This is an awesome HK exploitation flick, called Nu ji zhong ying in Hong Kong but known as Bamboo House of Dolls in the USA and Bamboo Women's Prison in Europe. It is set in Southwest China, in 1943, where Japanese soldiers invade a hospital looking for a downed American flyer. They end up rounding up all the nurses, a surprising number of which look American, in a chaotic scene during which there is groping and struggling and the throwing of unwilling nurses over shoulders to be carried out and also coincidentally some baring of legs and bottoms. These World War II era nurses are wearing some remarkably short skirts.

Cut to a prisoner of war camp, the titular Bamboo House of Dolls. It is roll call and there are bare breasts as the women prisoners quickly dress in prison rags (they sleep topless) and run outside. There's a Japanese woman officer who strides out wearing over-the-calf brown boots and a blind Chinese prisoner crawls forward and licks her boots clean. So if you like that sort of thing, there's that. The prisoners all line up outside and the order is given to "Bring her out!" An exhausted woman prisoner is dragged out of a "hot box" and manacled between two posts. She is in a short one-piece shift that is torn down the front. There is some really inventive camera work as we focus on a close-up of her sweat covered breast and nipple, then the camera focus shifts into the distance and we see the woman Japanese officer glaring sideways at the prisoner. That focus shift was kind of cool, and an artistic bit of cinematography I was not expecting.

The prisoner is stripped. The woman Japanese officer runs her hand along her bare arm. She selects a fellow prisoner to whip the manacled prisoner to death. And we see that, brutal Japanese orders to the contrary, the prisoner was not stripped but just made topless. I admit "Make her topless!" sounds less menacing than "Strip her!" so I understand the literary license the filmmakers took. But totally naked = hotter scene. She is whipped. She jerks and writhes nicely, but her cries don't do justice to the pain she is supposed to be feeling. The prisoner whipping her cannot continue, so another prisoner is selected to continue the whipping. When she hesitates, she is whipped as well to prompt her cooperation. So double the whipping. The whipping continues until the prisoner is hanging limply by her manacled wrists, apparently dead. The prisoner who whipped her to death is overcome by guilt and flees, trying to escape by climbing the wall but when she reaches the wire at the top she is electrocuted in a nice jerky-fireworks-smoke-and-small-fire scene. The whipping scene was just okay. There are several more pictures in the GIMP Whipping Scenes Database.

There's some uninspiring day-to-day "life in the Bamboo Cage" scenes during which we are introduced to the characters. There's a food fight/cat fight in the dining hall that involves hair-pulling and turning other prisoners upside down so their prison garments fall down around their heads and we see more panties and bare breasts. There's head dunking in pails of water. The Japanese overlords are displeased and pick out a few of the prisoners to grope and leer at menacingly, and it turns out what they've just done is selected their sex toys for the evening. No GIMP-ness.

Cut to a sadistic Japanese soldier guarding the boot-licking blind girl. He is amusing himself by throwing glass onto the floor of her cell and then poking and prodding her with his sword to get her to dance around on the broken glass, cutting her feet and eliciting (fairly lame sounding) screams and cries. Finally, overcome by his sadistic lust, he attacks her, tears her clothes, throws her down onto the glass-covered floor, and we cut away but I'm 99 and 44/100ths percent sure that rape followed. Low GIMP.

Cut to a Japanese officer out of uniform standing in front of an oriental prisoner. He anxiously tears open her shirt and kisses her neck. She is wholly unresponsive to his advances. He works his way down to her breasts. She just stands there, looking straight ahead. He pushes her back on the floor and kisses and gropes her. She just kind of lays there. He gets annoyed at her unresponsiveness and slaps her, retreating to a chair to smoke a cigarette. I think we can all sympathize with his plight.

Next, we see another prisoner laying on a mattress on the floor, completely nude. (This the the first completely nude scene of the movie, by the way.) She is kind of writhing. Behind her, a Japanese officer is doing push-ups, and I guess we're supposed to think his physical exertion is turning her on. Or something. The camera goes to her face (she is an American prisoner) and extra slowly pans down her body. She has great breasts but kind of small nipples. Her leg is raised so we don't know if she has 70s bush but I'm betting she does. This was the 70s, after all. Suddenly they are having sex. Then there's an alarm and the guy runs outside. Another guy comes in, I think maybe the cigarette guy, and picks up where the last one left off. My VHS copy is not that good so there may have been some dialogue there I missed that explained the partner-changing. However, it is close enough to consensual sex that the GIMP rating is zero. This gal is just a horny slut.

The next prisoner we see is kicking and fighting and giving two male guards quite the struggle. The Japanese woman officer is sitting placidly nearby. During the struggle, the prisoner's breasts escape captivity from her garment right before we shift to silhouette view in which we watch the soldiers remove her clothes while the Japanese woman officer stands and undresses. They force the prisoner to the floor and we see her long legs flailing up in the air as they remove her panties. She is lamely screaming the whole time. The woman officer takes a strap-on out of an attractive decorative oriental wood-inlaid box and stands looking down at the prisoner as she straps it on.

