Like the stories it homages such as Emmanuelle and The Story of O, this Ozploitation grot spectacular would have fuelled the erotic fantasies of a generation of baby boomer and older Gen X men who had no access to anything more salacious than stashes of Penthouse magazines in brothers' bedrooms or Dad's backyard sheds.

Writer/director John Lamond said at the time he thought setting the story in some of the locales that had come from erotic literature (particularly Emmanuelle) would lend it a sheen of class and taste, and the hedonism of 1970s Hong Kong indeed does – in no small part because Emmanuelle was also the story of a young girl's sexual awakening in Southeast Asian dens of iniquity.

But while it might be high class smut, it's still smut, with every chance to show young starlets and their strapping male suitors in various states of undress explored fully.

Felicity (Glory Annen) is an archetype more than a character, one we've been familiar with from French and Italian cinema for years – an innocent, attractive ingenue with a burgeoning sexual curiosity and no idea of the effect she has on men (on both sides of the screen) who want to deflower her.

She's attending school at a convent, so all the nervous fumblings in the shower and dorm rooms you imagine are firmly present and correct, but Felicity gets the chance to complete her sexual awakening when her absent but wealthy father sends her to Hong Kong to stay with friends of his, people who belong to a small community of libertine expat Australians who eat, drink, spend money and shag for a living.

Their liberal attitudes to sex are as fascinating to Felicity as the delights promised by the act itself, and through them she meets an eclectic cast of characters/caricatures.

One is Me Ling, the prototype of a sexually liberated Asian woman who leads Felicity on any number of erotic adventures. Another is Miles (Chris Milne), another Aussie she meets when he rescues her from what appears to be a sexual assault or kidnapping attempt, and who she falls in love with.

It can't escape the styles of the day, which means extremely ripe dialogue and acting from all concerned (you wouldn't have thought 80s-era Hollywood correspondent John Michael Howson could get any more camp), and it also has the curious expression of cultural cringe where man all have natural accents and the women all sound British so they don't come across as lovable, uncouth ockers like the men do.

It has all the nudity and soft focus cinematography you expect from era-specific soft porn, also doing a surprisingly good job showing the bright lights and shadowy corners in the only experience most Australians had of China in the late 70s.

But for all the cliches it gets two things right that are surprisingly frank and realistic. With the blessing of the woman who's supposed to be watching over her, the underaged girl agrees to go with a suave, persuasive dirtbag from a party she doesn't even know so he can drive her up to a hilltop and bang her across the bonnet, and her first is thus terrible.

Add after falling in love with Miles she comes to the conclusion – after shagging around a bit more on the side – that familiarity has its benefits and it's better with someone you care about.

The most unintentionally funny aspect of the film is that even though they seemed to have the requisite permits and permissions to film in Hong Kong (several location and production services are mentioned in the credits), they went out and just started shooting the lead characters amid throngs of people - everyone else passing by looks at the camera curiously.