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Sex and Zen: Deluxe Collector's Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (13th February 2025). |
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The Film
 Licentious young monk Wei Yang Sheng (New Dragon Gate Inn's Lawrence Ng) is a seducer of women who finds himself in a fortuitous union with Qui Yan (Robotrix's Amy Yip), not only because she is beautiful but because he very much needs the protection of her righteous father - nicknamed “Master Iron Gate” - from many wronged husbands. wei teaches his wife to enjoy sex through the teachings of the “Carnal Prayer Mat” a book banned because of its graphical depictions of sexual positions and the notion of sex as pleasure. When he travels far from home, ostensibly to study but screw around away from his watchful eyes of his father-in-law, he enlists “flying thief” Sei Khunlun (Five Fingers of Death's Lo Lieh) - so principled that he returns stolen money with interest - to get him into the bedrooms of wives under the noses of their husbands. When Wei fails to measure up to the endowment and stamina of the draper (The Eternal Evil of Asia's Elvis Tsui) they witness taking out his anger sexually on his pretty wife (Mari Ayukawa), Sei tells him to come back when he has a dick the size of a horse. Wei gets just that after he meets doctor Tian Chao Zi (Dr. Lamb's Kent Cheng) whose family have specialized in limb transplantation for generations with Tian focusing on perfecting the transplant of animal sexual organs onto humans. After Wei seduces and abandons the draper’s wife, he sets his sites on noblewoman Rhu Zui (Hot Desire's Isabelle Chow) while her husband is away - having promised to wear custom-tailored prophylactics to avoid bringing home the clap again - but her possessive widowed lesbian cousin Hua Chen (Dream Lovers' Rena Murakami) has other plans for both lovers. Meanwhile, Qui Yan has grown sexually-frustrated in her husband’s absence and turned her attentions from learning calligraphy with a brush stuck in her nether regions to the hunky gardener who used to be a draper, leading to tragedy when a set of contrivances reunite husband and wife. A big budget, visually-striking answer by Golden Harvest to the Category III competition, Sex and Zen - from the novel by Yu Li, previously adapted just four years before in 1987 - is frequently explicit in its acrobatic couplings like ancient Asian erotic drawings come to life as photographed by Just Jaeckin (Gwendoline); however it is no more sex-positive than its grittier, dirtier ilk with women receiving the brunt of punishment for enjoying sex (even the one who truly “flourishes” under such treatment). The cruder comic elements do raise a chuckle or two but it is obvious director Michael Mak (Butterfly and Sword) put all of his energy into choreographing and visualizing the sex set-pieces set against some vividly colorful period sets as shot by Peter Ngor (Armour of God) and scored by Mak-regular Joseph Chan Wing-Leung (Long Arm of the Law). The film spawned two sequels in 1996 and 1998 ostensibly based on different vignettes of the source novel, as well as a digital 3D effort in 2011. 
Video
Wildly popular in international markets, Sex and Zen was only available stateside via a Tai Seng import of the Hong Kong DVD featuring a gauzy non-anamorphic transfer dating from the laserdisc era. A few years later, Joy Sales put out an English-friendly Region 3 DVD in Hong King using Fortune Star’s remaster. Although a definite improvement over the earlier master, it was unfortunately been upscaled for subsequent Blu-ray releases until 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray which comes from a new 2K restoration which blows everything that came before it out of the water (not that that was hard). Eye-popping primaries remain along with different forms of diffusion from smoke to sheer materials billowing in front of the camera but there is now fine grain (and a little noise) in place of the blocking and smearing of the standard definition masters and previous upscale. As with the Shaw period films, the hairpieces do not hold up well in high definition with unsuccessful blending of the appliances making some characters look like they had a bad spray tan that ends at the hairline. 
