Krasue Sao (1973)

... aka: กระสือสาว

... aka: Ghost of Guts Eater

... aka: Krasue Girl

... aka: Will-o'-the-wisp

Directed by:

S. Nawaraj (Sanit Kosaroth)

One of the only fully surviving pre-80s Thai genre films, this has been preserved for posterity thanks to a couple of enterprising men in Sweden who traveled to Thailand right at the dawn of the home video revolution, acquired the rights to a handful of films not released anywhere outside of the country and then issued them to VHS in the early 80s. The original Thai language soundtracks were retained but the films were given new English titles and hard coded Swedish subs. These acquisitions, less than 20 in total, were then distributed through two different labels: HB Video-film Norrköping and Video World. Ghost of Guts Eater was sadly the only horror movie of the lot and the rest appear to be action films. Because the same VHS-sourced copy has been bandied around so much in recent years (the quality is dark / poor but it's surprisingly in widescreen), the most common print you'll now find has American subtitles on top of Swedish subtitles on top of smaller Swedish subtitles!

The film centers around a well-known ghost in Thailand called a krasue. This same ghost has equivalents with different names depending on the Southeast Asian country you're in, but the spirit is usually the same: a detached, flying woman's head with internal organs (heart, stomach and a lump of intestines) dangling beneath that has a taste for flesh and blood, typically that of fetuses and babies. There are dozens of films involving this creature, which are still being made regularly to this day, and this appears to be one of the earliest films of this type.

One of the titular creatures is terrorizing a small village, scaring the bejesus outta everyone and slaughtering chickens. The ghost has taken possession of an old woman named Chim (Sulaleewan Suwanthat, who's also featured prominently in the Italian exploitation classic MAN FROM DEEP RIVER) and, having used up her body for all its worth (one of the unfortunately side effects of such a possession), is about to pass itself onto a new carrier. Thankfully Chim's syrupy sweet granddaughter Bua Klee (Pisamai Wilaisak) happens to be living with her. Prior to passing, Chim gives Bua Klee a ring, but only under the condition she promise to never take it off. She also insists Bua Klee cremate her body immediately and not tell anyone about her "murder." Bua Klee's boyfriend Boon Muang (Sombat Metanee, who passed away this past August) and his best friend Phi Chood (Choomporn Theppitak) happen by their hut just in time to help. They also must help Bua Klee fend off the unwanted advances of the thuggish arse Chatr (Man Teeraphol), who also has romantic designs on her.

Bua Klee (now pregnant) and Muang get married but their wedded bliss doesn't last too long, nor does the newfound peace and quiet in the village. The ring Bua Klee now adorns houses the spirit of her krasue-possessed granny... and she's hungry! Now possessed by the spirit herself, Bua Klee's head occasionally pops off and flies around the village late at night looking for grub. Several villagers i.d. the floating noggin as belonging to her and rumors she's a vampire rapidly spread. An exorcist, Doctor Prasit (Tat Ekathat), is called in to help. He gives the skeptical Muang a "holy rod" and instructs him to beat his wife with it. You'd think this would cause some friction in their marriage, as suddenly whipping your wife without explanation is sometimes known to do, but Bua Klee just brushes it off with a smile: "No matter what, I will forgive you! I love you so much! Please love me long!"

Seeing how the beating does not reveal any kind of evil spirit, Muang goes back to Dr. Prasit and punches him out, which prompts the exorcist to plot revenge ("Your vampire wife will die!"). However, his attempt at calling forth a demon backfires when it kills him, captures his spirit and takes him to hell. With things rapidly going downhill for them in their village, Muang, Bua Klee and Chood flee to the country to stay with Muang's uncle, Chaeng (Sawin Sawangrat), but the seclusion ends up not offering up any protection.

In a scene that sounds much better than it actually is, another old krasue lady lives nearby, which leads to a krasue v. krasue catfight over an animal carcass that concludes with Bua Klee biting the other krasue's guts. That prompts the injured krasue and her hubby (some kind of flying "demon") to get revenge, which they plan on enacting whenever Bua Klee gives birth to her baby so they can steal it and eat its heart. But that's not all!

When Muang travels back into the village to make a deal with wealthy trader Kamnan (Chao Klaewklong), he strikes the fancy of the man's spoiled daughter, Madua (Metta Roongrat), who herself is already being pursued by Chatr (the same guy who was trying to get into Bua Klee's pants earlier in the film). Chatr attempts to kill Muang, but only shoots him in the arm. After spending a few days nursing him back to health, Madua declares her devotion to him ("You know I love you so much!"). Him being married and already having a child isn't of any real concern to her. She just uses love spells to make him fall for her. The father then catches them in bed together and forces them to get married.

