THAI ONE ON - NYUK NYUK NYUK







Hor Taew Tak (Haunting Me) (2007) Thailand

Now stop me if you've heard this movie plot before. But there's not much chance of that - unless you've actually seen this movie (and it's unbelievable three sequels). Let's see... we've got two ghosts haunting a building owned by four way way WAY over the top katoey (Thai for 'drag queens') because of, umm, well each one has their own reason - but both are haunting the four plus their young male boarders at the same time.

It's up to the brave men... uh women.. uh, anyway it's up to these four individuals to try by any means necessary to exorcise the two ghosts in order to keep their male toys - umm I mean boarders happy. And I notice you haven't stopped me yet. You'll probably wish you had. I mean really, really wish you had.




We're not talking Patrick Swayze 'Wong Foo' type of katoey either. We're talking over 50, and over the top in attitude, language (what was translated anyway) and dress. Wow. This is not a horror movie by any means although it is labeled as one - think of it as more of a three stooges (plus Shemp) meets ghosts type of movie and you might have something a little closer. 

The four's names are Taew, Mot-dum, Songkram and, for some reason, Cartoon (no I have no idea why). Their problems come when, for some unknown reason, they decide to cover up the deaths of one obese katoey named Pancake (don't ask) who fell, hit his/her head and died. The other is a beautiful girl named Num-Ning but we don't see how she died until later.

Like all foreign movies, how much you get out of it depends a lot on the translation. This was a toughy. The girls didn't speak very clearly to begin with (judging by how their voices sounded slurred) and the translation was really rough ('You can scare me dead!') making a good review of exactly what happened here just about impossible.

Needless to say there are sight gags galore, Scooby Doo-like cartoon sound effects, sped-up chase scenes, and the pissed off ghosts. Pancake, who apparently, uh, rotted a bit before she was found, alternately shows herself 'normal' and 'rotted' depending, and the beautiful girl Num-Ning, although having long hair, was not one of those slimy long black haired girls - she was actually pretty - with glowing green eyes.

If I were to pick a good sight gag it would be toward the beginning. One of the katoey's is in the kitchen preparing food. Num-Ning slides by the window like she's on a smooth track slide. She does this twice, then suddenly appears in the kitchen. No one is there so she looks out the window - the katoey slides by as if on the same slide, telling the 'ghost' to take over in the kitchen. Umm, I guess you had to be there.

The rest is (for them) comic scrambling to find some way to get rid of both ghosts. There are sex jokes, family jokes (a katoey's son is constantly popped on the head for saying 'dad' instead of 'mom'), rape jokes (yes, I know, I didn't think that was appropriate either) and much, much confusion.

After trying 'traditional' Thai methods to exorcise the ghosts which don't work, they decide the only way to get rid of them is to solve the mystery of their deaths (which, if you think about it was what they should have had the police do in the first place...).

And, in the end, Pancake becomes a friend and helps them with their problem with Num-Ning who, after all, only wants justice against the boys who killed her. Simple enough, right? Apparently not - since three more movies follow. Yikes.

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IMPORTANT ADVICE - DIE AMERICAN



Shadows aka Hellgate (2011) Thailand

They should have kept the name Shadows for this one - do you know how many variations of the word Hellgate make up movie titles? Well, neither do I but I know there are quite a few of them. And the main baddie in this story, the tale of the spirits supposedly called 'Asurugai' was nowhere to be found in any wiki or Thai site so whether they just made that crap up or the close captioning misspelled it I dunno - I got a headache and stopped looking.

Accidents happen every second. There's probably not a single one of us who does not know of or love someone they have lost to an auto accident. We go into shock, we grieve, we get depressed, we continue living. Not in Thailand apparently, or so this movie would have us believe. But it takes two Americans in Thailand to tell us this?

A successful man and his family are in Bangkok and there's a horrible traffic accident, which kills the man's (Cary Elwes, looking old and sad) wife and child. He's in a coma for weeks but finally wakes. Funny (funny strange) but he just can't feel anything - he can't cry, he doesn't grieve. And he starts seeing things. In America it's called the five stages of grief. But this American is in Thailand so hey, here it means his 'soul' is split, and it's mostly clinging to the still stuck souls of his wife and child. How freaking depressing.

Because of this he has very little time left - soul travel is on a tight schedule. Like a freaking vampire, he's losing his reflection in the mirror (That means 'soul' why now?) so his hospice nurse, very disappointed that her patient didn't die and now she's stuck with him (just kidding, lighten up) has her aunt try to fix him up - she fails and now they need more powerful help. Well they're in Thailand so they go to... William Hurt. WTH? 

