'White Slaves of Chinatown' - grindhouse girls!

By Steve D. Stones

If White Slaves of Chinatown doesn’t put you to sleep, nothing will. However, it was successful enough to spawn other films in the so-called “Olga Series” – Madame Olga’s Massage Parlor, Olga’s Girls and Olga’s House of Shame. White Slaves of Chinatown is the first in the series.

Olga’s House of Shame is considered to be the best of the series. Both White Slaves of Chinatown and Olga’s House of Shame include boring voice over narration, similar to the narration in The Creeping Terror. All the films in the series were made in 1964.

White Slaves of Chinatown is full of scenes showing enslaved prostitutes shooting up heroin and undressing in Olga’s slave pits. Olga keeps young women captive to sell them as street prostitutes to keep her drug business of heroin, marijuana and opium going. A number of scenes show the captives being tortured, but with minimal and unconvincing reaction shots from the victims. Olga burns a victim’s breast with a cigarette. Another victim is tortured with her hand pressed in a table vice.

One of the enslaved prostitutes becomes pregnant. Producer George Weiss, who produced Ed Wood’s sex change epic - Glen or Glenda, plays the doctor who performs the off camera abortion.

The opening montage of newspaper headlines is borrowed from an earlier exploitation film – The Devil’s Sleep (1951).

White Slaves of Chinatown is sold at Something Weird Video in Seattle, Washington as part of Frank Henenlotter’s “Sexy Shockers From The Vault.” Henenlotter is a B-movie, exploitation expert employed by Something Weird Video, and director of such cult classics as – Basket Case, Brain Damage and Frankenhooker.

Eli Roth, director of Hostel, and other directors of the “torture porn” genre are greatly indebted to the Olga series of the 60s. Happy viewing of this grindhouse classic!