Reviewed by: ewaffle Date: 07/25/2009 “Water Margin: Heroes Sex Stories” is an uneven mock documentary in three parts. It has a couple of old pros doing their typical acts, brief appearances by two stars and tongue in cheek narration by its producer. The first part is a tale of revenge full of sexual assault and gore. Madam Sun is a lovely young bride who lives with her husband in the countryside, happily keeping house for him while he searches the surrounding area for unusual plants which he uses in special formulas to make, among other things, brilliant dyes. She works alongside her husband, Cheung Ching, the saddest of sad sacks who is unable to keep up with her all but insatiable sexual demands/desires even with the male enhancement herbs he finds. Cheung Ching is forced to watch while his wife is raped by several bandits, is beaten and his genitals crushed becoming impotent as a result. Their relationship is sorely tested by this horrify attack but somehow survives. They move to a nearby town where we find them running a restaurant specializing in meat buns. They aren't very successful, often without enough cash on hand to buy meat for the next day and still haunted by their ordeal. The husband, always carefully attuned to his wife's needs and very handy with tools, builds an ingenious machine that she uses to bring herself to orgasm--apparently several times per day--while he is forced to listen to her moans and agonizingly reflect on what might have been. The restaurant business is on the edge of insolvency when who should show up as customers but the bandits who all but destroyed the couple's bucolic life in the past. So we have a group of disgusting louts who deserve to die, their victims who are unrecognized by the louts and with the right combination of skills to not only kill them but to do so in a fitting and satisfying fashion. She is a terrific cook, very handy with knives and cleavers among other tools of her trade while he is a chemist, able to concoct powerful pharmaceuticals from material he has at hand. The result is retribution for the crime victims, an ironic (and a bit disgusting) cure for the husband's impotence and a large supply of meat for the buns at no cost. Organs and large sections of muscle fly from the suspended corpses of the bandits as Madame Sun hacks away in a frenzy of vengeance fueled rage--while it might be more appropriate for the bandits to be merely paralyzed but conscious as they are cut to pieces this is still a fitting end for them and leads to a successful if not what might be termed "happy" ending. This section of the movie is well done. The action hurtles along with no exposition or recapitulation of what happened in the past--the director follows the dictum "don't tell, show" perfectly. Things come to a dead stop a few times so that the audience may watch Natsuki Ayano do a credible imitation of a woman having sex. The scenes of both the initial rape by the bandits and their subsequent death and Madame Sun's cathartic chopping of their hanging bodies are appropriately brutal. In the second tale, Yin Ching is the son of a wealthy family, good at nothing but seducing women--he becomes interested Ann who returns his affection (at least to the extent of going topless while they stimulate each other through layers of clothing) but then becomes cool to his advances. He discovers why when he spies on her with the daughter of a senior official, played by Teresa Mak--whose presence is the only reason I bothered with this movie. Her character (who I will refer to as Teresa since she isn't credited with a name other than "daughter of senior official") is not one to be trifled with. When Yin Ching sees the two of them together in a leafy alcove he grabs Ann to take her away. Teresa, quick and deadly as a cobra, slashes him across the chest with a knife she has concealed in the folds of her bodice. She then underlines his humiliation by slapping Yin Ching, telling him Ann will never marry him and brandishing her dagger when he moves to unsheathe his sword. To make matters even worse the whole thing is witnessed by an older man who tells Yin Ching that Teresa's father is too important for her to be interfered with. He spies on Teresa and Ann in the same lavish room where he formerly dallied with Ann, and should have realized than that Ann was not the girl for him since all he offered was some almost fully clothed mutual frottage while with Teresa she enjoyed food based S&M, crawling around while Teresa rubbed a banana on her naked body, then sitting up only to be kicked to the floor. It was a very labored and extremely unsexy scene and for those wondering Teresa Mak was fully clothed--real fully-- for every second she was onscreen. Yin Ching then decides to leave and find a kung fu master who will teach him enough to win back Ann. This may be the lamest reason ever given for the hero of a Hong Kong movie for his journey of discovery and discipleship to a virtuoso--so he can beat up a knife-wielding lesbian. Not exactly the heroic stuff we expect: no slaughtered family to avenge, no evil dynasty to overthrow, not even a gang terrorizing the town to defeat. But it works here. While on the way he encounters a beautiful woman being accosted by four toughs. Yin Ching shoots