He plays some kind of shaman/surfer bum who's white as a sheet with a neato tat on his neck and lots of wisdom - especially about these things I couldn't find - the ass guys - who are supposed to be feeding on our... ya know, skip it. I think the Thai people should stick to their tradition of laying in coffins to get rid of the bad and let in the good, uh, karma? (they do, I have seen that) and not rely on Americans who think they're Thai people now.

So since Elwes is losing it - he sees dead people (so old I can't even think of a joke) and they can actually hurt him - reluctantly Hurt decides to use some wango-tango on the dude and takes him to some monks who take him further out where there's a 'gate' he's got to go through to pull himself together (sorry, couldn't resist). This is the only redeeming part of the film and that's only because of the beautiful countryside and gorgeous shots you briefly get to enjoy before going back to Elwes fighting Gollum - umm - I mean the ass guys and, uh, heal? Grieve? I dunno.

With the help of his nurse who suddenly is willing to risk her life for him (ick) you have the typical 'fighting your demons' type of scenes that drag until yes, he finds his family (and the rest of him) and we have the prolonged goodbyes. Trust me, I'm not being insensitive to either Thai tradition or people's need to grieve, what I have a problem with is this movie - harping on an overused theme and using Americans in the main roles as the problem and the problem fixer. So, finally, Elwes is whole and he can now cry. And we can breathe a sigh of relief because the movie is over.

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FOREIGN HORROR THAT'S CONFUSING AS HELL






Hak Yae (Black Night) (2006) Hong Kong

I'm starting to scare myself a little bit. Not with movies, but my head - it's starting to 'reject' them. What I mean is, I watch 'em, I write 'em down but lately I then promptly forget them. Usually I can watch several and take my notes and get them on my blog in a couple of days. I just tried this yesterday and today and realized that although I had watched this pair of movies and taken my usual notes I had absolutely no idea what the hell the movies were about. That was Hidden 3D (no loss really) and this one. And this was a good one too. Very confusing, but pretty good.

This is a trilogy of three horror shorts in three different countries with no wrap-around story to connect them. That's okay because they are confusing enough by themselves. For some reason, they all have to do with water, which makes me wonder why they didn't call it Black Water or something, because not one of the stories had anything to do with a black night. But then again, even with some explanation (and I really paid close attention, I promise) I couldn't tell you exactly what it was precisely about. But I'll try because then you won't have to.

Next Door (Hong Kong): For some reason China has a whole month for a ghost festival when you're not supposed to be out at night. What a drag. Jane comes back from a trip and looks for her boyfriend Joe - he's knocking on her neighbor Hosie's door but won't explain why. She keeps seeing a small boy who rolls a marble over to her, but then disappears. Puddles of water keep appearing on her floor and a red eyed woman sneaks up on her then disappears. She doesn't know why. 

Long story short, Joe had been having an affair with Hosie (a lot of chutzpah to sleep with two women who live next to each other). He was playing around with her and, being a cop, playfully puts her in handcuffs but then goes out for condoms (eww) and says he'll be right back - but that's when he ran into Jane. Hosie has the key but drops it. She then remembers she left the tub running (of course) and tried to turn it off with her hands behind her back - duh. She trips on a marble (WTH is with the kid and the marble?) and pulls down the shower curtain and falls into the water and drowns. 

Now this is how they end it so don't yell at me. Jane discovers Hosie's body as Joe discovers them both. To save Jane from the vengeful ghost of Hosie Joe shoots himself. Jane loves him so she handcuffs herself to him (Hosie put them on him) and they both plunge out of the window, splatting on the ground below. But Hosie promised (Ghosts make promises?) that Jane would live so sproing! Jane sits up and smiles. As Hosie. Jane then (as Hosie) proceeds to continue her life and take her place as a model in New York. Spooky. That was sarcasm by the way.

Dark Hole (Japan): Yuki suffers from nightmares. One day, she notices a boy in a yellow outfit appears at her job in an aquarium where before it was only in her dreams. When she approaches him he disappears but dammit, there's that puddle again. What the hell is with puddles of water in the East? Her finance' Satoshi suggests she go to see a psychiatrist. She finally remembers she has a pet who only she can see who lives in water. Ah geez. 

