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Released by: Camera Obscura
Released on: 1/31/2011
Director: Ernst Hofbauer & Huei Chih-Hung
Cast: Yueh Hua, Liu Hui-Ling, Sonja Jeannie, Diana Drube, Gillian Bray
Year: 1974
The Movie:
It's all well and good that the powers that be at Celestial Entertainment chose to acquire and remaster as massive chunk of the Shaw Brothers' output - but they didn't get everything. Case in point? Virgins Of The Seven Seas, possibly better known to western audiences under the alternate title of The Bod Squad, a German/Chinese co-production between Constantin Film and The Shaw Brothers directed by Ernst Hofbauer & Huei Chih-Hung, the brains behind trash classics like the Schoolgirl Report series and Bamboo House Of Dolls, The Killer Snakes and The Boxer's Omen respectively. How does this bizarre and unlikely coupling turn out? Pretty much exactly as you'd expect it would - tits and kung fu galore!
The film begins when a crew of Chinese pirates skins an all too real snake and feed the poor bastard's bowels to each of the five foxy prisoners they have stowed in the cargo hold - Donna (Sonja Jeannine), Anna (Diane Drube), Brenda (Gillian Bray), Karen (Tamera Elliot) and Celia (Deborah Ralls). These poor women were, at some point between Europe and Australia, abducted with the intention of being sold into slavery and that's just what's going to happen. When they get off the ship to the mainland, things go from bad to worse as they're forced to learn the Chinese art of making love through some bizarre training montages which involve topless exercising and rocking and back and forth on their stomachs.
Thankfully a kindly woman named Ko Mei Mei (Liu Hui-Ling) takes the girls under her wing and teaches them each a specific martial art technique so that once they're actually auctioned off to the various local perverts, they'll be able to use their skills to escape. Along to help out is Ko Mei Mei's brother, Ko Pao (Yueh Hua - who looks a lot like Jimmy Wang Yu from The One Armed Swordsman here, albeit with both arms), who may or may not find true love before the movie is over. As the girls attempt to make their escape they learn how to spit olive pits into the faces and asses of various bad guys, all of whom are intent on closing in on them and bringing them back to the house where they were being kept in the first place…
Featuring a bizarre mix of humor, sex and action Virgins Of The Seven Seas is a ridiculously entertaining picture, with the emphasis on ridiculous. It moves along at a great pace and is never dull but is rather impossible to take too seriously (though it's obvious that we're not really intended to in the first place). Random moments and characters pop up throughout the film and add very little to the story except for upping the oddity factor. Case in point, a man who has a darkened nose and rat's teeth who looks very much like a rodent who is willing to get into a bidding war for the one buck toothed girl up for auction, seeing her as a kindred spirit of sorts, or the random and prolonged scene in which our five foxy females get naked and decide to frolic in the surf along the coast, knowing full well that the bad guys looking for them aren't far away at all. This is a film not all too concerned with realism or, for that matter, common sense of any kind.
The whole thing plays like a quirky mish-mash of the Bavarian sex comedies popular in the Germany of the sixties and seventies and a typical Shaw Brothers period martial arts film. Some of the sets look a little bit familiar and the Morricone-esque musical cues might provide attentive viewers with a sense of déjí -vu but this is all part of the film's fucked up charm.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Virgins Of The Seven Seas is presented in a nice 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen progressive scan presentation that looks to have been culled from some pretty decent film elements. There's a little bit of color fading evident as the feature plays out but skin tones generally look nice and lifelike, never too pink or too orange. Detail is as strong as you might hope for, though some of the darker scenes lose a bit in the grain structure. Minor print damage can be spotted throughout but overall the picture is a good one showing only tiny bits of debris. The picture is generally very film like and natural looking, devoid of any noise reduction tactics, mpeg compression artifacts or pesky edge enhancement.
The only audio option on the disc is a German language Dolby Digital Mono track that comes with optional subtitles available in English only. There aren't any problems to report here, as the levels are well balanced and the dialogue perfectly audible. There are no issues with an inordinate amount of hiss or distortion even if you might pick up the odd pop here and there if you listen really carefully. Overall the audio is fine and the removable white English subtitles clean, clear, easy to read and free of any typographical errors. Seeing the film in German somehow makes it all the more surreal.
There aren't a ton of extras on this disc but there's really probably not a whole lot out there to find in the first place so it's impressive, really, that we're seeing anything at all in the supplements department. First up is the Super 8 Version of the film, which is basically a quick little highlights reel, the kind that you'd buy out of a magazine in the seventies. Seeing oddball relics like this preserved for future generations warms this writer's heart and while obviously the full strength feature length version is the one to go for, this is a pretty cool little bonus to have on the disc.
Aside from that, the disc contains the film's original German language theatrical trailer (sans subtitles) that is as baffling as you'd expect it to be, a modest still gallery of promotional artwork and related materials, classy animated menus in both English and German, and chapter selection. The disc itself fits inside a standard keepcase which in turn slips comfortably inside a cardboard housing that features some lovely nipple-slip poster art on the top. Inside the keepcase is a booklet of liner notes from author Christian Kelfer, in English and German as well (a nice touch!), that give some welcome background information on the film as well as some critical analysis.
The Final Word:
About as bonkers as anything else to have the Shaw Brothers' name attached to it, Virgins Of The Seven Seas should be seen to be believed and thanks to the efforts of Camera Obscura, now you can do just that. The transfer is a good one, the audio problem free, and the extras about as plentiful as can be expected for a fringe title like this. It doesn't matter if your interest stems from the Shaw connection, the Hofbauer/Constantin connection, both or neither, if you have any interest in seventies cult cinema, this is one for the record books.
