Chinese Kamasutra (1993)
The Kama Sutra was, some scholars believe, written in India sometime between the 4th and the 6th centuries, and it is often attributed to and author named Vātsyāyana, although a historian named John Keay has said that the book dates as far back as the 2nd century. The book is notorious for having smutty pictures, although the pictures were added for later editions.
Joe D’Amato’s 1993 softcore feverdream “Chinese Kamasutra” (released this week on DVD from One 7 Movies) has nothing to do with the book, its origins, or even its content. There is a Chinese Kama Sutra in “Chinese Kamasutra,” but it’s essentially a collection of badly-drawn x-rated pictures. This book, however, is erotic enough to stimulate the imagination of the film’s heroine, and unleash an entertaining, if totally nonsensical, romp through an erotic story of baffling happenstance and sexy ghosts.
For those of you unfamiliar with Joe D’Amato, let me introduce you by way of a selected filmography: D’Amato is the Italian film director responsible for nearly 200 feature films, including such adult titles as: “Sexy Night of the Living Dead” (1980), “Blue Erotic Climax” (1980), and “The Emperor Caligula: The Untold Story” (1982). D’Amato also directed under the name David Hills, and it was under this name that he directed a series of sword-and-sandal films starring hunky beefsteak Miles O’Keefe (and others) as a magical warrior named Ator. Many of you may know of his film “Cave Dwellers” thanks to “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”
The director of “Cave Dwellers,” it turns out, worked all the way through until his death in 1999, sticking with largely adult titles (“120 Days of Anal” anyone?), most all of them with an historical theme. I have now seen a few of his films, and I can say for sure: cogency is not one of his strong suits. Let us explore this through “Chinese Kamasutra.”
The film follows a sexy librarian named Joan (British model Georgia Emerald) who is interning at a library in China. She is tall, has long, luxurious hair, and breast implants that are distractingly round. She is constantly fending off the advances of her co-worker (Li Yu), who looks like a Chinese Butch Patrick, and sounds like a British Shadoe Stevens. The dubbing is distracting, but I suppose no more distracting than most Italian productions. Some of you may not know this trick, but many Italian films were shot without sound, and then dubbed into their original languages, along with any languages needed for international distribution. This made for easier international marketing.
Anyway, Joan finds the titular book, and is immediately intrigued. She stays late after hours to masturbate to the book. One the way home every night, a mysterious man in a red robe spies on her from the neighboring mansion, which was presumably deserted. Hm…
Eventually, Joan goes into the abandoned mansion, and finds an entire army of servants waiting for her. They alternately strip her, massage her, sexually pleasure her, and feed her dinner. The master of the house (Leo Gamboa) then appears to her, and explains that she is the reincarnation of an ancient princess, and he was the brave warrior she once loved. They are now reincarnated as members of the Kamasutra Cult (!), and are to achieve high consciousness through sex. That sounds way better than that boring old meditation stuff.
She also has dreams about her previous life, where she made out passionately (and badly; I hate when people are obviously bad kissers in movies) with her handsome prince (Marc Gonzálves). Confusingly, she is also called Joan in her flashbacks. It’s unclear as to what is real, and what is dream, and what is mere fantasy, and what is supernatural in this film. Did Joan enter another ghostly dimension? Are the servants ghosts? Is this all an elaborate fantasy brought on by the Chinese Kamasutra?
If these are her fantasies, she’s got some weird ones. She pictures herself on an alter, being licked and fondled by various Chinese women, while men look on, tied to pillars. She is assaulted by palace guards, who hold her down, and poke her all over with dildos (!). She does have legitimate sex with one fellow, but the camerman’s chosen angle clearly shows that no sex is going on.
Even though the film was made in 1993, and home video had already made hardcore pornography available in people’s homes, Joe D’Amato remains largely in the softcore arena (a few steamy masturbation scenes notwithstanding). This, added to the pretentious dreaminess, gives the film a fun, old-school sexploitation vibe that was largely dead by the 1990s. In that regard, “Chinese Kamasutra” is a fun curio.
The problem, though, is that “ChiKam” isn’t that fun to watch. D’Amato made his film so pretentious that it undercuts a lot of the eroticism. It also doesn’t help that Emerald, while pretty, and possessed of a lovely body, looks utterly bored by most of the proceedings. Her face is a heavily made-up pizza of indifference. The only scene where she seems to be having any sort of playful, sexy fun is, quite oddly, a scene where she eats a carrot that’s been carved into a penis. Only then, does she have any sort of gusto.
The films ends bafflingly as well, and yes, I’m going to give away the ending. Our heroine’s co-worker questions an elderly man as to her whereabouts. The man revels that he is the master of the ghosts that we’ve been looking at, and remembers her from the past. The co-worker goes to the house, and finds it empty. Did she go back in time? Well, as it turns out, no. She was laying in her bed this whole time. So did she imagine it all? Did she travels back and forth in time? Did the old man? I’m confused. But never mind. She and her co-worker go at in while he’s drunk, and all is well.
Joe D’Amato is a name to know. If you want to explore past his “Cave Dwellers” days, and dip a toe into his vast body of pornographic work, I suppose “Chinese Kamasutra” will serve as good an introduction as any.
