... aka: 怪屍
... aka: Goesi
... aka: Grotesque Corpse
... aka: Guai shi
... aka: Koesi
... aka: Monster
... aka: Monstrous Corpse, A
... aka: Strange Dead Bodies
Directed by:
Beom-gu Kang
Supposedly South Korea's very first zombie movie, this borrows so much from Jorge Grau's No profanar el sueño de los muertos / LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (1974) that it's a virtual remake of that minor classic. This is also set in the country, has essentially the same plot about using sound waves to tamper with an ecosystem with disastrous results, the same exact central characters and even exactly replicates most of that film's scenes, right down to certain zombie designs. Pampered city gal Su-ji Yu (Gwang-ok Yu), who's just spent five years in the U. S., arrives at the airport in Korea, gets a rental car and heads out into the country. Her destination is Suri village, where she plans on visiting with her estranged older sister, Hyeon-ji (Yun-jeong Hong), who moved out there a few years earlier with her photographer husband, Yeong-tae Jeong (Wang Kuk Kim). Getting lost on the back roads, she offers to give a ride to Taiwanese professor / scientist Myeong Kang (Ming Chiang), who's there to attend an environmental conservation conference in the mountains near the village. Su-ji proves to be so squeamish that she shrieks at the mere sight of a fuzzy caterpillar on his sleeve but she'll have a lot more to actually shriek about here shortly.
The two pull over to get their bearings and Myeong wanders off; eventually stumbling upon a small team of researchers led by American Doctor Steve. He recognizes one of the scientists, Jun-su, as one of his former students. Initially concerned they're polluting, the scientists put Myeong's mind at ease when they inform him that they're merely experimenting with ultrasonic waves to see how effective they are at eliminating harmful insects from the area. While Su-ji is waiting by the car, she's attacked by a gray-haired man dressed in black, who is eventually revealed to be the village drunk, Yong-dol (Song Baek). The issue? Well, he supposedly drowned to death two days earlier and really shouldn't be out walking around.
Su-ji eventually makes it to her sister's home to find her in hysterics. She too has had a run-in with Yong-dol, who was just chasing her around when they arrived. Soon after, her husband, who'd gone out to photograph plants near a stream, is found dead. A bald police chief (Am Park) and his assistant, Detective Jee (Chan-il Sin), show up to investigate. They grill Hyeon-ji, who was in an unhappy marriage, has a long history of mental illness and refused to be admitted to an asylum when her husband tried to have her institutionalized, as well Myeong, which is kind of idiotic considering he was with Su-ji the entire time and didn't even arrive until after he was killed. With no evidence, the investigators are forced to led everyone go. Before they do, Myeong swipes a roll of the victim's film off the desk and takes it to get it developed.
A female doctor (Pauline Yuk-Wan Wong, who'd later have some success in Hong Kong ghost comedies) reveals that there have been a rash of recent deaths to premature babies and insists on going to the research site to ask questions. Meanwhile, the skeptical Myeong becomes a believer when he and Su-ji visit a cemetery and are attacked by four zombies, who have to be taken down with fire. A detective gets killed there while trailing them, which gets them into even further doo doo with the main investigator, who becomes convinced our heroes are responsible. It isn't until the kilometer radius at the research site is extended and corpses start attacking at a nearby hospital that he and the officers comprehend what's going on.
While not completely worthless, this is still a far cry from Grau's film in nearly every conceivable way. The only noticeable improvements are the casting of Ming Chiang, who makes for a far more likable protagonist than Ray Lovelock, and the portrayal of the hateful main investigator character (played by Arthur Kennedy in the original), who's a little less annoying here. Other than that, this simply fails to measure up. For starters, as a remake that replicates most of its scenes to lesser effect and offers nothing new, this gets docked points right out of the gate. And then there's the fact it's entirely gore-free and it doesn't have near the quality of make-up effects. While the living dead in Grau's film weren't given an elaborate make-up job or anything, they still did at least look like corpses. To try to make up for that here, they apply the same technique used in many Asian ghost movies from the period: lighting the faces with blue and red. Contact lenses are also sometimes used. I personally don't mind the simpler look, but the zombies certainly looked scarier and more threatening in LSCL.
Though there's a serviceable synth, it's not nearly as effective as the inventive score from the original film. The editing is also pretty wonky at times too, with the hospital bloodbath climax of the original reduced to a bunch of cut-aways. I'm not sure if what I watched was a censored version or if the uncut version is the same way. It ran 84 minutes, nearly all of the murders are off-screen (all we get to see are a few people getting strangled and some crackling noises to imply their bones are being crushed), there's hardly a drop of blood and it quickly moves to something else any time there's a chance that something violent or gory might occur. Not that a film necessarily needs blood and gore to be effective, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt this particular movie any.
There was a VHS release in South Korea on the Oasis Video label and I believe this also may have been hawked by mail order bootleggers Video Search of Miami at one point under the Strange Dead Bodies title, yet it remained very difficult to see until just last month when a somewhat restored version was issued by the Korean Film Archive. While this new print is in widescreen and perfectly watchable, it still features a lot of damage, fading and is in desperate need of lightening for the night scenes and color correction (there's often a reddish tint) for many of the day scenes.
Hopefully KFA can get some other older Korean genre films out there because most of these were never released outside of the country and many were barely even released on the Korean home video market in the 80s so they are even incredibly difficult to find there.
★★
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