Her doctor tries to convince her she has Dissociative Personality Disorder (I've already said how rare that actually is.) She is herself, and she is her pet, a pet who kills when she gets mad. Duh. But she visits the site her pet lives in and her doctor follows. He is then eaten (rather, sucked out from the inside, actually a pretty neat effect to have the eyeballs explode inward) by her Cthulu type monster. Her fiancee' shows up and tells her she's nuts, she killed the doctor. What she do, eat the eyeballs? He keeps yelling at her - mistake. Gulp. He's gone.

The Lost Memory (Thailand): Prang is a single mother who lives with her young son. She's having a tough time after an accident took away a chunk of her memories. She's bothered by a man who seems to shadow her and her son Sun (sorry, that's his name). She's trying to remember what she's lost as hard as she can but it's really slow (so is this story). She finally remembers she had a best friend. This friend had a boyfriend named Wit. When they broke up, Prang started dating him, and married him and had a son. 

But he went back to her best friend. She gathers up her stuff and her son and drives off. That's all she can remember. Finally she remembers she had a huge fight with her ex-best friend and tries to find her, only to find out (although she knew because, say it with me now, the ghost of her friend soaking wet and LEAVING A DAMN PUDDLE showed up at her house) that she died the day before. She goes home and realizes it's Wit who's been following her around. 

Once home she starts remembering more. Like the accident that caused her amnesia. Her son was not belted in the car and had died - she's been dragging around a ghost all this time. Sigh. He's pissed 'cause she said she'd never leave him and she did so... of course she has to die, right? The father rushes in and pleads with his son not to take her away but he slips on a bar of soap (swear to God) and hits his head on the toilet. She rushes off in his car and... do you really need to know the rest? Bratty little kids alive or dead always get their way I guess. 

The end scene is the happy family at a mental hospital. Wit is rolling his wife around in a wheelchair while Sun walks beside them - of course in reality it's the now insane Wit rolling around an empty chair.



                              

THAI ONE ON

The Screen At Kamchanod 

(Pee Chang Nang) (2007) Thailand

I am just not a big fan of Eastern horror. Not because they don't make good movies, I've seen several I've actually liked. Maybe it's because I don't understand the culture, the movie isn't translated well, or I just don't have the brain power to pay close enough attention to what the movie is trying to say. This is definitely a movie that will require your full attention and even then you probably will get very confused.

This movie starts with what I consider a death knell to horror movies - 'Based On Real Events'. That immediately turns me off and I hope like crazy I haven't run into another hand-held 'found footage' type of garbage. Thankfully this is not like that, but whether any of it could be real is highly doubtful due to the story itself. A major plus is that this film has more spook and scares than all of the Paranormal Activity movies put together which makes for a steady stream of a really unsettling movie. A minus is whomever translated the movie into English did a crappy job, misspelling most of the names (I had to look up the Thai site for the real spelling) and I highly doubt that the dialogue was accurate. However it's still pretty good.

It begins with the statement that in 1987, organizers of a movie screening in the forest of Kamchanod in Thailand discovered that no one showed. But when the film was almost over, a group of people appeared out of nowhere and stood in front of the screen. When the movie ended, they disappeared. Skip ahead 18 years and we have a doctor named Yuth and his wife Orn. Yuth has decided to either debunk this story or prove it - again because of the translation it's not totally clear. What is clear is that he deserves to have his manhood chopped up with a rusty knife. 

Throughout the film it is shown that he has been beating Orn for wanting to leave him and constantly checks on her and threatens her. She even tries to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train but is saved at the last instant. So we're not dealing with a hero of a protagonist. In fact, there's something sinister about nearly everyone involved in Yuth's project.

They find the film and a group of six (including the projectionist) decide to watch it. It is a pretty neat part of the movie - the film itself is in bad shape and we get flashing scenes of a forest and shaky images that cannot be clearly seen. As they watch however in the theater, one by one the other seats fold down as if someone were sitting on them, and hands, faces and hair appear and disappear around them. Much spookier than any slamming door or moving objects in a PA movie. One of the viewers does as I've seen in another Thai horror movie, putting his feet on his seat so no ghosts can grab him.

Seeing the movie just makes Dr. Yuth want to do the 'experiment' all the more, even though now all are being bothered by specters, some really grotesque - some great makeup was used here. Although Dr. Yuth also is affected, he is a jackass and doesn't care what it's doing to the people who he's supposed to love or care about. Even when his 'friend' who watched the movie kills his wife to 'spare' her from the spectres and then kills himself he goes on. 