Meanwhile, a desperate Bua Klee is trying to find a way to get her man back. She learns of a treasure by some old ruins that's supposedly guarded by a giant. As for how to break the curse, it involves finding some fire and then stripping naked next to it. She attempts this (showing off her bare ass in the process) but is denied the treasure because she's yet to atone for her sins. A plan is hatched to break the love curse against Muang, which causes things to spiral out of control. Many people get killed.

While it may seem hard to believe by today's standards, this was a major release and a hit film in Thailand at the time, with many top box office draws in the cast and special effects work (including some brief, crude stop motion) that was considered elaborate and revolutionary by early 70s Thai standards. It was also shot on 35mm during what was considered the Golden Age of cinema in the country, so the production values are somewhat better (though still low!) than much of what came later. Starting in the second half of the 80s, similar films would be cheaply and carelessly shot on 16mm, bogged down with childish slapstick comedy, not even feature much in the way of special effects and be marketed almost exclusively to rural audiences. The films were not well-made or sophisticated enough to cut the mustard in larger urban areas and were mostly ignored there.

Running 105 minutes, this almost seems like three different movies mashed into one. It's episodic and melodramatic, sometimes tediously so. The pacing is horrendous, the soundtrack is comprised almost exclusively of overbearing (stolen) music and it ends up sidelining the very creatures we came to see in favor of the alternately mushy and messy relationship drama. That would perhaps be easier to take had we not been saddled with a lead female character who's insufferably whiny, pathetic and weak. Sometimes this hits on the right side of weird but the highlights are sadly few and far between.

The credited director is ส.เนาวราช, which is translated to either S. Naowarat or S. Naowaratch on most websites (the Swedish subs call him "S. Nawaraj"). Doing a little digging around and connecting of some dots, I was able to find out who this guy really is and about some of the other players involved. The real director is สนิท โกศะรถ, or Sanit Kosaroth, who was best known as a crime fiction writer and magazine publisher. The Naowarat / Naowaratch alias was a pen name he frequently used. He passed away just two years after this film was released at the age of just 45. The film was financed by บันลือ อุตสาหจิต / Banlue Utsahachit, who owned his own publishing house that frequently employed "Naowarat" as a writer. It's based on a graphic novel series by ทวี วิษณุกร / Thawee Witsanukorn, which was published by Banluesan Publishing House.

★★

Crocodile Fury (1988)

... aka: Sorceress of the Deep

Directed by:

"Ted Kingsbrook" (Godfrey Ho? Tomas Tang?)

Neramit (uncredited)

Sompote Saengduenchai (uncredited)

Only one of the four crocodile movies Sompote Sands worked on in the 80s received much in the way of international distribution and, sadly, that was CROCODILE (1980), easily the blandest and worst of the lot. His three other ventures into croc territory: KRAI THONG (1980), CROCODILE THERAKWAD (1982) and KRAI THONG 2 (1985), are all a lot more fun despite not being as well known. While none were released here in America, both Krai Thong movies received English releases in other countries. The first was given VHS and VCD releases in Hong Kong with subs, while the second received the cut-n-paste, or as I like to call it, the rape-n-pillage, treatment from Tomas Tang and his Filmark International. As per his usual, he extracted the more entertaining parts from the source movie, tacked his own newly-shot footage to it and basically created a brand new story via the dubbing. The bad part is that a lot was cut from the original KT2 to make room for the new stuff while the original version that hasn't been tampered with is only available in Thai.

What's strange about this particular title is that even though it was dubbed into several different languages, it was never released in any English-speaking country. As far as I know, there were just two versions: a widescreen release that's dubbed into French and a full-screen Greek release that's dubbed into English but has burnt-in Greek subtitles. The latter is also the source print used for all the bootleg DVD versions currently on the market.

We first meet a blonde witch named Monica (listed in the credits as either "Trudy Calder" or "Nina Ferrer") and get a tour of her home, which is filled with candles and various little trinkets, including a skull with red-blinking eyes that shoots smoke out of its nostrils and the Onibaba mask. Monica, decked out in what appears to be the top half of a red clown costume but with garters and stockings instead of pants, waves her hands around a crystal ball. We then cut to two guys with machine guns chasing after a group of other men in the woods. That's followed by a sort-of "best of" montage of crocodile attacks taken from Krai Thong 2; most of which had themselves already been used before in Crocodile Therakwad. Since I've recently viewed both of those, and now this, I've seen many of these attack scenes used no less than three times in three different movies over the past few months!