Audio
Audio options include the original mono Cantonese and English tracks in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 as well as the DVD-era 5.1 upmixes in lossy DTS 5.1. The English dub sounds new-ish and takes the viewer out of the period more so than the fact that the characters are all speaking English. The Cantonese 2.0 mono track boasts clean post-dubbed dialogue, music, and effects while the 5.1 track is more conservative than the DVD-era 5.1 upmixes of Hong Kong films, giving spread to the score more so than the effects. Optional English subtitles are free of any noticeable errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) who notes that while the film was number fifteen at the box office, it was actually a huge hit, the most well-known Category III film, , made a star of Amy Yip, and cross the boundaries of cult film and art house, being widely-exported and making a million for Golden Harvest alone on its sale to Italy (where its popularity briefly kicked off the importing of other Asian erotic works on video). Djeng provides background on "The Carnal Prayer Mat" or "The Prayer Mat of Flesh" (noting that the Chinese characters for "flesh" and "jade" were similar so the latter was used in the title to make it seem more elegant) which was one of three banned books from earlier eras that were still hard to get in Mainland China (Djeng reveals that while he worked for the Oakland Public Library, visitors from their sister city in China were less interested in the sights than in finding the books in Chinese-American book shops). He also notes that for many Category III was synonymous with pornography and that the combination of production values, comedy, a Penthouse endorsement, and the indirect endorsement of actor Tony Leung (The Lover) who revealed that actress Anita Mui (Miracles) "forced" him and his wife Carina Lau (Days of Being Wild) to go see the film and they were laughing the entire time. He also reveals that higher-profile Chinese actors were reticent to make Category III films but for the financial incentive and some distanced themselves by changing their names in the billing – while others like Elvis Tsui who was one of the first men to do nude scenes became the "King of Category III" – and much of the nudity was done by Japanese A/V actresses and some doubles (including the cinematographer).  The disc also includes the rare bonus of the film's Longer Mandarin version (102:43) – 1080p24 with Mandarin Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono and optional English subtitles – which pretty much looks the same as the main presentation. While this version is longer, it is not more explicit; in fact, it is less so. Pretty much every sex scene is reduced to a few shots just long enough to get the point across – Isabella Chow only plays the flute in her lesbian scene and there is no view of Elvis Tsui's fake member and the acrobatic sex scene consists of some scuffling bare legs across the floor – along with some cutaways to erotic paintings. The additions are largely meaningless scene extensions like Yan admiring Sheng's painting abilities before he pulls out the book of Han erotica (the shot of him pulling out the book starting the scene in the Hong Kong original). It is still a thoughtful addition since we do tend to know more about the Mandarin versions of films featuring additional footage largely due to being exported before editing was fine-tuned (which sometimes went up to the premiere and even after) and less about what got censored in the Mainland China versions. "The Master of (Sex and) Zen" (54:55) is a a new interview with director Mak who reveals that he wanted to direct a more erotic film as far back as 1983 when his film Everlasting Love was screened at Cannes where he met Jaeckin – whose Emmanuelle was a hit in Hong Kong – who asked if he would be interested in directing a script about the Kama Sutra. Unfortunately, Golden Harvest's Raymond Chow was not interested in a co-production deal. Years later when Category III films took off, Mak was "given" the the project and the budget. He recalls traveling to Japan to research what sold and scout Japanese actresses who were less inhibited than Chinese ones. His intention was always to outdo everyone else, combining action choreography and sex, but also "going beyond" the target male audience to something that would have much wider appeal. He also discusses directing the actors in sex scenes, working around Yip's refusal to do any actual nudity by focusing on her facial expressions, the reception of the film, and his opinions of the sequels (he describes the 3D film from 2011 as "garbage"). Ported from the Hong Kong and Australian Blu-rays is an older interview with director Michael Mak (14:04) that covers most of the same ground but also includes an anecdote about running through the budget quickly wasting film trying to warm up the actors and shooting in a temperature-controlled studio. New to this release is "Tempting Your Heart: The Seven Emotions of Amy Yip" (54:01), a rare laserdisc video program of vignettes involving Yip. Like the film, there is a fetishistic fixation on her face with some nudity as she poses while doing monologues about her thoughts on love and marriage, gets undressed by a handmaiden in a suggestively lesbian scene, showers with some other women in army uniforms, tries on scuba gear (but stays dry), and then runs around the woods with the other women with guns and dodging explosions before getting captured and held prisoner in a scene featuring bondage and whipping that still manages to be pretty tame. Extras close out with English opening credits (2:02), English closing credits (1:19), the Hong Kong theatrical trailer (3:16), and a still gallery (7:03). 
Packaging
This first pressing comes in a limited edition rigid slipcase with a double-sided poster and an illustrated booklet by Zoe Smith, Paul Bramhall, and Dylan Cheung (not supplied for review).
Overall
A big budget, visually-striking answer by Golden Harvest to the Category III competition, Sex and Zen is frequently explicit in its acrobatic couplings like ancient Asian erotic drawings come to life
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