not nearly as strong the later Eurpean WIP films made by people like Jess Franco or the notorious Italian "Nazi sexploitation" films (or their American equivalent, the "Ilsa" series). Other times, however, it descends into slapstick comedy like a long, bizarre food fight scene. Sex, as always, is the real name of the game, but even this is curiously circumspect. There's plenty of nudity (shower scenes, etc.), but when the cruel female commander apparently rapes her favorite Caucasian stoolie with a strap-on dildo, the action is kept so much off-screen that it's hard to even figure out what's happening. And after Birte Tove's character first discovers that the Chinese camp cook is a spy who is going to help them escape, she decides to have passionate sex with him, even though they just barely met, and they proceed to do so after lighting about a hundred candles--which is strange to say the least considering this is a spontaneous and furtive encounter in an enemy prison camp.

That's not necessarily to say this is a bad or entirely un-entertaining WIP film, but it is definitely a very strange one.