He tells his wife to take a ripped up document and have it repaired. This was an interesting part of the movie too. I didn't know this kind of thing could be done but watching the process was fascinating. There's also a pretty good scene where Yuth is accosted by an old woman who wants him to 'die in place' of her - after which he is run down by a truck - but not. Again, kind of confusing but good effects. He is unhurt but there is blood all over the street and blood smeared tire tracks lead away from him.

Unfortunately this is where things start to get very confusing. From what I understood, if they recreate what happened 18 years ago, the ghosts are supposed to then leave them alone - but only if they are there. Dr. Yuth, great guy that he is has decided to keep anyone but himself from being there. We get a plot point of an old man who is the only survivor of the first screening who has an amulet that protects him for some reason, and one of the group, a young stoner named Roj steals it from him as Yuth is taking him to the screening - but for his own reasons.

What is real and what is uh, I guess fantasized gets blurred together. In the end Roj, who Yuth planned to kill as he suspects he and his wife are going to run off together, lives because he holds the amulet, the others who are not there are tortured more by ghosts I think - and Yuth finds that he and the others ARE the audience and along with all the others they disappear and the characters are seen fainter and fainter and the film of their life skips and eventually rips. 

The film starts again, but the ending is just as ambiguous and you don't really know quite what they're trying to say and the film rips again and it's over.

Those with more brain power would probably understand this much better than me. Maybe I've been 'ruined' by the dozens of horrible American horror I've been watching. But this is still a very unsettling movie with some really good effects and worth a look.




                              

THAI ONE ON





The Coffin (2008) Thailand

I can't believe I'm starting to miss a good ole' fashioned get a bunch of kids together with no cell phones, have them be rude to the inbred locals and be chased around and killed one by one by some deformed giant wearing overalls. Well, try a couple of the movies I've been watching and you'll be crying out 'Jason, Freddy, Michael come back!' in your sleep too.

With no disrespect intended to any readers who may be of Thai origin, you see I'm just a simple small town girl. I've been to, uh, five states, tops. Well, maybe six. Can't remember. Point being I'm totally ignorant about geography and most people's ways of life. So if this seems bizarre to me, please take that into account.

The coffin ceremony for the living: The basic idea is you get into a cramped little box (their coffins are much smaller and simpler than those you find here) with a bouquet of something tied to your hands and a note, usually a prayer or wish. The point? To throw off any bad karma you may have. The problem? Everybody knows this: What goes around comes around. And it goes...



A huge living coffin ceremony is taking place in Thailand. Not the first, just one of the largest.  For a fee of around 200 Baht (a merit-making donation to the temple) participants lay in the coffin holding flowers. The lid is then shut as the monks chant death rites. 

Just over a minute later as the monks chant about new life, the coffin is opened and the participants are ‘reborn’ leaving behind their bad karma. If, in future years, the participant endures a spell of bad luck or misfortune, they may again opt for the coffin ceremony to bring about a reversal in their luck. 



If all goes as the ceremony intends, whatever your problems were, will be no more. That's the goes around part. I guess they all forget about the 'comes around'... we see two people, separate situations. Because of one man wishing in the coffin for his girlfriend to come out of her coma, his ex-girlfriend (I guess) and her son die in a fire. She then haunts both him and his current girlfriend. A girl has cancer and so wishes for it to be gone - she's cured but her fiance' is killed in a car crash. Aaah, you say - eye for an eye kind of stuff wink wink nudge nudge say no more? And where is the monkey's paw? Isn't that basically what this is?

Yup, but we get to suffer through this Thai soap opera (I wouldn't call this horror) for 81 minutes. These people aren't too swift as to why they're having these problems so it drudges on and on. In perfect English too, huh. But they figure it out, redo the ceremony and hey, great ending: The guy's girlfriend goes back into a coma and dies, and the girl with cancer gets it again and dies too! What an inspiring message!

I stole the following from a travelogue:  It should be pointed out that not all Thai people believe in the power of the coffin ceremony. There are plenty of Thai Buddhists who view it as a bad omen for a living person to lie down in a coffin. 

The ceremony was the inspiration behind the 2008 Thai horror movie, The Coffin which brought the unusual ritual to a wider Asian and international audience. In a much less scary scenario, monks pull a white cloth over the coffins. The ceremony is very quick and as soon as one batch of believers have been ‘reborn’, the next participants are in place. There are nine coffins used with nine being an auspicious number in Thailand.

Whoops, guess filmmakers can insult their own countries all over the world.