The prisoner, who is being held down on the floor with her arms above her head by one of the guards, looks up in panic and sees the strap-on and figures it has her name on it. She screams again and struggles more. She arches her back and turns her head to the side and closes her eyes and does all of the things you really like a victim to do in the face of impending violation. In silhouette view once again, the obviously topless woman officer (with noticeably hard nipples) walks over and mounts the helpless girl. Not in silhouette view, we see the victim throw her head back and cry out as she is being penetrated. She rocks her head from side to side and her body moves slightly as she is being raped.

This is where the scene should have ended. But no. She settles down, closes her eyes, starts to moan, licks her lips and proceeds to enjoy her rape. She arches her head back and we see her bounce slightly as the woman Japanese officer thrusts into her but she appears to be enjoying it. Her feet fly up and shake in orgasm (I guess) and the female officer lifts her into a sitting position, possibly still inside her based on the arrangement of their legs in silhouette view, and they start kissing. They start rocking back and forth. The GIMP meter went from being full-on pegged to being lifeless just like that. Don't you hate when that happens?

Next we go to the pretty blond prisoner (Birte Tove) who seems to kind of be the star. We get off to a rocking start as the Japanese officer completely rips her top down in one swift movement. She runs, holding her torn garment up to cover her breasts while he pursues her around the room. She backs into the bedroom and stumbles and falls onto a futon. He dives toward her but she rolls off to the side. He talks to her soothingly, trying to calm her down much as you would a pet, running his hand over her leg and kissing her until she pushes something into his mouth. (Couldn't tell exactly what.) He rolls back in anger. She gets up and runs away and when he catches her she finally lets go of that top to fight him and her top falls away and we get a nice view of her breasts. He pins her arms behind her back and starts kissing her neck and the scene suddenly ends. WTF?

The next scene begins with a sun rise. (Sun rise, rising sun? Is that supposed to be a clever transition for a Japanese prisoner of war camp? I give them credit for trying.) The four girls are walking back to their dormitory the next morning, one limping painfully, all obviously in the same garments as they were wearing the night before so everyone who sees them knows what they've been up to.

Other plot developments occur and suddenly we are in the midst of a riot, with scantily clad women prisoners wrestling with Japanese soldiers who in real life would just shoot them all. But then we wouldn't get flashes of panties. There's a sit-down where the officers get drunk and have a great time. The Commandant asks for some female entertainment and the blond gal is brought to him. She plays along until she can grab a gun and shoots at him but misses. Then he chases her around with a sword but is interrupted before he can, um, penetrate her.

Then all of a sudden we are in a prisoner's public bath with nude women pouring buckets of water over each other. The camera pans slowly up and down various bathing women's nude bodies. Lots of bare breasts and bare backsides and long legs. No full frontal nudity.

The Japanese woman officer walks in as they are dressing and selects one of the American prisoners. She looks terrified to be singled out, and is led away. The Japanese woman officer undoes the girl's hair and lets it fall around her shoulders. She undoes the girl's dress and strips it down her body and off of her. Then the Japanese woman officer undresses herself and starts pouring water over the prisoner's body and soaps her up. Then they start kissing. Another potential GIMP scene shot to hell.

So then several women prisoners escape. Nothing of consequence happens GIMP-wise until they are surrounded and captured. Then we get them all staked out on the ground all in a row but, sadly, still fully dressed. Their arms are pulled out to the side but their legs are tied together. No close-ups, no real stress or menace. Minimal GIMP but we do have some bondage.

There's a love scene between the pretty blond and some guy. Totally consensual if not enthusiastic. No GIMP.

But then we get a prisoner being held with her feet in some kind of stocks being tortured. Her knees are fastened in one set of stocks and the torturers are stacking blocks of wood under her ankles, forcing her legs up and bending her knees forward (the direction they are not supposed to go). She passes out. Water is splashed on her face.

Cut to a new scene, destined to be the best GIMP scene so far. It is heavy on the red lighting, which is a bit off-putting. Ankles and wrists are being snapped into manacles on a table. A woman's ankles and wrists, as it turns out and she is fully dressed, although her dress is bunched up above her waist so we see her panties and long bare legs. She has a metal cap on her head with ominous wires snaking away from it. We are treated to a long shot of the entire length of her strapped-down body with the Japanese woman officer standing over her, demanding information. The bound babe moves her feet helplessly and her breasts heave in anxiety as the Japanese woman officer turns abruptly and angrily throws a switch. The prisoner screams and jerks and arches her entire body up off the table. What an awesome reaction shot and we get a view from her feet up her deliciously arched form. Then we cut away. Damn. But it was great while it lasted.

Unfortunately, that's it for the good parts. The movie goes on for quite a while longer, what with escapes and chases and killings and so on. But there are no more decent GIMP scenes. (SPOILER ALERT: The pretty blond gets shot and dies.)