When the last cinema designated for showing soft porn films in Hong Kong shut its doors in March, the theatrical distribution of such movies in Hong Kong came to an end. Hong Kong started producing soft porn films in the late- 1970s but production expanded after the introduction of the Film Censorship System in Hong Kong in 1988 The majority of Category III films (aged 18 or above) were made by soft porn distributors. UVD, the first cinema circuit showing only soft porn films was formed around that time with 8-9 cinemas. Pink films from Japan, and soft porn films from Hong Kong and the West were shown.
When the soft porn cinema circuit opened, some films would gross HK$1-2 million — which is more than some more mainstream Hong Kong films have managed in the past few years. As audiences seldom cared about the storylines of the films as they were only interested in the sex, the naming and advertising of those films became important ways to interest the audience. The companies spent a lot hiring freelancers to name and create slogans to sell the films. Amusingly, the film censorship regulations do not allow totally naked girls on lobby cards, so cinema staff had to use marker pens to add black bras and underwear to fulfill the legal requirements.
Running a soft porn cinema circuit is not as easy as one might think, due to the relative high cost of film copies compared to the box office take. UVD tried to lower the cost by showing videos instead of film copies. The format changed from VHS videos to VCDs with the decline of VHS tapes. The lower cost of showing VHS/VCD interested other distributors in distributing soft porn films. During the good times, there were 3-4 pink film circuits, each with around 8-10 cinemas. That’s almost a small-scale foreign film circuit.
The decline of soft porn film distribution in Hong Kong is due to several reasons. Film censorship of pornographic subjects has been tightened over the past decade and that has made distribution more difficult. Less sex means that the films are less attractive to the target audience. In addition, these cinemas had to face competition from porn channels on cable TV, which are more handy and less embarrassing. For those who seek harder pornographic contents, pirated Japanese hardcore porn films on VCD have dominated the market. As a result, it has been difficult to attract a new audience into cinemas for these movies.
To try and prevent losing more of their target audiences, the remaining softcore cinemas introduced a new way of showing movies. Instead of showing one film several times per day, the cinemas started showing one new pink film together with a few old films twice a day. Viewers could stay in the cinema for the whole day for the price of one ticket. This screening schedule is very unique in Hong Kong cinema. It did help the box office for a short period of time.
Like other cinemas in Hong Kong, softcore cinemas had to face the rapid rise of rents. But other cinemas could be re-opened in shopping malls. This was obviously not an option for pink cinemas. A number of softcore cinemas in Hong Kong were forced to close because of protests by the owners of neighboring apartments. The neighbors felt the cinemas smeared the image of the neighborhood.
I visited the last softcore cinema in Hong Kong, the Kwun Chun Theatre, in Jordan on a Saturday afternoon to see what it was like. It was a very small cinema with around 100 seats. Despite the talk of declining audiences, I was surprised to find that it was full. Almost all the audience were males aged 50 or above.
The end of softcore cinemas in Hong Kong brought a big change for the soft porn scene. Even Hong Kong Category III sex films along the lines of Sex and Zen are very rare today.
Ryan Law