We then cut to a man named Rudolf ("Lucas Byrne" / Ernst Mausser) wandering around an old temple. He stumbles upon a corpse hanging from a tree, is bitten on the leg by a reanimated skull, finds a worm-faced corpse and then starts throwing up yellow slime filled with maggots. Afterward, he wipes his chin, says "Better!" and then casually walks away (!?) He encounters a pair of jianshi (hopping vampires) but Monica swoops in long enough to save him with the old spell paper to the forehead trick.

According to this new plot, both Monica and Rudolf used to work for some guy who ran something called "the vampire business." Though their former boss is now dead, they're still carrying on doing whatever it was he was doing, which is left so vague (like most of these Filmark releases) it hardly even matters. They make mention of a special agent named Bruce Thompson ("Nick Reece" / Kent Wills), who's trailing them. Monica is encouraged to "keep casting your evil spells to create chaos and divert the agent's attention." One of these involves her making circle motions with her arms and chanting "hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba," which causes one of her pet jianshi to puke black fish into a bowl, which then hop into the mouth of her second jianshi and, uh... does something, I guess? I'm just not entirely sure what.

All of these new scenes are spliced between the KT2 footage, which thanks to the new English dub offers up a similar though somewhat different story with different motivations for the characters. At a village party, a crocodile snatches a guy and starts to drag him off when Jack (Sorapong Chatree) jumps in the water and pries the crocodile's jaws off of him. The crocodile then transforms into Maria (Aranya Namwong), who was Jack's lover in her human existence but is now changed / reincarnated / cursed into being a crocodile-woman. Seems every time Maria is ordered to kill, Jack stops her by reminding her that if she keeps from murdering anyone that the two can be reunited as lovers once again after he passes on.

Maria spends most of her time in a golden underwater cave called "Sea World" along with another croc-woman (Duangcheewan Komolsen), Shamu (just kidding about that one) and the evil Master Cooper (Sor Asanajinda), who plots "world domination" and is in cahoots with Monica. Cooper resurrects a "crocodile spirit" of "an evil sort of man" named Don Moore (!) in his human existence. Don (Lak Apichat) immediately gets to work slaughtering animals (he rips a water buffalo's head clean off) and more villagers in his crocodile form, plus tries to rape all of the croc-women in his human form.

Supansa Nuengpirom and Ampha Phusit, who played Krai Thong's spoiled wives in KT2, have been turned into a couple of bitchy, hilariously-British-accented (!) gossips named May and Peggy here. Thankfully, what hasn't changed is that the entire crocodile massacre at their home (probably the best scene in KT2) has been kept fully intact here. Maria convinces Don to kidnap Peggy and bring her to the cave, where she can be tortured and raped. Maria's motivation? Well, she thinks that Peggy "seduced" Jack away from her. When Maria teams up with Don and the two threaten to overthrow Cooper, he transforms another reptile into a diamond-fanged "crocodile spirit" named Steven (Sombat Methanee). While Don and Steven fight for supremacy of the underwater kingdom, Jack uses magic powers he's just learned from an elder to do battle with both of them.

Annnnd, as that's going on, special agent Bruce starts closing in on Monica. Rudolf attempts to shoot him, but he accidentally kills a villager (Sun Chien) instead. After that failed assassination attempt, Monica sends a bunch of green-blooded, kung fu fighting zombies after him. And when that doesn't work, she unleashes both her hopping vampires AND the zombies on him. Monica, who suddenly sprouts Freddy-like clawed hands at the very end (?!), and Rudolf then attempt to kill him themselves, which somehow results in her stomach swelling and a skull-baby bursting out of it. Yeeee!

As far as Filmark mash-ups are concerned, this is one of the better ones I've seen. "Better" being a relative term, of course. Not that it's really any good or makes a whole lot of sense but it benefits a lot from using an entertaining original film as its backbone while basically just throwing a bunch of entertaining supernatural mumbo jumbo into the mix. This results in fast-paced, seldom-boring good dumb fun, which is the most one can ask from something like this. Thai funnyman Lor Tok and Tanit Pongmanoon appear briefly in the recycled footage.

The pseudonymous director is probably producer Tomas Tang. Some online sources (including some of the posters) claim that Godfrey Ho directed, wrote and / or edited the film, though neither his name nor any of his regular aliases appear in the credits, which are almost entirely fake, anyway. Hard to tell!

SBIG