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Sex: The Annabel Chong Story

Sex: The Annabel Chong Story

Released Jan 01st, 2003
Running Time 86
Director Gough Lewis
Company Greycat Releasing
Distribution Company Coffeehouse Films
Cast Dick Nasty, Donna Warner, Israel Gonzales, Chi Chi LaRue, Ona Zee, Allenina, Michael J. Cox (2002), Annabel Chong, John Bowen, Others, Jasmin St. Claire, Ron Jeremy
Critical Rating Not Yet Rated
Genre Alternative

Rating


Reviews

Annabel Chong spent 10 hours having sex with 251 men one day in January, 1995. Fears of HIV polarized the adult industry; battle lines were drawn, questions were cast after the fact about tests and condoms, and Chong was the eye of the hurricane.

Who was this girl? This documentary never quite penetrates that deeply. We do find out that Chong started as a personality construct of 22-year-old Grace Quek, a USC undergrad with middle-class Singapore roots. She attended Cambridge University and worked as an artist's model in London before heading to the States.

Intellectually gifted, Quek's also a bit... different. She moved to America because, she tells the camera, "I had this weird notion that if Armageddon hit the world it was gonna start in L.A."

And if it wasn't gonna start, Quek would just have to give it a push.

How she did so isn't clear: she tells a classmate she entered porn because she was "pissed off in a feminist theory class" while her fan club receives a sexier version: she was "bored with fucking with everyone on campus."

When Quek met director John Bowen, Annabel Chong poked her newborn ass into the light — just in time for a triple penetration scene.

Bowen's talent creating a stir and Chong's desire to "shake things up" seems a frightening combination, ultimately culminating in The World's Biggest Gangbang. Chong's closest friend, Alan (now trannie performer Allenina) notes he was concerned about the risk of HIV the 'bang might incur.

"Apparently in society today they see something morally degenerate about someone willing to take that risk... I believe that sex is good enough to die for," a defiant Chong counters. Yeah, but for these guys?

(Those looking for titillation won't find it in the big 'bang — it's shown in fits and starts, more to prove a guideline than anything else.)

Industry insiders offer amusing reactions to Chong's blatant snub of their status quo. Michael J. Cox insists Chong's "making porn look sleazy" and Ona Zee's snotty "... I make film noirs...," are hilarious. God bless the drag queen who's got her own sense of humor: Chi Chi LaRue goes for intentional laughs with, "You gotta love her for taking that many dicks! Go, girl!"

Chong's been trying to present herself as a gender gladiator, but now her rhetoric is disjointed; she drags heavily on her cigarettes. "I'm at the age where I believe that I can change something," she tries to explain; seconds later she whispers, "I'd like to think so," and Quek surfaces for a moment, fighting back tears.

Ultimately, it's Bowen who screws her the hardest, never paying her $10,000 fee. Director Gough Lewis' often-manipulative editing shows Chong on a downslide: Her misguided sense of adventure makes her a pariah in America, a smutty joke in England and the moral equivalent of a threat to national security in Singapore. And those 251 guys (one of them cut her vagina with his fingernails; she did the last — Ron Jeremy — screaming in pain) didn't turn the tables on the patriarchy, as planned.

Chong's "comeback" vid with Elegant Angel will have her Gangbang Queen title as a marketing point. Quek wisely shuts up while bitchy Chong negotiates. She and director Rob Black dickerover her fee (using the late Israel Gonzales as their go-between) in an exchange that's more entertaining than the scene itself. Black's "I want at least some fuckin' fist and piss," is only topped by Chong's "I'll piss on anybody's face, I'll shove my hand up anybody's butt; tell fuckin' Rob Black it'll be the world's greatest scene because I am Annabel Chong!"

But Quek isn't. She's a confused kid whose ritzy education hasn't protected her from porn's bottom-feeders; she's shunned and nearly forgotten as Jasmin St. Claire beats her gangbang record a year later. Quek's feminist warrior persona crumbles as she reveals she'd been gang-raped in London. She's a cutter, slashing her arm with a dull knife ("Sometimes there's a pain inside you can't let out because you're so numb; because life leaves you so numb. You've just gotta feel something."). And, visiting her parents in Singapore, she learns a "good citizen" has informed her mom about her movies. Their confrontation is heartbreaking — Mrs. Quek speaks (subtitled) of "regaining dignity" while Quek sobs, begging for forgiveness.

Eventually, Quek returns to Los Angeles, graduates from USC and returns to porn. Recalling her classic negotiation with Black one year later, she muses, "Today I was thinking — am I Annabel Chong? Have I once and for all lost my balls?"

Not even one of 'em, hon.



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