each of them with a bolt from his mini-crossbow, wounding them badly and leaving their bleeding carcasses where they fell. He takes the woman to a doctor who tells him that she has amnesia and has forgotten everything up to that point but when cured will recall her former life but forget everything that happened between the time of her trauma and the moment of her recovery. Seeing a chance for an easy conquest Yin Ching decides to care for the woman, taking some medicine with him. The last portion of this segment is various shots of the actress playing the woman with amnesia--who turns out to be a famous courtesan—naked and writhing on a bed of straw.. It is as good a use of celluloid as any—this actress has a lush body with lovely breasts, exquisite legs and perfect skin. The last segment is the story of Lee Kwai, the Black Whirlwind. It has a typical story/structure with fat, clumsy woodcutter Li Si trying to find his hero Lee Kwai and being mistaken for him. The local weapon maker gives him two axes, inscribed for Li Kwai, to deliver to the great man. Seeing the personalized axes (and ignoring the extra 50 pounds or so that Li Si is carrying, the townspeople hail him as the warrior bandit. Everything he wants is available and free since the grateful citizens give him gifts of food, clothing and wine as he walks through the market street. There is also a beautiful young woman who has a horrible secret that Li Si discovers much too late. Lee Kwai gets word of an imposter in town and is not amused. Returning from his bandit stronghold to confront the ersatz axeman he is set upon by his enemies who have been forewarned by an embittered former member of his band. Surrounded by uniformed and well disciplined armed men--the police, army or some representatives of the law, he fights his way through the first ambush but is badly wounded and takes refuge in an abandoned temple. Here he meets Li Si who ultimately proves himself a hero. "Water Margin: Heroes' Stories has little to recommend it. Teresa Mak is onscreen for three scenes and while she looks dangerous and delectable while wielding a dagger she is not the focus of the segment in which she appears. In his segment Elvis Tsui looks menacing and swings his axes credibly but only for about ten minutes. The pornographic sequences feature attractive actresses and are well shot and lit but would have fit just as well in a softcore flick from decades earlier. Greenstreet Kan introduced the segments beginning on camera and then as a voice-over narrator during the first scene of each one. Si Gaai-Keung is an accomplished comic actor but is given little to do other than act confused. Reviewer Score: 3

Reviewed by: ryan Date: 11/21/1999 Summary: Water Margin: Heroes' Sex Stories (1999) Have you thought about that there are lots of untold stories behind the famous Chinese classic novel? Properly you may heard that some of them. If you haven't heard about it? 'Water Margin -- Heroes Sex Stories' is one of them. The main selling point of 'Water Margin -- Heroes Sex Stories' is about the sexy girls from Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In fact, the whole movie is divided into three parts talking about three of the 108 heroes in Water margin, hosted by Greenstreet KAN Yi-ching. The first story is about Man-meat dumpling lady SUEN Yee-lang is a women with huge sex demand while her husband (JIM Bing-hey) tried to get machines to satisfy her needs. Unfortunately, his Dick cannot work after being 'robbed' by a gang. SUEN seems to be a bit boring. Finally they find a way -- Killing baddies and feed up the dead bodies with a machine to make the Dick erect for making love. The second story is about young boy YIN Ching who has no intention to study his real Kung Fu but inducing Kung Fu. He leave from his families to live alone after his girl was fallen in love with a Tom Boy. However, through out the days outside, he found another girl to satisfy his sexual needs. The third story is about a guy LEE Sai who looks like 'Black Storm' LEE Kwai (Elvis TSUI Kam-kong) and tried to forge LEE Kwai's identity to take sexual advantage in the village. In terms of joy, I think KAN Yi-ching has done a good done to make the movie much more interesting. The second and the third story is just typical but KAN can present in a way that sounds okay. Dialogue like 'In the past, when you need sex, you can't go for prositutes easily and it's good to have a girl like an EPS for your sex.' This make the whole movie much more fun. For the first story, I think they have present it in a way that is very funny. Uning others' Dick for better sex life is also out of our imagination. At least I think they have put up some efforts in presenting the stuff to make it fun. One thing that you may note is that 'Water Margin -- Heroes Sex stories' features with Elvis TSUI Kam-kong. If you expect to have love scene with Elvis, you'll be totally disappointed as he appeared at the last 2 minutes of the movie in a decent manner. All in all, 'Water Margin -- Heroes Sex Stories' is a funny movie. Though the second and the third stories are very typical and quite boring, the first story is very funny. Together with KAN Yi-ching's outstanding hosting, it seems to be not a bad choice if you look for such genre.