Porn to be wild

Sabrina Lee peers under the velvet curtain of the seedy Yangtze Theatre to uncover the history of this once-rated- PG cinema 
It was 2pm on a blistering Saturday afternoon when we made our way to Pearl’s Centre along Eu Tong Sen Street, Chinatown. We were to rendezvous with our inside man, Charles Goh, to discover the long-lost background of the infamous Yangtze Theatre. 

At 39, Goh and his brother Raymond, 43, are in the business of bringing up the dead through analytical research. The Goh brothers, who grew up in Chinatown, founded the Asia Paranormal Investigators; as such, they specialise in solving modern-day mysteries by digging up the past. In Chinatown, the Goh brothers led us through a maze of TCM practitioners, shops selling Taoist and Buddhist amulets, and vegetarian eateries, until we finally entered the mouth of Singapore’s original ‘sinema’ – the Yangtze. 

For those too virtuous to know otherwise, the Yangtze is Singapore’s undisputed champ of soft-core porn. Its beginnings, however, are a lot more humble. Construction of the main building began sometime between 1971 and 1976. The Yangtze Theatre itself opened its doors in 1977, with a focus on kung-fu flicks. According to Yangtze usher Mr Tan, 71, the theatre screened some of the best martial-arts films from Hong Kong, including Sam Cheung’s Blind Boxer, Chia Wen Sun’s The Bold Brothers, Kuang-chi Tu’s Crush (all 1972); and Man Yi Yang’s Kung Fu Brothers in the Wild West and The Karate Killer (both 1973).He also said that young Bruce Lee wannabes would pack the cinema after school and during weekends to catch the latest in kung-pow action. Unfortunately, business at Pearl’s Centre dwindled and by 1985, the main commercial floors, including the Yangtze Theatre, shut down. 

The building remained empty for several years; it was only when some subsidiary owners bought the commercial floors between 1985 and 1991 that Pearl’s Centre was revived. According to Tan, an amusement park rolled into the cinema compound, but local government officials deemed the rides unsafe when they realised there was no proper fire escape plan. Fun packed up and left the building. In 1991, the theatre reopened under Malvis Vision Pte Ltd, a movie distribution company. Malvis leased out Yangtze’s halls independently to theatre companies like Shaw, Cathay and Eng Wah to screen the usual PG to G fare. 

But today, the Yangtze is not listed on Shaw’s website. In fact, the only way to find out what’s showing is to call for movie times. As early as 1998, the cinema was listed in Archive.org, a non-profit internet library, as showing ‘quality R(A) films at any one time’. 

So what happened between the earl yand late ’90s? The likeliest answer is that Yangtze became a victim of its environment. Due to competition from bigger and better malls, Pearl’s Centre soon lost its crowds. The Yangtze suffered a worse fate as mega-theatres offering plushier seats, breathable air and cheese hot dogs started sprouting like mushrooms. The Yangtze had to find its own niche in order to survive. And the ‘sex sells’ solution just didn’t fit into Shaw’s stable of period dramas, rom-coms and martial-arts masterpieces. To add insult to injury, Yangtze’s potential patrons fizzled out when the age limit for R(A) films was raised to 21 instead of 18 in March 2004, along with the introduction of new film ratings. And so, it was out with the young boys and in with the grumpy old men. 

While interviewing Tan, we tried to squeeze out some seedy facts about the Yangtze. But we walked away empty handed; either because of his failing memory, or the fact that, at the end of the day, there aren’t any terrifying ghost stories or other juicy tabloid titbits associated with the theatre. But Tan does remember one thing very vividly, and that’s the first movie he saw at Yangtze: Bloody Battle Returns to the Bridge (loosely translated into English), the film screened for the theatre’s 1991 reopening. It starred the undisputed movie queen of Hong Kong in the ’50s, actress Li Li Hua. ‘Until now, it’s still one of my favourite movies,’ he adds. 

So it seems that despite the cinema’s obvious sex appeal, there is also a sense of nostalgia for this relic. And at a time when nearby theatres like the Majestic and Oriental have been converted into shopping malls, at least the Yangtze is still standing tall and playing hard.