Product Details

• Actors: Annabel Chong, John T. Bone, Ed Powers, Dr. Walter Williams, Charles Conn (II)
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Strand Home Video
• VHS Release Date: December 3, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000077VTL
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,840 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fasinating porn star -- bad (ex-boyfriend) director, May 9, 2003

By 

errorfound482 "errorfound482" (Walla, walla Washington) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sex - The Annabel Chong Story (DVD)

There's no denying that the life of Annabel Chong is fascinating to observe -- from her life as a feminist scholar to porn-star celebrity to nothing and back to porn-star celebrity.

Unfortunately, with such great material the filmmaker doesn't do a good job. First of all, this documentary is just like an Annabel Chong Home Video collection done by the ex-boyfriend (which is what the director was). It follows all her through her daily and not-so-daily life and nothing more.

Never does the filmmaker ever ask "Why?" Why does she do this? How has her past trauma (being gang-raped) affect her (it barely even acknowledges the rape)? Why does she go back to porn after promising her humiliated parents to make it up to them? It just lazily notes these things and moves on to her going around and doing her daily tasks.

Worse, at times it misrepresents Chong. There's one scene where Chong is cutting herself without explanation. Wow. Screwy, right? Except in the BONUS MATERIAL, you learn that that's the scene when the director breaks up with her and SUGGESTS they take turns doing cutting themselves and films it.

The filmmaker may be incompetent but that's not to say the DVD isn't interesting. With a life as... complicated... as Chong's it's hard to make it boring. The most moving part is when she moves back with her parents in Singapore and they discover from strangers her secret life has having being the center of the world's biggest gang-bang.

So the documentary is worth the viewing, but don't have your expectations up there and you'll be fine. Also be forewarned: they do show clips of Annabel Chong uncensored.

42 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Annabel Chong Story is a sad one, November 30, 2002

By 

David Thomson "Second Rate Eric Hoffer Imitator" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sex: Annabel Chong Story [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I originally viewed this movie in a theater catering to the liberal elite of Houston. It is very fair to suspect that few in the audience were of a fundamentalist religious persuasion. Nonetheless, the consensus opinion of these viewers after the movie were of utter disgust and pity for the pathetic Ms. Chong. This documentary follows Annabel Chong around as she allows others to belittle and take advantage of her. She claims to be a champion of sexual freedom and female rights, but this is not in the least bit convincing. Never for a moment do we take seriously her pseudo-intellectual rants. Chong's low self esteem is readily apparent. Annabel aims to please and personal degradation is a price that she is more than willing to pay. The porno film makers don't hesitate to cheat her out of money and are carelessly indifferent whether she contracts a venereal disease. I am utterly convinced that if this were a work of fiction the audience might be tempted to conclude that the story line is a bit over the top. In this particular case, true life is much more compelling than make believe.

Many of Chong's friends wish to be nonjudgmental and pretend that she is doing nothing out of the ordinary. Try as they may, these individuals fail to carry it off. A most telling scene is where Chong tells a platonic male friend that she is a porno movie star and has had sex with hundreds of men. The young man initially seems to think that Chong is pulling his leg. We then observe his horror as he realizes that Annabel is not joking. Eventually Chong's parents learn of her exploits and are rightfully shocked and appalled. This film is not easy to watch. Are you looking for erotic titillation? If so, you will want to avoid The Annabel Chong Story. This documentary may inadvertently present the best case against pornography ever presented to the general public. Is pornography a victimless activity? Even those espousing a very libertarian philosophy will have a hard time answering this question in the negative. The Annabel Chong Story is ceaselessly sexually explicit and definitely not for the faint of heart. Almost certainly, this is the only reason why it didn't receive an Academy Award nomination. It is well worth a few hours investment of your time. Paul Schrader's recently released Auto Focus should also be on the top your list. The latter film indirectly deals with the consumers of Annabel Chong's dubious talents.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars drawn in despite all, April 7, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Sex - The Annabel Chong Story (DVD)

Part of what makes this a decent documentary is that there is no certainty about the filmmakers biases--not to me, at least. At times I think he admires her, at others, I think he despises her, and I am never entirely sure.

And so, absent a forceful guide, a viewer will view this film through her own theoretical and experiential lenses. A young porn fan might find it light and fun. My view is my own, filtered through my mind, my education, my experiences.

Seen through that lens, the film took me on an interesting journey. Ms Chong's putative reasons for her choice to be a porn star seem, at first, convincing. Yes, it would be a wonderful thing if women in our society were to take control of their own sexuality and celebrate it. No, women should not feel shame about being very lustful or sexually active. Indeed, some religious traditions other than the ones Westerners know do celebrate sex as way to mystical union with the All. Good thoughts, every one.

As the film progresses, however, it became obvious to me that while Ms Chong may talk the talk (though always fumblingly), what she is walking is not the walk, but a hike through hell. Drug use, painful shyness, an inability to maintain eye contact with anyone, subjecting herself to an orgy with the ugliest collection of losers ever to appear naked on screen, financial exploitation at the hands of the sleazes who film her, empty relationships with personality disordered others, lying to and (unconsciously?) intentionally hurting her mother, the only person in her life who actually does seem to love her, the self-mutilation scene.... gah! By the end I felt I had sat through a session in a "Treating Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse" seminar (and I'd not be surprised to find this film is used in that milieu).

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing--or at least, in this case, an embarrassing thing. Chong's education (not a hearty recommendation for USC, this film, nor is their unctuous professor who appears several times) has taught her a few feminist phrases and a pat Marxist deconstruction or two which she parrots badly while she desperately tries to act out her skewed MTV vision of a liberated woman. "I'll do [this and that]," she says in one possibly scripted scene, describing degrading sex acts, "if I like the girl" (apparently loathing the men who sodomize her is just peachy with her) "but I'M ANNABEL CHONG and I want at LEAST a thousand dollars!" Her actions, at best, contradict her "feminist" and "marxist" rhetoric.

But I'd be simply a coldhearted leftist academic to notice that dissonance without also noticing that no sane person with an ounce of self-respect would take a million dollars, much less argue their way up from 800 to 1000, to do what Chong has just agreed to do. Her rhetoric is either a scam or a self-deceptive lie. Her scream of "I AM" seems a scream from the soul of a lost little girl wanting to believe she exists and matters. That the name she screams is not her own makes her desperation and failure to believe in herself more poignant.

I watch the film as she replicates on herself on a daily basis, horrifically, the buried trauma that must drive every sex worker. The film ends up convincing me that the porn industry is exploitive and evil, populated solely by victims and abusers. It convinces far more powerfully than a year of dogmatic anti-porn lectures ever could. I leave the film feeling some compassion for the woman, some revulsion, but little hope that she'll ever find her way back from her chosen hell.